I never watched all of the "Rocky" movies, so I'm not sure where they started to go off the rails. "Creed," however, is still going strong with its third entry, which was directed by Michael B. Jordan, and introduces a formidable new opponent in Damian "Diamond Dame" Anderson, played by Jonathan Majors. Donnie and Dame share some history and got in trouble together in the past. This landed Dame in prison for many years, and has left him with a serious grudge against his former friend. Donnie retires from boxing at the beginning of the film, and is now helping to train and promote upcoming boxers like Felix Chavez (Jose Benavidez Jr.), and spending more time with his family, including young daughter Amara (Mila Davis-Kent). However, when his attempts to help Dame go awry, Donnie may have to step back into the ring.
It's been eight years since the first "Creed," and it's been thoroughly satisfying watching Donnie move through different stages of his life and relationships. Sylvester Stallone sits out this installment, allowing Phylicia Rashad, as Donnie's mother, to be his major mentor figure here. Despite his personal crisis in this film, there's been a lot of growth since we saw him in 2018's "Creed II." It makes sense that he's moved into a different role, running a training academy and gym with Wood Harris's Little Duke. And of course he's fluent in ASL with his daughter and Bianca. And what the film gets so right is that it sets up a great troubled antagonist in Diamond Dame. "Creed III" is a star vehicle for Jonathan Majors more than it is for Michael B. Jordan. Majors' physical presence is so charismatic, and his performance is so well calibrated, it's impossible to keep your eyes off him. The film works because its combatants are well matched and they play off of each other perfectly onscreen.
"Creed III," frankly, has a bare bones story that doesn't hold up to much scrutiny, but its emotional arcs are rock solid. It's good to be in this universe with these characters and all their decades of history again. The filmmaking is very strong, with the boxing and training sequences among the best in the entire franchise. I like the occasional stylization, like the use of speed ramping and abstracted visuals. Jordan is a professed anime fan, and I was expecting something far more exaggerated, but the big flourishes are rare, and the action is mostly kept pretty grounded. I wasn't expecting much at the outset, but this is a thoroughly satisfying film on every level, and I hope Michael B. Jordan gets to direct again soon.
Now on to "Magic Mike's Last Dance." Despite her prominence in the ad campaign, it didn't really sink in for me that Salma Hayek Pinault was the female lead of this film. I thought her role would be closer to Jada Pinkett Smith's emcee in "Magic Mike XXL." Instead, Hayek Pinault is firmly the second lead of "Last Dance." She plays Maxandra Mendoza, a wealthy socialite going through a divorce, who happens across Mike Lane, working as a bartender at a fundraiser. One thing leads to another, and she pays him for an intimate lap dance that leads to more. The next thing Mike knows, she's flying him to London for a secret job, which turns out to be helping her transform a stuffy play at the theater she owns into an erotic male burlesque extravaganza.
The love story is pretty flimsy, but it stays mostly adjacent to the old "putting on a show" formula and some snazzy dance sequences. None of the new dancers are really characters, but they display enough impressive moves to be a nice distraction. None of Mike's fellow performers from the previous "Magic Mike" movies appear either, except in a Zoom call group cameo, which is a shame. Instead, we have Max's precocious teen daughter Zadie (Jemelia George) and chauffeur Victor (Ayub Khan Din) keeping an eye on the progress of the show's development and Max and Mike's romance, and occasionally putting in their two cents. Zadie's incongruously posh VO narration of the events is downright awful - one of the more perplexing choices in the film.
"Magic Mike's Last Dance" was originally supposed to be an HBO Max Original, but was one of several recent streaming projects that was given a theatrical run. I don't think they should have bothered with this one, because everything about the film feels small and overly familiar. It has some fine spectacle, and Tatum is able to summon up more charm than you might think, but there's nothing remotely on the level of Joe Manganiello's epic gas station number from "Magic Mike XXL." And as much as I love Salma, I think she's been in too many inane comedies lately, because she's pitched way, way too broad for this kind of movie. I have to respect Steven Soderbergh for sticking with this series for so long, but please let the title be accurate, and let this really be "Magic Mike's Last Dance."
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