Bryce Zabel's MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

The Wrestler (2008) -vs- Rocky Balboa (2006)

Taking a Last Shot at Glory 

The Smackdown.  It's a classic underdog story (and Smackdown) we have before us. Other than boxer George Foreman it almost never happens in real life but we love the very idea of an aging champ who gets up off the canvas (comes out of retirement) to claim his former glory in a final burst of passion and daring. A couple of years ago nearly everybody was shocked to see that there was even an ounce of life left in the Rocky franchise when, in its sixth installment, "Rocky Balboa" got off the cinematic mat and gave audiences the best experience with the boxer from Philly since the bicentennial. This year there's all kinds of buzz about Mickey Rourke's stellar performance in "The Wrestler."  Ladies and Gentlemen, let's get ready to rumble because Randy (the Ram) Robinson has just stepped in the ring with Rocky Balboa!

The Challenger. The hype over this film is split about 50/50 between the poignancy of the story and world of director Darren Aronofsky's fourth feature and the fact that it mirrors in content a comeback story in real life featuring Mickey Rourke. There's no question that Rourke has had an erratic career, built on bad choices and oddball behavior in public so there's a dramatic resonance when he plays Randy (the Ram) Robinson, a battered hulk of a professional wrestler who should stay down but keeps getting up. "The Wrestler" actually won the Venice Film Festival this year in its depiction of the real, hard-edged world of pro wrestling. We all know it's faked but that doesn't mean that people don't get hurt and feel pain, and that the pain can be emotional as much as physical. It's twenty years after the Ram's hey-day in this film and instead of Madison Square Garden, he's playing some pretty awful venues. It's so bad he can't even make the rent on his trailer but the physical demands of getting in the ring make it a worse place to make a living with every passing day.

Quantum of Solace (2008) -vs- Casino Royale (2006)

The Smackdown.  It's the longest running movie franchise in the history of the world.  In total, it has grossed billions worldwide, surpassing perhaps the gross domestic product of many small nations.  In 1964, James Bond skulked from the hard-boiled cynicism of Ian Fleming's novels onto the Silver Screen, introducing the world to their Favorite Super Spy.  Yet time was unkind to the Bond franchise, and the films descended into stale parodies of themselves, straying further from not only Sean Connery's iconic debut but also the fascinating, amoral spy of Fleming's novels.  Then came "Casino Royale" and Daniel Craig.  With Daniel Craig, Bond found his relevance again, and his heart.  Today, facing high expectations in the wake of "Casino Royale", "Quantum of Solace" has stirred up violent controversy as to its quality against "Casino Royale."  Today, we let the newest Bond go up against the last Bond, trying to put what has become something of a media field day to rest.

The Challenger.  "Quantum of Solace" arrives under the direction of Mark Forster, scripted by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and Paul Haggis.  The movie is a somber epilogue to "Casino Royale", with a betrayed and bitter Bond viciously hunting the mysterious organization behind his former lover's demise. Bond is largely unforgiving, a force that is at times both brutal and surgical.  As he nears the organization (named Quantum), Bond finds himself in the middle of a South American coup de tat, underscored by an oddly realistic attempt to horde the world's water supply.  Incorporating elegance and taste with the typical tropes of Bond, "Quantum of Solace" is a lean--if somewhat too short--depiction of a Bond that finds a cold place for Double-O Seven in the modern world.

Casino Royale (2006) -vs- On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

The Smackdown.  Nobody ever forgets their first time.  And get your mind out of the gutter, I'm talking about James Bond and what it takes for an actor to play him on an initial outing.

James Bond has a long franchise of adaptations, interpretations, and revitalizations spanning nearly fifty years.  With such a lineage, it's only natural that there'll be some intra-family rivalry.  Today we put up two highly-touted revampings designed to help Bond fans overcome two of the most popular actors to depict James Bond: Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan. 

On Her Majesty's Secret Service attempted to co-opt the loyalty of Bond fans by paying respect to Ian Fleming's original stories beyond just their titles, and of course sliding in newcomer George Lazenby as Bond... James Bond.  Casino Royale did much the same, using an orthodox choice in Daniel Craig to return to source material while retooling Bond for Jason Bourne-style audiences.  While Daniel Craig's Bond is certainly meaner and tougher, can this blond-haired Bond match up against the man better known as the post-Connery Bond?  Which one makes good on their promise to decrypt Double-O Seven and break territory ignored by previous Bond formulas?

The Challenger.  Fans felt there'd be no dying another day for the Bond franchise after Pierce Brosnan's last Bond outing in the overwrought and cheesy Die Another Day.  Faced with serious spy thrillers like Alias and The Bourne Identity, producers scrambled back to Ian Fleming and his first Bond novel, "Casino Royale." Daniel Craig, "the new guy," sparked hell among fans for his demeanor, blond-hair, and overall scruffy appearance.  Introducing the legendary spy at the beginning of his career, Casino Royale pits a cocky and inexperienced Bond against the poker-playing banker of the world's terrorists, Le Chiffre.  Although adding entire sequences and ideas absent in Fleming's novel, the film stays loyal to the novel in that Bond learns a harsh lesson from too easily trusting, and loving, a beautiful colleague in this high-stakes thriller.

The Godfather (1972) -vs- The Godfather, Part II (1974)

Vote Now: An Offer You Can't Refuse...

The Smackdown.  By now it's all become a part of our collective cultural memory -- the horse's head showing up in the bed, making an "offer he can't refuse" and that haunting score by Nino Rota.  Imagine being in the theaters though, almost four decades ago when the original "The Godfather" was in release back in 1972. For years new viewers of the Godfather Trilogy were exposed to either increasingly degraded theatrical prints or VHS or DVD copies that were, in many cases, even worse.  For the past two years, though, Francis Ford Coppola and a small army of digital restoration experts have been at work reclaiming the golden glory for high-definition Blu-ray, standard DVD and even a few more theatrical prints out in some major cities.  It's not the purpose of this Smackdown to lay out that process but if you want to know more about "The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration," there have been some excellent articles including The New York Times and Slate Magazine.

What is most astonishing about "The Godfather" which won the 1972 Oscar for "Best Picture" is that two years later "The Godfather, Part II" also won the Oscar for "Best Picture."  This pretty much qualifies the second film as the unquestioned best sequel of all-time (although there are supporters now for "The Dark Knight").  And, of course, it triggers a Smackdown to find out which of these two extraordinary films is the best.  We'll give the competition our usual treatment with an added bonus.  Five of our critics weigh in at the end with their individual essays.  Joe Rassulo, Scott Baradell, Sherry Coben, Mark Sanchez and Jay Amicarella all come at the material with damned unique POVs, and it's a fun read.  Finally, at the end of this review, you can put in your own two cents by voting in our Smack-Poll.

The Defending Champion.  If you think about it now, the "Godfather" films are the modern world's version of those Shakespeare plays about kings and princes.  This is the film where Vito Corleone, the aging Don of a powerful Mafia family hands off the power, reluctantly, to his youngest son Michael, delivering one of the saddest lines in cinema, "Michael, I never wanted this for you."  Al Pacino's Michael Corleone is one of the greatest acting performances on screen ever and his transformation from shy son to ruthless criminal makes you forgive any of the actor's excesses over the years.  The film opens on a wedding where Michael has returned from World War II just in time to see his sister Connie get married. All of the men in Michael's family are involved with the Mafia and it's assumed that the older brothers will handle the criminal duties while Michael lives a legit and decent life. It's truly the story of the family but the engine that drives the action is about a drug dealer Virgil Sollozzo who wants Don Corleone (Marlon Brandon) to go into the drug trade with him.  Corleone refuses, gets shot by hit men, barely survives.  This opens the door for his son to begin a violent mob war against Sollozzo that changes him and his family forever.  It's the story of the old ways surrendering, violently, to the new ways.  You probably know all this.  Beautifully photographed, scored, directed, written.  Most people have it on their Top Ten lists and more than a few place it as #1. 

High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008) -vs- The Godfather: Part III (1990)

Third One's The Charm(er)

The Smackdown. Sequels rarely top the original. Some are downright soul-scarringly wretched. Most leave the viewer vaguely aware that they've had their pockets picked by a large corporation's greedy stab at recapturing movie magic by revisiting a lucrative well once or twice too often. Then there are the sacred franchises - all those Jedi knights and boy wizards and hobbits and pirates standing tall as lighthouses, inspiring a thousand ill-conceived sequels. Legions of diehard fans can't get enough of these perennial box office champions, marking their calendars for the next installments and collecting tiny plastic effigies, posters, and other placeholders to tide them over in the meanwhile. Merchandising provides another kind of sequel; Disney, the empire built by a shirtless rodent, knows best how to milk a cash cow.

So now, dancing blithely into the theaters comes the third entry in a mega-successful Disney Channel telemovie franchise, this time direct not to video but direct to the even-bigger screen. Worthy of the upgrade or no, the multiplexes will be packed with squealing teenyboppers.

Coppola didn't disappoint with his "Godfather Part II". Hardly. More than a decade later, he sailed once more into the breech, trying to recapture lightning in a bottle, a complicated story in hand and much (but sadly not all) of his creative team intact. Too old for wizards and hobbits, we Godfather groupies waved bon voyage from the shore and waited, fingers crossed, to see if his third trip would prove worthy of the family.

So. It's Gangsters versus Grads. If part two's for the company, is part three the charm?