That Movie Book – Week Six

I know this was supposed to go up on Monday, but I really only just finished writing it now. The movie viewings got pushed into after the weekend, which delayed the writing of this, which is why I am a few days late. Plus I had a lot of thoughts about the films this week and trying to untangle them into coherent sentences took longer than anticipated. I apologise profusely and will try not to let it happen again. At least I’m being honest about it and not sneakily backdating this so it is on the right day. Honesty is a virtue.

It’s annoying, because we were organised this week! We bought two of the three films we wanted to watch, and would have bought the third if we could find it anywhere. That being said we, unsurprisingly, got off to a slow start. Ben’s had to work late a lot lately so I spent Friday watching Mulan and trying to work out which of the Chinese characters were actually voiced by Chinese actors. It was a fun way to pass the time.

Eventually we got into the swing of things and started on with our weekend of “Taking Aim With Luc Besson”. Ben’s a fan so he was pretty pumped

We started off on Saturday with The Fifth Element. Ex-Army Officer now taxi driver Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis) finds a mysterious woman who he helps save the world while blowing up stuff a lot.

(this trailer is ridiculously boring for such an action-y movie. what’s up with that?)
I had watched this a while ago when I was a teenager and all I remember from that viewing was that it was a bit overwhelming. All the colour and the noise battling for focus was too much for me and I didn’t like it. This time round I was more prepared and actually enjoyed it. It’s funny how time changes perspectives. To be fair it was still quite overwhelming, but I understood why it was a bit better. I got a bit annoyed that the story had the inevitable “the otherwise strong female character needs the help of a man to reach her goals” thing. I also was reminded how much of an awesome actor Gary Oldman is. Seriously, I want to watch all of his films just so I can bask in his variety. Even with the strange plastic thing on his head (what’s up with that, anyway?) He was definitely evil and amazing. The CGI and other effects haven’t really aged that badly for a 15 year old movie. When Leeloo is being remade it was obvious compared to stuff from today, but really on the whole it still looked pretty good. I am always glad when that happens; I get a bit worried after seeing Total Recall and it looking awful that something like that will ruin how I react to the film.

Next up was La Femme Nikita, on Sunday night. Woman gets arrested after killing two policeman, gets her death faked and wakes up in a super secret agent facility and gets trained into being a super secret agent.

(This is the second time this post where the trailers for the films were boring as all hell. The quality of this one is pretty bad too, but it was the only one I could find quickly that had subtitles)

Nikita confused me a bit. Obviously she had something wrong with her, and that’s demonstrated throughout the start of the film when she attacks other peole and sings crazily. Even after she gets out of that facility there are still times where she has these really strange character quirks that seem a bit jarring compared to the rest of the time. All in all I feel like I shouldn’t feel sympathetic for her, because she’s most likely a psychopath, but I still do. I think it’s because she seems childlike most of the time. Even when she’s a slick and sexy secret agent person she makes me think of a kid playing dress-ups. Also I couldn’t really understand what her motivations were, other than “don’t get arrested/die”. But sometimes she wanted to die, so even then I’m not sure. It just seemed that even though she didn’t really want to be a super secret agent she still went through with the jobs without complaint. The ending was a bit abrupt, but I guess it kinda made sense really. I can’t think of another way for it to have ended. Ben tells me there was an American remake where everything was a happy ending and all flowers and rainbows, and Nikita is less of a tragic figure, which irritates me but isn’t really that surprising when I think about it. Pretty sure I’m not going to watch it.

Finally I ended up watching Leon the Professional by myself on Monday. We just completely ran out of time this weekend. This film is about a Hitman who uncharacteristically helps a young girl when her family is killed, refuses to kill the people who killed her family and teaches her to be a hitman (hitperson?) instead.

Leon the Professional was heart wrenching. Straight up almost made me cry. Once again, Gary Oldman is fantastic in this. So amazing. In fact all the main actors are pretty tops. Jean Reno was a little wooden at times, but I think this was his first English speaking role, which might have been reason behind it, but it didn’t really detract from the film overall. It could also be because his character was kinda awkward in general so it was part of how Leon would have acted anyway. There were a lot of really touching scenes that work so well between Natalie Portman and Jean Reno, and even though you can kinda tell how the movie is going to end it was still really, really good. On Monday night I was really tired and it was about time for me to go to bed and I still had to write all this up but I stayed up later than I meant to and didn’t write because I was much more interested in what was going on. Really good. Ridiculously violent, so if that’s not your thing then fair enough, but still really good.

Ben and I were talking about a common theme throughout the three and came up with the fact that there is a tough guy/girl. Fifth Element has both Korben and Leeloo. Nikita had, uh, Nikita but also Bob the Secret Agent trainer dude (though you don’t see him in action that much). Leon and Mathilda are both pretty tough in The Professional, but in different ways. Leon is physically tough, as is expected by being a hitman, but Mathilda is very emotionally tough. She has to deal with some pretty shitty situations throughout her life, not just the death of her whole family, but still seems to (at least outwardly) sack up and get on with business. Another theme I noticed was a childlike character trying to deal with their lot. Leeloo is very childlike and naieve, which is understandable seeing she’s really just been ‘born’. Nikita seems childlike in a lot of ways throughout the film, and as soon as she is on her first mission out of that institution thing she reverts back to that pretty quickly. Leon is also a childlike figure, especially compared to Mathilda and her trying to overcompensate for her age.He was strangely gentle for a hitman, which I think made him a more interesting character than most other hitmen in movies.

The films we didn’t end up watching were Subway and The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec. I might watch them at a later date because I enjoyed these three quite a lot.

So yeah, it took a while but it finally is here. We both decided that we’re only going to watch two of the five suggestions this weekend, so hopefully I’ll have plenty of time to get things organised and up on time. The next theme is weddings so that should be entertaining.