TIFF 26 Dispatch 3: I Play Rocky, Ink

I didn’t plan to make a third dispatch from TIFF, but sometimes things just happen. There were two additional movies from the festival that I really hadn’t said too much about, I Play Rocky and Ink. While I was watching Ink, I began to notice a distinct element that tied the two films together: Citizen Kane. What would one of the most revered films of all time have to do with a “Making Of” picture and an adaptation of a play?

For those unfamiliar with Citizen Kane (outside of the phrase Rosebud) it is by and large a newspaper movie. What do I mean by that? Well its predominant interest is about how a newspaper is run and what that entails. Given that Ink is about Rupert Murdoch and the rise of The Sun newspaper I think that comparison is easy to see. I Play Rocky references Orson Welles, the writer and director of Citizen Kane, who also wrote the leading role for himself. It’s through that inspiration that Sylvester Stallone gets the idea to write himself a part, a part that would eventually put him in position to play Rocky. I thought that was a coincidence that was too much fun to ignore so here I am reviewing both films. 

Coming almost 50 years since Rocky came out in theaters, I Play Rocky is director Peter Farrelly’s (Green Book) to dramatize the making of that cinema classic. Although this is based on Stallone’s life, I’m not sure how much of Rocky happened like this. Given Stallone’s profile in 2026, it's hard to imagine a time when he couldn’t get a job, but this dramatization is a delight with a convincing Anthony Ippolito at the center of it. 

Showing up to interviews as Mike Stallone, Sylvester (Ippolito) couldn’t get an acting gig to save his life. While he had the aptitude for how films were made and how they work, casting directors never saw him for anything more than a background thug. At his lowest point, Stallone was sleeping in the streets, taking whatever job would come his way. That’s until the inspiration to write his own role came from his first wife, Sasha Czack (AnnaSophia Robb). Yes, Stallone got first noticed in Hollywood not for his acting, but for his scriptwriting. 

Eventually, Stallone gets the inspiration to write what would become Rocky, the story of an underdog boxer who’s given a 1-in-a-million chance to face the champ for boxing glory. His producers, Irwin Winkler (P.J. Byrne) and Robert Chartoff (Toby Kebbell), are eager to buy the script and get financing from Sandy Maddox (Tracy Letts), but there’s an unusual stipulation– Stallone plays Rocky or he doesn’t sell the script. 

What once fueled the success of Rocky, also fuels I Play Rocky– the classic underdog story. Stallone beat all the odds, got his movie made, and went on to be part of a franchise that has made its mark in film history. Once production on Rocky begins, I Play Rocky gets a lot of mileage on referencing specific moments in the production, such as Stallone breaking his hand hitting frozen beef or how they fought to keep the ice skating sequence in the movie. The best of these moments comes from Stephan James as Carl Weathers. Weathers played the boxing champ Apollo Creed in the films and James is hilarious during his time in the film. The trailer for the movie doesn’t really do it justice as Ippolito comes across as a poor choice for Stallone in those brief moments. Don’t underestimate him though as he does a great job channeling Stallone. 

I Play Rocky will undoubtedly play better to those familiar with the original film, but there’s something exciting about an underdog story that everyone can get behind. I’m not surprised that this was almost the People’s Choice winner out of TIFF because this is a crowd pleaser through and through. It’s not as compelling as Rocky, but it doesn’t need to be. I Play Rocky will have audiences cheering all the same. [B-]

Now I know I said earlier that Ink was about Rupert Murdoch and the British tabloid paper The Sun. While it is certainly about those things, its focus is more on Larry Lamb (Jack O’Connell), the editor who would bring The Sun to prominence. He’s handpicked by Murdoch (Guy Pearce) to run the paper, scratch that, turn the paper into the best selling paper in London. You may ask yourself, how do you make a newspaper movie interesting in 2026? Well you hire director Danny Boyle to make it. 

Watching Lamb gather the talented need to shepherd his newspaper into the next era is a lot of fun, even if his longtime reporter / mistress Jules Davies (Claire Foy) doesn’t seem too eager to join the fray. A newspaper doesn’t become a success by playing by the rules and it takes Lamb and the team at The Sun a bit to learn that lesson. But when they do, they are off to the races. 

What makes this otherwise bland story feel like an altogether different beast is the direction from Boyle. Utilizing his eye for extreme angles and unusual camera positions, Boyle along with DP Alwin H. Kuchler, captures the genesis of The Sun from every possible angle. I imagine execs at Netflix sweating when Boyle explained that his new movie starts with Pearce and O’Connell sitting at a restaurant discussing a newspaper strategy. But what should be mundane is completely energized. 

If the idea of watching a movie that glorifies one of Rupert Murdoch’s many media achievements before becoming a global media mogul disgusts you, I understand that. But Ink makes Murdoch more of an axillary player, rather than the main course like Larry Lamb. Ink works not solely because of what it's depicting, but the frenetic pace and style in which it is doing it. Ink analyzed what worked in the newspaper film before, and succeeds through sheer force. [A-]