‘Creed’ packs quality and crowd-pleasing punch
‘Creed’ is easily the second best film in the series and a quality picture in its own right.
Michael B. Jordan
Generic ‘Fantastic Four’ lacks drama, excitement, most other things
For the first half of ‘Fantastic Four’ you’re wondering, “When is this movie going to start?” For the second half you’re wondering, “When is this movie going to end?!?” It’s not an awful movie, it’s just unrelentingly bland.
To Better Know a Team: Fantastic Four
The Fantastic Four are the first family of Marvel Comics. Created in 1961 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (apocryphally, the result of an edict by Marvel publisher Martin Goodman to tryout a superhero team, a la rival DC Comic’s super-successful Justice League) and heavily inspired by the monster comics Marvel was publishing at the time, their tremendous popularity and success is responsible for launching Marvel’s Silver Age superhero renaissance, transforming a middling publisher of romance and sci-fi comics into one of the “Big Two” publishers of superhero adventure stories, leading to the creation of some of pop culture’s most enduring and beloved characters. Without the Fantastic Four, there would arguably be no Spider-Man, no Hulk, no X-Men or Avengers. Fantastic Four #1 is, simply, the Big Bang of Marvel Comics.
Michael B. Jordan is ‘Adonis Johnson’ in full synopsis for ‘Creed’, ‘Rocky’ spinoff
Forget the Alien sequel; the real exciting ’70s spinoff movie is Creed, which is not about the second worst rock band of all time but is yet another chapter in the Rocky franchise. Following his Sundance darling Fruitvale Station, director Ryan Coogler and that film’s star Michael B. Jordan’s Creed is about the son (grandson?) of boxing …
‘Fruitvale Station’ powerfully acted, but slightly scattered as a whole
Fruitvale Station is a series of vignettes searching in vain for connective tissue. Its anchor is the excellent young actor Michael B. Jordan, and while he and the other performers in this dramatization of a harrowing recent tragedy are all solid, the final product is still a bit too scattered to make an impact, despite the moment-to-moment resonance.
‘Fruitvale Station’ succeeds thanks to an exceptional lead actor and smart first time director
Death does not negotiate. When it arrives at one’s door, there is no escape. Disease, fatal accidents, murder, suicide, death cares little for the means, only the end, literally. The discussion of death becomes all the more morbid when people engage in ideas of who deserves to die and who deserves to live.