“Do I have regrets?” asks Sylvester Stallone at the beginning of “Sly,” the Thom Zimny documentary about him that served as the closing-night film at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday. “Hell yeah, I have regrets.”
Putting that quote up front is a smart way to introduce a film about the man whose career sometimes seems to have resulted in equal parts iconography and mockery. The actor, screenwriter and director created the classic characters Rocky Balboa and John Rambo, but struggled to find respect and made more than his share of terrible films.
Another smart move: New conversations with Stallone run throughout the film, but these are not the usual talking-head interviews in which the subject sits in a chair and runs through his life. Instead, Stallone almost always talks to the camera while standing up and moving around.
Zimny’s camera stays on the go, bobbing and weaving...
Putting that quote up front is a smart way to introduce a film about the man whose career sometimes seems to have resulted in equal parts iconography and mockery. The actor, screenwriter and director created the classic characters Rocky Balboa and John Rambo, but struggled to find respect and made more than his share of terrible films.
Another smart move: New conversations with Stallone run throughout the film, but these are not the usual talking-head interviews in which the subject sits in a chair and runs through his life. Instead, Stallone almost always talks to the camera while standing up and moving around.
Zimny’s camera stays on the go, bobbing and weaving...
- 9/17/2023
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
What do we want out of a training montage?
I mean that question seriously. What, do movie viewers truly want out of a sequence where the main character improves, grows stronger, and collects a new set of skills in a matter of minutes as the magic of movie editing compresses hours (even days or weeks) of backbreaking, bone-crushing work into a few shots? If you were to quiz the pop culture zeitgeist at large, the answer would be clear: bombast. The big picture view of the training montage is one that is inherently silly, one that is easily parodied, one that suggests anyone can get better at anything as long as they have some great music and some rapid cuts of them leaping from one activity to another. Training montages are silly, pop culture tells us, and the zanier and wilder and bigger they are, the more we remember them.
I mean that question seriously. What, do movie viewers truly want out of a sequence where the main character improves, grows stronger, and collects a new set of skills in a matter of minutes as the magic of movie editing compresses hours (even days or weeks) of backbreaking, bone-crushing work into a few shots? If you were to quiz the pop culture zeitgeist at large, the answer would be clear: bombast. The big picture view of the training montage is one that is inherently silly, one that is easily parodied, one that suggests anyone can get better at anything as long as they have some great music and some rapid cuts of them leaping from one activity to another. Training montages are silly, pop culture tells us, and the zanier and wilder and bigger they are, the more we remember them.
- 3/2/2023
- by Jacob Hall
- Slash Film
"Rocky" has endured as one of the most uplifting sports films of all time thanks in large part to its heartfelt portrayal of two social misfits falling haltingly in love as one of them trains for an unlikely, yet plausible shot at the heavyweight boxing title. Sylvester Stallone and Talia Shire give lovely, lived-in performances that are painful to watch at times because Rocky has no idea how awkwardly his gregariousness lands, while Adrian seems terrified that anyone would find her worthy of affection.
For most of its runtime, "Rocky" is a human drama about losers. It soars to life during its Bill Conti-scored training montage that explodes the film into its exhilarating third act. Interestingly, the final match isn't all that long. From the opening bell to the end of the fifteenth round, it occupies a scant eight-and-a-half minutes of screen time. But it feels like trench warfare...
For most of its runtime, "Rocky" is a human drama about losers. It soars to life during its Bill Conti-scored training montage that explodes the film into its exhilarating third act. Interestingly, the final match isn't all that long. From the opening bell to the end of the fifteenth round, it occupies a scant eight-and-a-half minutes of screen time. But it feels like trench warfare...
- 1/13/2023
- by Jeremy Smith
- Slash Film
John G. Avildsen was an expert in the art of the feel-good finale. He knew how to end a movie on a high, and send the audience floating on air out of the theater. He did it with "Rocky" in 1976, and again in 1984 with "The Karate Kid." Once the big fight is over in both these films, Avildsen lets Bil Conti's music crescendo, cuts to a close-up, freezes the frame and, boom, credits. How effective is this? Both movies were also blockbusters that launched franchises that remain active and hugely-popular to this day, with even more spinoffs and sequels on the way.
It's hard to imagine "Rocky," in particular, ending any other way, but Avildsen and Sylvester Stallone (who wrote the movie's screenplay in addition to starring as the Italian Stallion) had a decidedly different idea for the original conclusion -- one that might've sabotaged the sweet-natured film and cost...
It's hard to imagine "Rocky," in particular, ending any other way, but Avildsen and Sylvester Stallone (who wrote the movie's screenplay in addition to starring as the Italian Stallion) had a decidedly different idea for the original conclusion -- one that might've sabotaged the sweet-natured film and cost...
- 1/12/2023
- by Jeremy Smith
- Slash Film
It’s It's an oft-echoed sentiment that movies are made in the cutting room, so the Academy Award for Best Film Editing is a cherished trophy indeed. First, some guild award stats: since 1963, the American Cinema Editors have correctly predicted the eventual Oscar winner 36 times (in years when the award has been split between Dramatic and Musical/Comedy Editing, the specific prize given has been noted): 1963: Harold F. Kress, “How the West Was Won” 1964: Cotton Warburton, “Mary Poppins” 1965: William Reynolds, “The Sound of Music” 1968: Frank P. Keller, “Bullitt” 1970: Hugh S. Fowler, “Patton” 1972: David Bretherton, “Cabaret” 1973: William Reynolds, “The Sting” 1975: Verna Fields, “Jaws” 1976: Richard Halsley and Scott Conrad, “Rocky” 1978: Peter Zinner, “The Deer Hunter” 1979: Alan Heim, “All That Jazz” 1980: Thelma...'...
- 2/20/2015
- Gold Derby
Now this is a list that could result in a lot of fascinating dissection and thanks to HitFix it comes to our attention almost three years after it was originally released back in 2012, celebrating the Motion Picture Editors Guild's 75th anniversary. Over at HitFix, Kris Tapley asks, "Is this news to anyone elsec" Um, yes, I find it immensely interesting and a perfect starting point for anyone looking to further explore the art of film editing. In an accompanying article we get the particulars concerning what films were eligible and how films were to be considered: In our Jan-feb 12 issue, we asked Guild members to vote on what they consider to be the Best Edited Films of all time. Any feature-length film from any country in the world was eligible. And by "Best Edited," we explained, we didn't just mean picture; sound, music and mixing were to be considered as well.
- 2/4/2015
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
A random bit of researching on a Tuesday night led me to something I didn't know existed: The Motion Picture Editors Guild's list of the 75 best-edited films of all time. It was a feature in part celebrating the Guild's 75th anniversary in 2012. Is this news to anyone else? I confess to having missed it entirely. Naturally, I had to dig in. What was immediately striking to me about the list — which was decided upon by the Guild membership and, per instruction, was considered in terms of picture and sound editorial as opposed to just the former — was the most popular decade ranking. Naturally, the 1970s led with 17 mentions, but right on its heels was the 1990s. I wouldn't have expected that but I happen to agree with the assessment. Thelma Schoonmaker's work on "Raging Bull" came out on top, an objectively difficult choice to dispute, really. It was so transformative,...
- 2/4/2015
- by Kristopher Tapley
- Hitfix
Exquisitely produced, immaculately acted, and thoroughly uninvolving, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a perfect nothing of a movie. It takes James Thurber's beloved short story about a man who spends all his time daydreaming of heroic feats in far-away places, and expands upon it in the most schematic, belabored way. This time out, Walter (Ben Stiller, who also directed) runs the photo archive at Life magazine. It’s a job most people would probably love to have, but in Stiller and screenwriter Scott Conrad’s vision, it's the ideal purgatorial position for a submerged, extra-in-his-own-life type. In this iteration of the story, Walter is no longer a henpecked zhlub and more a lovestruck dreamer: He wants to go and speak to leggy, kindhearted fellow employee Cheryl (Kristen Wiig), but he can’t, much to the ridicule of the folks around him. Instead, he fantasizes about sweeping her...
- 12/24/2013
- by Bilge Ebiri
- Vulture
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