Just picked up the latest issue of POSITIF, which contains a review of Sylvester Stallone's ROCKY BALBOA by none other

than Leos Carax. Carax wrote a number of critical pieces for CAHIERS DU CINEMA (notably a fascinating piece on Stallone's PARADISE ALLEY, as well as a brief review of ROCKY II) early in his career, but as far as I'm aware, this is the first piece of criticism he's undertaken since becoming a filmmaker (and surely his first ever for POSITIF). In case it's of interest to anyone, I've done a quick (and pretty rough) translation of a few passages: "In his first film (as director), PARADISE ALLEY, Sylvester Stallone presented us with the viewpoint of an orphan contemplating his solitude in the cinematic darkness. Now in ROCKY BALBOA he shows us the world as it might be perceived by that orphan's father, fondly recalling the child he abandoned, and with whom he now hopes to be reunited" "This film places such an emphasis on the weary, aging body - such a focus on the demands made by bodily needs - that it might have been entitled HELL'S BATHROOM." ('La Salle de Bain de L'Enfer', a reference to PARADISE ALLEY, which was released in France as 'La Taverne de L'Enfer'.) "All the world laughs at Stallone when he claims he wants to film the life of Edgar Allan Poe: but what is ROCKY BALBOA if not a modern version of Poe's THE MAN WHO WAS USED UP, with Stallone/Balboa casting off those superficial signs - the shorts, the boxing gloves, the catchphrases, the timid wife - of which his famous Rocky character is constructed in order to reveal that there is nothing underneath, that the sign was all." "The boxing ring, far from being a naturalistic space, here becomes the embodiment of that cinematic frame the characters beat their fists against in a futile effort to escape". "If PARADISE ALLEY made us think of that orphan's cinema best represented by Laughton's THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER or the early work of Chaplin, ROCKY BALBOA suggests Chaplin's magesterial LIMELIGHT. Once more the author, called Chaplin or Stallone, grown, like his star, called Calvero or Rocky, inexplicably old, dazzles us with a final display of his themes before drawing down the curtain on the fact of his own mortality. This is the death of cinema. Long may it live!"