The last three movies I saw in the theather:
- Wall-e
This was a really great comedy animation movie. Anyone should watch this for the pure pleasure of laughing while watching a silly robot get in love.
- The X-Files: I want to believe
It’s a decent movie but nothing great.
- The Dark Knigth
A great movie. It deserves it’s own post, which I’ll write some time.
I liked this year’s John Rambo, but to me, the latest Rocky movie, last year’s Rocky Balboa, was the best recent (top notch) work performed by Silvester Stallone.
Rocky movies are all about the same: Rocky is the underdog and he needs to prove something. Not to the world, but to himself. In the end, Rocky proves to himself (and even to the world) that he is able and everybody loves Rocky (sometimes even his opponents).
All the Rocky movies have two other things in common: great soundtrack and great training sequences.
I’ll leave the soundtracks for some other time, since this post is about the training sequences.
Let’s go movie by movie:
Rocky 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iPFK5T_G3U
Punching meat in the meat house. It probably does not get any more old school than this.
Rocky 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVdbuNpsryI
This is a great sequence. Rocky gets his motivation from a talk with Adrian, from where he goes to perform his old school routine of running, crunching, rope skipping, the works. And, in the end of the training sequence, he gets surrounded by the people in the street who follow him and cheer for him.
Rocky 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yERlhKvzpyk
In Rocky 3, Rocky gets to train with his former oponnent Apollo Creed. Apollo tries go give Rocky some of his style and technique, they do a lot of foot work and some swimming. Also new is the introducing of sand running.
Rocky 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AemCeiuI_k
This time Rocky was going to face Ivan Drago. The training sequence gives us both of their training methods: Rocky goes old school (as always), while Ivan Drago trains under the supervision of scientists with loads of high-tech equipment.
This is probably one of the best training sequences ever. Both guys are shown going trough different ways to reach the pain and the cut of the sequence is really nice, because almost we get a side by side comparison of their respective methods.
Rocky 5
I didn’t manage to find a youtube video of Rocky’s training in the fifth movie. I don’t actually remember if Rocky did train in this one anyway, since he was retired and was not going into a pro fight.
Rocky 6
The training sequence starts with Rocky’s trainer giving a very nice speech. It goes like this:
“To beat this guy, you need speed. You don’t have it.
And your knees can’t take the pouding, so hard running is out.
And you got artritis on your neck and you got calcium deposits on most of your joints, so sparring is out.
So what we’ll be calling on, is good old fashioned blunt force trauma. Horse power. Heavy duty, cast iron, pile driving punches that will have to hurt so much they’ll rattle his ancestors. Everytime you hit him with a shot, his gotta feel like he tried kissing the express train.
Yeah.
Let’s start building some hurting bombs.”
The speech is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4Xo7cVu3Ik
The training sequence is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoLVWvqEwzs
I always think that these training sequences are very wonderful and powerful pieces of cinema. The Rocky movie series may not be a top notch serious, but the training sequences are always great, and that alone makes the movies worth wile.
