Creed III (12A) ***

Subject (15) ****

Cocaine Bear (15) *

Project Wolf Hunting (18) ***

While Sylvester Stallone has been vocal about his reasons for severing ties with Rocky spin-off Creed (he doesn’t actually own any of the rights and has long since fallen out with producer Irwin Winkler), it’s also a sign of Creed III’s confidence in its own franchise status that it doesn’t need all the fan service that coursed through the first two films. Nostalgia aside (and it is a bit of a shame Stallone’s not in it), the new film is far more interested in expanding its own mythology than paying tribute to the past.

Kicking off with a 2002-set prologue, the film, which also marks star Michael B Jordan’s directorial debut, begins with a life-changing moment of violence that sends the teenage Adonis Creed and a boxing-obsessed childhood friend called Damien Anderson on wildly divergent paths. Cut to nearly 20 years later and Adonis (Jordan) has just retired from boxing as the reigning heavyweight champion to enjoy his charmed life with his beautiful music producer wife Bianca (Tessa Thompson) and their cute-as-a-button daughter Amara (Mila Davis-Kent). Damien (Jonathan Majors), on the other hand, is just out of prison after an 18-year stretch and is looking to finally get his own shot at the title, an impossible dream that brings him back into Adonis’s life after Adonis offers to help get him on his feet out of a misplaced sense of guilt for the way things have turned out.

Though the film seems to be setting up its own spin on the original Rocky’s unlikely shot at a title fight, Jordan – working from a script by Ryan Coogler, Keenan Coogler and Zach Baylin – takes things in a slightly different direction. Zeroing in on Adonis and Damien’s complicated relationship, he unleashes some acting fireworks from the destined-for-the-A-list Majors, who burns up the screen as an underdog with a chip on his shoulder and a score to settle. Majors is so good, in fact, it’s almost a shame the film around him succumbs to so many bombastic and melodramatic plot twists. As a director Jordan is also a bit too literal in his efforts to symbolise how these two men have been imprisoned by their pasts (at one point, during a boxing scene, the ring fades away to be replaced by actual prison bars). But for the most part the fight sequences are distinctive enough from the previous films to at least feel fresh. And whenever Majors is on screen it feels like we’re watching a true acting heavyweight.

The ethics of documentary filmmaking are put under the spotlight in Subject, a timely look at the impact documentaries can have on the lives of those whose stories are being told. Focusing on the participants of five blockbuster docs – Hoop Dreams, The Square, The Wolfpack, The Staircase and Capturing the Friedmans – directors Camilla Hall and Jennifer Tiexiera examine what happened once the cameras stopped rolling, contextualising their own subjects’ varying experiences within the current non-fiction film boom and interviewing filmmakers, critics and academics about key issues, such as paying participants and the duty of care a filmmaker has to those whose stories they’ve been entrusted to tell.

Though there are some undoubted benefits – Hoop Dreams’ Arthur Agee, who got a share of the film’s profits (not a standard deal by any means), is clear about the positive impact having his story told on screen has had on his life – others, such as The Staircase’s Margie Ratliff, feel much more exploited. The film is up front about not giving the filmmakers of the named docs a right-of-reply; instead Hall and Tiexiera find subtle ways to lay bare the reality-warping effect the very act of making a documentary can have.

Not since Snakes on a Plane has a self-styled B-movie so thoroughly failed to deliver on the one-joke promise of its title as Cocaine Bear. Very loosely inspired by a true story from the mid-1980s, this alleged horror comedy, about a black bear going on a kill-crazy rampage after ingesting a drug smuggler’s missing stash, looks for laughs in a series of gnarly encounters between said bear and a bunch of characters in naff wigs wandering around the Appalachian wilderness. The Lego Movie’s Phil Lord and Chris Miller may serve as producers, but the tongue-in-cheek script (by Jimmy Warden) is pretty weak and the sketch show-style visual gags all fall flat, leaving stars like Keri Russell, Alden Ehrenreich, Margo Martindale, O’Shea Jackson Jr and the late Ray Liotta (to whom the film is dedicated) with nothing to do but flail around commenting on the insanity of their characters’ collective predicament as a coked-up CGI bear pursues them. In interviews, director Elizabeth Banks has rather fancifully likened Cocaine Bear’s mix of comedy, violence and interconnected storylines to Pulp Fiction, but it’s closer in tone to Alexandre Aja’s rubbish studio-backed Piranha remake. Just say no, kids.

For more stylishly made blood and guts action, South Korean action horror movie Project Wolf Hunting is a surer bet. Though hardly more coherent, it does at least deliver some thrills alongside its many, many, many kills. The premise is essentially Con Air on a boat: Korea’s nastiest prisoners have been rounded up in the Philippines and placed on a cargo ship for deportation back to their homeland. Naturally they soon find a way to break free, but they also quickly discover they’re not the most dangerous thing below deck. Bloody mayhem duly follows.

Creed III and Subject are in cinemas from 3 March, Cocaine Bear is out now, Project Wolf Hunting is on selected release from 3 March and available to stream now on Icon Film Channel

Cocaine Bear review: Why thriller is worth just one star, plus reviews of Creed III, Subject and Project Wolf Hunting

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