But I beg to differ, from the CW and from most critics; I loved Rocky III<\/em>.<\/p>\n The film featured Sylvester Stallone and “Mister T” – both of them at the brink of the “caricature” phases of their careers (from with Stallone only emerged in the mid-nineties, and T has not), but not quite <\/em>there yet.<\/p>\n I saw this film about the same time I was drifting toward conservatism.\u00a0 And that may have been one of the reasons I loved it; Rocky, the old-school plugger and ex-kneebuster from Philly (along with former foe and now-teammate Apollo Creed) were the old school; T’s Clubber Lang represented all that was gauche and vile about modernity.<\/p>\n And yet, for a film that basically was a cartoon, I loved the Clubber Lang character; T played it with visceral, uncompromising anger that went – I thought, and still think – way past the material. Look, Mister T will probably never do Shakespeare in the Park – but after watching Clubber Lang, I was always disappointed he wound up on “The A Team” and chattering “I Pity Da Fool” for the rest of his career.<\/p>\n Rocky <\/em>was, of course, a classic – one of my favorite movies ever.\u00a0 Rocky II <\/em>was, of course, utterly predictable; there was never a moment of suspense; you knew <\/em>Apollo Creed was going down (and even though I’ve seen Rocky<\/em> at least a dozen times, it’s still got suspense).<\/p>\n And even though I was a Republican by that time, Rocky IV <\/em>was too obvious a “morning in America” Cold War movie even for me, the newly-minted Reagan voter; I knew the entire plot as I walked into the theater; First Blood <\/em>was a much <\/em>better movie.\u00a0 I have yet to see V<\/em>, and Balboa <\/em>was another whole thing altogether (a great movie, but just…different).<\/p>\n But Rocky III<\/em>?\u00a0 I felt <\/em>that one. It’s a wrecking crew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Conventional wisdom is that Rocky is the only part of the franchise worth watching (or was, until Rocky Balboa, the sixth part of the series, came out). But I beg to differ, from the CW and from most critics; I loved Rocky III. The film featured Sylvester Stallone and “Mister T” – both of them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6],"tags":[211],"class_list":["post-4700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-n-e","category-mitch","tag-love-and-hate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4700"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26895,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4700\/revisions\/26895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/www.cinemacenter.org\/coming_soon\/images\/stallone460.jpg\")
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