Category: 2000s

Rocky V is bad fan fiction that any Rocky fan can just ignore exists. Instead after Rocky IV, turn this one on instead. A retired and widowed Rocky is challenged by the current and unpopular heavyweight champion after Rocky is shown to beat him in a simulated fight. The side stories regarding Rocky Jr.’s daddy issues and the young girl from the original Rocky are wholly filler and unnecessary, but the rest of the film is an almost perfect conclusion to Rocky’s character arc as a boxer. 

After watching the original, I felt I needed to check out the more recent adaptation. It’s entirely possible I’d seen this before (for no good reason I confuse the title with Assault on Precinct 13, which I have seen). The ending here seemed very familiar, though not anywhere near as memorable as the one from 1974. John Travolta is nowhere near as good as Robert Shaw and the whole role seemed reworked, to the detriment of the film, to his star power, rendering the other hijackers almost obsolete. Denzel Washington is steady in his role as the subway dispatcher, but many other parts of the story were changed to make for a less compelling film. Instead of relying on the tension inherent in the hijacking situation, this version relies on loud music and flashy lights, playing like a video from MTV’s heyday.

A fairly recently discovered love for Lesley Manville and really enjoying Secrets & Lies, my last Mike Leigh film, made me want to check this out when I saw that it was leaving Amazon Prime this month. This is a completely dreary story of British three working class who interact and drudge through life together. It’s tiring to watch as it seems none of these characters will ever find any joy and are just destined to grind through their days until the end, from one generation to the next. It is well acted, with Timothy Spall as Manville’s cab driving husband giving a particularly wearied performance.

This movie is great for what it is. It’s exactly what you’d expect from an early 2000s thriller starring John Travolta and Vince Vaughn as the former and current husbands of Teri Polo. Vaughn is perfectly menacing as the criminal who has pushed his way into Travolta’s family and terrorizes John’s teenage son. As expected, the actions of the characters don’t make a lick of sense, but there’s plenty of tension and the pacing is on point. At an hour and a half, it doesn’t overstay its welcome and even has a small role for Steve Buscemi as a former associate of Vaughn’s character.

It’s hard to talk about this movie without revealing some of the twists and turns the plot takes. Don Cheadle is a Muslim, Sudanese-American who joins up with a terrorist organization and is thus tracked down by FBI agent Guy Pearce. It follows an unsurprisingly common thread for the early 2000s. I enjoy anything Don Cheadle is in and he carries this film on his back. Pearce manages a fairly decent portrayal as American law enforcement, giving Cheadle something to play against. Jeff Daniels and Archie Punjabi add quality in roles that could have been beefed up to the film’s betterment.

There’s a whole lot of unevenness in the story here that makes what could have been a really entertaining film about a mother-daughter con artist team into an overly-long mess with only occasional moments of good. The story takes too long to get started and some of the con parts are drawn out for way too long, while others are blink and you miss it. Sigourney Weaver is underutilized as the mother part of the duo and Jennifer Love Hewitt, squeezed into any number of mini dresses, is shoehorned into a love story with Jason Lee. I do really enjoy the power and energy Hewitt brings to her role and Weaver gets to show her comedic side. There is also a great mix of supporting characters played by a good number of well-known actors.