Word: avildsen
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...nowhere in the Philadelphia slums, Rocky becomes an astonishingly uplifting film that asserts that the American dream has been reborn. Rejecting the recently all-too-tempting directors' urge to make films about antiheroes who are as corrupt and malicious as the systems they fight, director John G. Avildsen has probed the boxing world to tell the all-American story of Rocky who jumps from obscurity to the lights...
...DIXIE DANCEKINGS Directed by JOHN G. AVILDSEN Screenplay by THOMAS RICKMAN...
...clever as he looks-or thinks he is. As the Dancekings' faith in his ability to conduct them to the top of the charts wavers, the group's desire to protect him from the worst consequences of his scheming grows in a rather touching way, though Director Avildsen sensibly makes no big thing...
...Nostalgia. Indeed, this refusal to inflate anything in the movie is its best quality. The story is set in the 1950s, on which much nostalgic yearning now centers, but Avildsen's camera focuses only casually on the artifacts of that period. There is at the moment a powerful desire among pop culturists (and cultists) to strip-mine the country-and-western field for meaningful nuggets that will help explain us to ourselves. That, too, is something Avildsen neatly avoids. Instead, he gives us the movie equivalent of the kind of song the Dancekings themselves might feature...
Directed by JOHN G. AVILDSEN...