Sylvester Stallone wrote this gem and wisely insisted on starring (possible replacing, if you can imagine, Ryan O’Neal, Burt Reynolds or Robert Redford), leading to many more Rocky movies, and some Rambos, and a dozen other mumbling portrayals.  Say what you will about what it spawned, but Rocky is near flawless.

Rocky is a busted up club fighter living in the bleak hell that is mid 70s Philadelphia. He’s a sweet guy, but he is an admitted bum, getting a fight every few weeks and paying the rent by collecting for a local loan shark. We meet Rocky after a sixth round knockout of another bum nets him $40, and he’s just been unceremoniously evicted from his gym by its manager, Burgess Meredith. His best friend is a meat packing cretin (Burt Young) who lives with his paralyzingly shy sister (Talia Shire), who Rocky is sweet on. Rocky’s fortunes change, however, when the champion, a Muhammad Ali figure named Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), has a ranked contender drop out from a well-promoted fight. Creed fixes on a gimmick – give a nobody – the “EYE-talion Stallion” – a shot at the title.

This is often heralded as the quintessential boxing movie, but boxing is secondary to a moving, beautiful love story between Shire and Stallone, and the portrayal of a Philadelphia so cruel and cold that Rocky seems like its only validation.

Shire is so withdrawn, a character taunts Rocky, suggesting she is “retarded.” She is not, but she is painfully muted. Rocky’s persistence, and the innate sweetness in him, pulls her out. The scenes of their first encounters, and particularly, the scene where he takes her on a first date, are realistic, poignant and heart wrenching. As they come together, you can see that each provides the other a confidence and support they’d never known. Stallone and Shire share a haunting chemistry of losers, and their story really is the movie.

As is the city. Director John Avildsen uses the gritty corners and grimy haunts of poor and working class Philly and the verisimilitude contributes heavily to the drama. Rocky lives in a hell, where folks sit on the cold streets, trash is strewn everywhere, and it is not enough to ignore someone – you must abuse them. So, Rocky’s loan shark boss has a driver who mocks Rocky mercilessly. When Rocky tries to tell a neighborhood girl to get off the streets or she’ll get a “rep,” she responds, “Screw you, creepo” and when he is kicked out of his gym, Burgess Meredith humiliates him publicly.

Of course, when Rocky gets his shot, Meredith, hat in hand, comes to help. The result is one of the most beautiful scenes in Hollywood history:

The picture received 10 Oscar nominations, including ones for Stallone, Shire and Meredith, and it deservedly won Best Picture.

The only fault is the fight itself, which is hampered by fighters who look buff and have some moves (Weathers simulates a nice stinging jab), but unrealistically degenerates into a clumsy brawl. While Avildsen does the best he can with the budget (a mere $1 million shot in less than a month), his interspersing of stock arena footage cannot save the fact that the Rocky-Apollo fight looks very small indeed, and you can see empty seats in the background of various shots of the fighters.  Given the budget and the quick pace of filming, these weaknesses are easily overlooked.

Otto Preminger skillfully presents Allen Drury’s Pulitzer Prize winning political potboiler (published in 1959), the story of  a senatorial nomination (Henry Fonda, who is tapped to be Secretary of State)  gone bad under the weight of McCarthyite tactics, vicious blackmail, and a dying president.  The story is intricate, but Preminger, ever the pro, handles it with ease.  For example, if there is an issue of senatorial procedure, it is cleared up in a clever discussion with foreign tourists, who receive a crisp and unobtrusive explanation as to parliamentary procedure and the role of the vice president in American government.

It is decidedly not an all-star cast, but it is a very good one.  Franchot Tone, as the tough and dissipated president, wields his waning power with as much vigor as he can muster.  He has a wonderful scene where first he tries to smooth-talk the chair of the subcommittee handling the nomination (Don Murray) into reporting it out and when the senator does not budge, his flash of anger is actually a little terrifying.  Walter Pidgeon plays the Senate Majority leader, tasked with shepherding the nomination through, and Charles Laughton hams it up wonderfully as the Strom Thurmonesque senator who opposes the nominee.  Lew Ayres, as the in-over-his-head vice president, is a perfect combination of insecure and decent.

Having been born in Washington, D.C., the shots of the nation’s capitol in a more innocent and uncluttered time are worth the viewing in and of themselves.  And look close, because Will Geer (Grandpa Walton) plays the Senate minority leader and Betty White also has a role in that august body.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s opus chronicles the American porn industry in the late 70s via the story of a loose family of weaklings, caught up in the speed, confusion and excitement of sex, drugs and fleeting fame in the bleaching sun of Los Angeles (Anderson took some license here, as the porn industry started in San Francisco and NYC, but his film requires that feel of promise and wasteland that is LA).

The patriarch is porn director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), and the story revolves around his LA retreat, a gaudy ranch-styled haven for his coterie of misfits.  There are the young rejects: porn star and mother Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), her teen charge Rollergirl (Heather Graham), studs Reed Rothschild (John C. Reilly) and Buck Swope (Don Cheadle) and lesser stars Jessie St. Vincent (Melora Walters) and Becky Barnett (Nicole Ari Parker); the film crew (William H. Macy, Ricky Jay and Phillip Seymour Hoffman); the money men, The Colonel (Robert Ridgely) and Floyd  Gondolli (Phillip Baker Hall); and a host of hanger-ons (club owner Luis Guzman and troublemaker Thomas Jane).

Into this world comes Mark Wahlberg, a young kid who works at Guzman’s nightclub and comes to the attention of porn director Horner after Rollergirl has an encounter with him and reports back his massive endowment.  Horner offers the boy a place in the family.  Wahlberg becomes Dirk Diggler, porn superstar, escaping from a toxic home to the warm embrace of pseudo-stardom in fuck films.  In the world of porn, he finds acceptance, friendship and a certain form of celebrity.

Diggler is based on famed porn star John Holmes, and while Anderson doesn’t take Dirk Diggler down Holmes’s exact path of The Wonderland Murders and AIDS, the trip tracks close enough.  Hubris and drugs take Diggler from the safety of Horner and his new family to the street, where he ends up turning tricks, beaten by punks, desperate to score drugs and nearly murdered by a psychotic drug dealer (Alfred Molina).

To a person, these people are none-too-bright, but they cleave together in a life that mirrors celebrity, though it is gaudy and flimsy, glitz on the cheap.  They briefly flourish in a fantasy world within a fantasy world, where their work is deemed art, and their talent is certified as genuine.  Despite the self-delusion, Anderson shows how the family actually provides support to these outcasts never found elsewhere.

The film is visually audacious and features several flowing scenes without a cut for long stretches, including a 3 minute opening scene which introduces most of the characters.  Anderson’s filming of two separate parties at the Horner house is boundless and reminiscent of Altman’s opening scene in The Player as well as Scorcese’s casino scenes in Casino.  The effect meshes with Wahlberg’s entrance on the scene, as he steps into a world where he is the golden child.  You see the wonder – beautiful young people drugs, a swimming pool! and despite better instincts, you become intoxicated along with Dirk.

The screenplay by Anderson is authentic and resonant, evoking David Mamet, but without the showiness.  A prime example is the discussion between Horner and Floyd Gondolli on the changing business of porn:

The music by Michael Penn is evocative of the time as well, and the cuts chosen for each scene are spot on, from Andrew Gold’s “Lonely Boy” (revealing Amber Waves as a mother) to the Beach Boys “God Only Knows” providing the coda for the characters, to “Sister Christian”, which now serves as a sinister song, as used in the film’s most harrowing scene, much like “Stuck in the Middle with You” after Reservoir Dogs.

Finally, the performances are uniformly stellar.  Julianne Moore was nominated for best supporting actress (she was beat out by Kim Basinger in LA Confidential, a great film and a fine performance, but still, Moore was robbed).  Burt Reynolds was also nominated and rightly so.  Interestingly, after seeing a rough cut of the movie, Reynolds fired his agent for casting him in Boogie Nights, but Burt’s artistic choices have never been stellar.  Wahlberg stands out, exuding the perfect blend of charm, wonder, cluelessness and want.  Anderson is lucky Leonardo DiCaprio turned down the role to work on a little picture called Titanic.  DiCaprio’s a fine actor, but he’s a little too savvy and wary.  Wahlberg was perfectly open, trusting and innocent.  The scene where his mother berates him as worthless and stupid, forcing him out of the house, is heart-wrenching.

This is a classic film of America sprawl, ascent, decay, and fall.  One of my favorites and one of the top 20 ever made.