“Patti Cake$,” December 10, 2017, DVD, home. There were more than a few times when I expected a very young Sylvester Stallone’s “Rocky” to emerge on the stage and spit some lines along with our heroine, Patti Dumbrowski, aka, “Killer P” (a wonderful Danielle Macdonald—and Australian no less!). The story lines by writer-director Geremy Jasper track in many ways in this tale of a young, wannabe hip-hop artist in the desert of Northern New Jersey, stuck in dead end jobs, with a down-and-out angry mother/absent father/sick grandmother. She is also very large woman, not your hottie songstress, who has taken abuse her whole life about how heavy she is. She has only her dreams of success and eventual respect from the Great and Powerful rapper/producer OZ, her friend. Jheri—an Indian-American rapper pharmacist, and her keen talent to keep her going. Eventually this fragile support expands with the addition of Basterd, a sensitive, thoughtful African-American death metal anarchist who lives next to a cemetery at the Gates of Hell. It’s a fun and painful look at the hip hop scene (Jasper wrote all the songs), Northern Joisey (heh, I graduated from high school there), and issues of gender/weight/race and dreams. She’s not facing down Apollo Creed, but she is fighting many of the same battles Rocky did. We both liked this one.