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From: Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-12-27 (Friday)
Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2024 12:02:11 -0800
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On 12/28/2024 10:06 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
> Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:
> 
>> I watched:
> 
>> La Femme Nikita (4K disc)  1990 action movie written and directed by Luc
>> Besson.  Anne Parillaud stars as Nikita, a junkie who reaches a point of
>> no return in her criminal life after she murders a cop during a robbery.
>>   The French government then fakes her death and retrains her as an
>> assassin, as well as how to behave more ladylike.  For her first
>> assignment they send her into a restaurant to assassinate someone, but
>> intentionally sabotage the hit to see how she reacts to the situation.
>>  From there she falls in love while working as a highly trained
>> government assassin and struggles to live her new life with her new
>> love.  Jean Reno costars as a "cleaner."
> 
>> Laon: The Professional (4K disc) 1994 action movie written and directed
>> by Luc Besson. . . .
> 
>> Colombiana (blu-ray) 2011 action movie written by Luc Besson and
>> starring Zoe Saldana as a woman who when she was a young girl saw her
>> entire family murdered in front of her by a drug cartel.  She then gets
>> her uncle to train her to become a killer.  Since her uncle is a killer
>> himself, it's not much of a hard ask and he agrees without much
>> persuasion.  Although he does convince her to also go to school since
>> she's a little girl.  Flashforward to present day and Zoe is a
>> professional hit woman out for revenge.  If I didn't know any better,
>> I'd swear Luc wrote this to be a sequel to Léon: The Professional, with
>> Zoe essentially playing a grown-up Natalie Portman's character.  Anyway,
>> it's a very solid revenge action flick with Zoe laying waste to anyone
>> who gets in her way as she's out for revenge against the cartel who
>> murdered her parents all those years ago.
> 
>> Anna (4K disc)  2019 action movie written and directed by Luc Besson.
>> Sasha Luss (Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets) stars as a
>> junkie who reaches a point of no return in her criminal life after
>> people die during a robbery.  The Russian government then retrains her
>> as an assassin, as well as how to behave more ladylike.  For her first
>> assignment they send her into a restaurant to assassinate someone, but
>> intentionally sabotage the hit to see how reacts to the situation.  From
>> there she falls in love while working as a highly trained government
>> assassin and struggles to live her new life with her new love.  I could
>> have sworn I once saw a different movie written and directed by Luc
>> Besson with a similar plot, but I'm sure he wouldn't recycle his own
>> ideas over and over again.  Anyway, as movies written and directed by
>> Luc Besson about a junkie the government recruits and retrains to be an
>> assassin go, this is a pretty good one.
> 
>> How many of the movies directed by Luc Besson in my collection should I
>> watch this week?
> 
> Arthur, I don't see how you can tell the difference among La Femme
> Nikita remakes and Fifth Element remakes. Luc Besson is stuck in a rut.
> 

The Fifth Element is *nothing* like Nikata!  Now, Anna on the other hand 
is almost a remake.

>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74BzSTQCl_c
> 
> If you can stand more, sure.


I'm done.

Between Thursday and Friday I watched them all.  Over the past few days 
I also watched several that he wrote or produced.  Not counting ones he 
directed, I actually have a  bunch more in my collection.  The guy's 
credit list as writer or producer is ridiculously long.  The only other 
movie I *almost* watched was "Lockout."  He didn't direct, but wrote and 
produced it.  I have no memory of what happens in this flick and was 
going to watch it, but when I read the plot description about a cop 
whose framed for murder and put in hibernation for 30 years, I thought 
it might go better with Demolition Man, whenever I get around to 
watching that again.