John G. Avildsen

Director of Rocky, The Karate Kid, and Lean on Me. A feel-good kinda guy.

Rocky (1976) -- I had a vague sense of this all my life as some probably-okay boxing movie, but when I actually watched it for the first real time as an adult, I saw that is is a fantastic picture. It's barely a boxing movie at all, maybe only the last fifteen minutes, and it's really well done. Rocky screaming "Adrian!" at the end is iconic, and now I know why: that little love scream drowns out the fact that Rocky has actually lost the fight (in a nice piece of mixing). More than anything, this is a sweet little story about a sweet guy and his sweet girlfriend. (Sylvester Stallone directed the sequel, Rocky II.)