CREED (2015)

In 1998, Adonis "Donnie" Johnson, the son of an extramarital lover of former heavyweight champion Apollo Creed, is serving time in a Los Angeles youth facility when Creed's wife, Mary Anne, pays him a visit and offers to take him in.

Seventeen years later, Donnie walks away from his job at a securities firm to pursue his dream of becoming a professional boxer. Mary Anne vehemently opposes this, remembering how her husband was killed in the ring 30 years earlier against Ivan Drago. He tries to get a slot at Los Angeles' elite Delphi Boxing Academy, but is turned down. Undaunted, Donnie travels to Philadelphia in hopes of getting in touch with his father's old friend and rival, Rocky Balboa.

Donnie tracks down Rocky at Rocky's Italian restaurant, Adrian's, named in honor of his deceased wife, and asks Rocky to become his trainer. Rocky is reluctant to get back into boxing, having already made a one-off comeback at a very advanced age despite having suffered brain trauma during his career as a fighter. However, he eventually agrees. Donnie trains at the Front Street Gym, with several of Rocky's longtime friends as cornermen, and also finds a love interest in Bianca, an up-and-coming singer and songwriter.

Donnie, now known as "Hollywood Donnie," defeats a local fighter, and word gets out that he is Creed's illegitimate son. Rocky gets a call from the handlers of world light heavyweight champion "Pretty" Ricky Conlan, who is due to be forced into retirement by an impending prison term. He offers to make Donnie his final challenger—provided that he change his name to Adonis "Hollywood Donnie" Creed. Donnie balks at first, wanting to forge his own legacy. However, he eventually agrees.

While helping Donnie train, Rocky learns he has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He is unwilling to undergo chemotherapy, remembering that it was not enough to save Adrian when she had ovarian cancer. His diagnosis and the fact that his best friend and brother-in-law Paulie Pennino—Adrian's brother—has now passed away in addition to Adrian, Apollo and his old trainer Mickey Goldmill further force him to confront his own mortality. Seeing Rocky shaken, Donnie urges him to seek treatment.

Donnie fights Conlan in Conlan's hometown of Liverpool. Many parallels are present between Apollo and Rocky's first fight 40 years earlier. Before going into the ring, Donnie receives a present from Mary Anne—new American flag trunks similar to the ones Apollo and later Rocky wore. Additionally, to the surprise of nearly everyone, Donnie goes the distance after giving Conlan all he can handle. Conlan wins on a split decision (just as Apollo retained his title by split decision against Rocky), but Donnie has won the respect of Conlan and the crowd. As Jim Lampley puts it while calling the fight for HBO, "Conlan won the fight, but Creed won the night." Conlan tells Donnie that he is the future of the light heavyweight division.

The film ends with Donnie and a frail but improving Rocky climbing the "Rocky Steps" at the entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Spectre (2015)

On a mission in Mexico City, unofficially ordered by a posthumous message from the previous M, James Bond kills two men plotting a terrorist bombing and gives chase to Marco Sciarra, an assassin who survived the attack. In the ensuing struggle, Bond kills Sciarra and steals his ring, which is emblazoned with a stylised octopus (an icon first seen in From Russia with Love). Upon returning to London, Bond is indefinitely suspended from field duty by the current M, who is in the midst of a power struggle with C, the head of the privately-backed Joint Intelligence Service, consisting of the recently merged MI5 and MI6. C campaigns for Britain to join "Nine Eyes", a global surveillance and intelligence co-operation initiative between nine member states, and uses his influence to close down the '00' section, believing it to be outdated.

Bond disobeys M's order and travels to Rome to attend Sciarra's funeral. That evening he visits Sciarra's widow Lucia, who tells him about Spectre, a criminal organisation to which her husband belonged. Bond infiltrates a Spectre meeting, where he identifies Spectre's leader, Franz Oberhauser. When Oberhauser addresses Bond by name, he escapes and is pursued by Mr. Hinx, a Spectre assassin. Moneypenny informs Bond that the information he collected leads to Mr. White, former member of Quantum, a subsidiary of Spectre. Bond asks her to investigate Franz Oberhauser, who was presumed dead years earlier.

Bond travels to Austria to find White, who is dying of thallium poisoning. He admits to growing disenchanted with Quantum and tells Bond to find and protect his daughter, Dr. Madeline Swann, who will take him to L'Américain; this will in turn lead him to Spectre. White then commits suicide. Bond locates Swann at the Hoffler Klinik, but she is abducted by Hinx. Bond rescues her and the two meet Q, who discovers that Sciarra's ring links Oberhauser to Bond's previous missions, identifying Le Chiffre, Dominic Greene and Raoul Silva as Spectre agents. Swann reveals that L'Américain is a hotel in Morocco.

The two travel to the hotel and find White's secret room where they find co-ordinates pointing to Oberhauser's operations base in the desert. They travel by train to the nearest station, but are once again confronted by Hinx; they engage in a fist fight throughout the train in which Mr Hinx is eventually thrown off the train by Bond. After arriving at the station, Bond and Swann are escorted to Oberhauser's base. There, he reveals that Spectre has been staging terrorist attacks around the world, creating a need for the Nine Eyes program. In return, Spectre will be given unlimited access to intelligence gathered by Nine Eyes. Bond is tortured as Oberhauser discusses their shared history: after the younger Bond was orphaned, Oberhauser's father, Hannes became his temporary guardian. Believing that Bond supplanted his role as son, Oberhauser killed his father and staged his own death, subsequently adopting the name Ernst Stavro Blofeld and going on to form Spectre. Bond and Swann escape, destroying the base and leaving Blofeld to apparently die during the subsequent explosion.

As the African base was one node in a wider network, Bond and Swann return to London where they meet M, Bill Tanner, Q, and Moneypenny; they intend to arrest C and stop Nine Eyes from going online. Swann leaves Bond, telling him she cannot be part of a life involving espionage, and is subsequently kidnapped. On the way, the group is ambushed and Bond is kidnapped, but the rest still proceed with the plan. After Q succeeds in preventing the Nine Eyes from going online, a brief struggle between M and C following C's arrest ends with C falling to his death. Bond is meanwhile taken to the old MI6 building, which is scheduled for demolition, and frees himself. He meets a scarred Blofeld, who tells him that he has three minutes to escape the building before explosives are detonated or die trying to save Swann. Bond finds Swann and the two escape by boat as the building collapses. Bond shoots down Blofeld's helicopter, which crashes onto Westminster Bridge. As Blofeld crawls away from the wreckage, Bond confronts him but ultimately leaves him for M to arrest. Bond leaves the bridge with Swann, and after making a brief stop to see Q a few days later to get back his repaired 1964 Aston Martin DB5, departs with her in his car.