Leon, a.k.a., The Professional (1994) and The Fifth Element (1997)

Director Luc Besson was ambitious during the 1990s, hot off his French hit “La Femme Nikita,” about a troubled woman trained to become an assassin back when such ideas were, “Whoa, who woulda thunk?” (Recall, this was long before the silly “Lucy.”

“Leon” –- known in the U.S. as “The Professional” –- offers a spin on that as a 12-year-old NYC girl (Natalie Portma, in her debut) is taken in by a hitman (Jean Reno) after her uncaring, vile family is murdered by DEA thugs. She mourns only her toddler brother. Gary Oldman is the head DEA agent, an evil freak who pops Quaaludes like chocolate. Young Matoilda wants to learn the assassin trade to kill Oldman and his badged thugs. Leon reluctantly agrees. But Matilda is troubled as she mistakes adoration for a fatherly figure for sexual attraction. In a huge misstep, Besson introduces this dynamic and then runs away from it. He opts for massive, very artsy gunplay instead, and it is wildly entertaining, the entire long climax involving Leon and every cop in the city. My college pals all loved the film, but I still find it a bit too loose for its own good. Oldman’s cop is far more amusing than dangerous. Put this guy up against any Joe Pesci character from the era, he’d fold like pancake batter. Reno has never been better. And I knew back then Portman was something to behold: Tragic, funny, confused, angry; she amazes. B

 “Fifth Element” gleefully torches any set standard. Oldman returns as the villain, doing a twisted take on -– I gather -– Marvin the Martian as an arms dealer out to steal precious alien stones that could save Earth from annihilation. Oldman’s Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg (awesome name!) insists he’ll make money off the ensuing chaos. A Republican? No matter. He’s up against Bruce Willis as Korben Dallas, ex-soldier turned cab driver in 23rd century Brooklyn. By winking coincidence, Korben has stumbled on Earth’s new savior, a fiery ginger head named Leeloo (Milla Jovovich). Part action/comedy, “Firth” is a love letter to “Star Wars” and “Blade Runner” -– both made when Besson was a teen. He spills references -- Leia hair buns, a familiar brown robe, and Brion James (RIP) – so fast, they fly by. “Fifth” also is a must for oddball film score buffs, thank you, Eric Serra. The best joke: Willis’ hero and Oldman’s villain never meet, separated by the most (purposefully) contrived circumstances. VIP is Chris Tucker as an androgynous DJ who ends up narrating the action. Some found his Ruby Rhod a disaster, I love the WTF attitude of him (her?). A-

Pixels (2015)

“Pixels” has a ridiculously great premise that vibes perfect 1980s action/comedy: Aliens attack Earth using as weapons massive “live” incarnations of Atari’s best video games: Pac-Man, Centipede, Tetris, etc. Damn the result. Look, Director Chris Columbus (“Harry Potter” 1 and 2) handles the big VFX scenes with polish: Pac-Man tearing through NYC is too cool and when a soldier is de-pixelated, it scares like classic “Doctor Who." But away from the action, Pixels dies. A dead-eyed Adam Sandler plays an ex-arcade-child-king now miserable, but still chummy with his dork childhood pal (boring Kevin James), now the worst U.S. president ever. Assholes, both. A big joke: Sandler insults a White House intern by calling him “Blue Lagoon.” Because the guy has curly blond hair. I sat blinking. How old is that joke? Sandler and James blunder their way into saving Earth. This Earth doesn't deserve it. The trailer promised a celebration of us 1980s gamers. The movie flogs us as infants incapable of adult decisions. Like hygiene. Or parenting. Fuck every person involved. Last miserable kick: The sexism astounds. When another arcade dork (Josh Gad) sees his dream woman come to life, she cannot speak. Only smile and obey. Offensive. C-

The Skeleton Twins (2014)

“The Skeleton Twins” has Sundance Winner embedded in its DNA: Dissatisfied white people moan, weep, break, and then manage to pull themselves together whilst living in a stunning home set among more stunning locales, here rural New York. It bleeds White People Problems. Yet it works. Hat tip to the leads. Former “SNL” cast mates Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader play estranged twins reunited through attempted suicide. In LA, Hader’s heartbroken gay Milo slits his wrists. He is found before dying, and the hospital call to sister Maggie (Wiig) stops her from gobbling pills. Sister brings brother home, where they attempt to patch their shattered relationship, and here’s where “Skeleton” soars: Hader and Wiig vibe shockingly true sibling love, inside jokes, bitterness, and parent-inflicted pain. It echoes in every smirk, lip-synch romp, and cruel taunt. I was awed how good these actors bounce off each other. And I know twins, my brothers are identical. Sadly estranged. That vibe is impossible to duplicate. Wiig and Hader got me. Whatever screenplay director/co-writer Craig Johnson started with, and it’s smart despite the whole WPP slant that can be tiring, it fires crisply by its words being spoken by these actors. B+

The Fisher King (1991)

Damn it. Robin Williams is dead. When I heard the awful news, I knew “The Fisher King” was the first film I wanted to watch, honoring the man. This is his greatest performance as Parry, a former academic who suffers a mental collapse after the murder of his wife, and lives homeless on the New York streets. The unstable gunman was set off by a shock jock radio host (Jeff Bridges) who decries yuppies on air, but lives in a NYC flat as lifeless as the moon. The main action of Terry Gilliam’s pitch-black drama/comedy takes place three years after when Parry saves Jack from suicide. Jack, realizing Parry’s downfall, commits to “saving” Parry. Serving his own ego. Dig the 15-minute midsection where Parry –- taken in by Jack -- woos his dream woman (Amanda Plummer) at dinner then walks her home, only to suffer a breakdown, pleading, “Let me have this,” to his demons. What follows is Williams’ finest moment. Also dig Williams’ perfectly told tale of a lonely, turmoil-stricken king. It’s a heartbreaking moment that now ought to leave any person in tears. Bridges, in the lead role, is excellent as always. A full daft feast. A

Begin Again (2014)

I love “Once,” the Dublin-set debut from John Carney that sucked the whimsical romance out of the meet-cute genre and gave us one of the best musical soundtracks in many a year. In “Begin Again” –- once called “Can a Song Save Your Life?,” a better title -– Carney hits the USA with Brit Keira Knightley in tow to play music with Mark Ruffalo. Once again, so to speak, Carney avoids the easy romantic lines and lets adults be adults, ones who exist by song: Creating them, listening to them, savoring them. Knightly is the cheated-on girlfriend of a rising pop star, and Ruffalo is on the skids of a broken marriage and dying music career. Then he hears Knightley sing and realizes a new reason to thrive. I’ll stop there. As with “Once,” music is key to every scene, but never breaks from reality. This is a good, smart film as much about New York as the couple at story’s center. Carney only over reaches when trying to make his leads seem ultra-hip independents when they share guilty pleasure songs while walking the Big Apple. Her embarrassed choice: “As Time Goes By.” Seriously, who doesn’t love to hear Dooley Wilson’s voice? B+

Paranoia (2013)

By the time most tech jumps from lab to retail, it’s old. All eyes are on the new shiny toy we don’t know we need. Woe the Hollywood thriller that wants to be techno hip, and takes a year to gestate before jumping into a theatrical pool already looking at NetFlix. “Paranoia” never stood a chance. We are tasked to root for a Brooklyn hotshot engineer (Liam Hemsworth, vibing like he’s never seen New York) who crosses the bridge to work for one CEO shark (Gary Oldman) and after a grievous faux pas is strong-armed into working for another Fortune 500 dick (Harrison Ford), with orders to steal wares both soft and hard. The drama tries to spook us with the notion that Big Business will always lurk … in a reality where we now the NSA is monitoring this review as it’s posted. Oldman and Ford square off grand, though no one is thrown off a plane. Damn it. Not even those guys can get past creaky dialogue and scenes where the duped-but-loyal girlfriend (Amber Heard) realizes her iPhone is missing and runs to dial her landline. Expiration date: Ancient. C-

The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

This is rare: A remake smarter and cooler than the original. John McTiernan’s takes on 1968’s “The Thomas Crown Affair” starred Steve McQueen and Faye Dunanway and spun on a bank-robber billionaire. Here, Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo -- at the height of their stardom -– are in the spotlight with an art museum theft as the central plot device. Great change up. Brosnan is a Wall Street master who has grown bored with acquisitions and the back-slapping hoopla of taking other people’s money. But he loves oil and canvas, and a thrill. So he takes a Monet from New York’s Met. In broad daylight. During a giddy fun sideshow to a full-on robbery he orchestrated. Russo is the insurance investigator who care shit about art, but only the chase. She knows Crown did the theft, and he knows that she knows. Is the art the thing here? No. It's two bored powerful people who finally found the one who makes them tick. “Crown” is smart, damn sexy, and funny, with an insider streak that plays on the stars’ wattage, New York ego, and the prior film with Dunaway playing a wink-wink role. Brosnan and Russo are perfectly matched. B+

The Lost Weekend (1945)

Billy Wilder is the greatest director. His “The Apartment” is the best romantic comedy film of all time. But check out Best Picture winner “The Lost Weekend,” the 1945 stark black-and-white story of a writer hitting bottom and finding yet more muck to dig through as he battles alcoholism, the kind where the guy knows he can’t breathe without a shot. Ray Milland –- I only ever knew him from “Escape to Witch Mountain” –- is Don, the insecure failure with just enough cash to buy just enough booze to finish ruining his life. But, this is 1940s-era movie, so there has to be an oh-so-devoted dame, and we get it with Jane Wyman as a magazine researcher. (Me, I thought the other lady of the film, a call girl, played by Doris Dowling, seemed far closer to earth than Wyman's saint.) Milland plays his part with a desperate bitterness and a swagger that every drunk knows is so well acted that no one would ever know he’s drunk. Wilder knowingly keeps those bottles in focus. The “upper” ender vibes wrong as if the studio didn't want audiences going home with too much a taste of reality. A-

The Family (2013)

Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer play husband and wife in the comedy-drama “The Family” which follows a mob-connected clan unable to keep their New Yawk F.U. attitude in check while living in rural France under witness protection. Dad pummels a shady plumber with a hammer, mom blows up a grocery for its lack of peanut butter, while the children (Dianna Argo and David Belle) pull of blackmail and crush anyone who crosses them. Tommy Lee Jones, haggard and grouchy as always, plays the haggard and grouchy U.S. federal agent who has to keep the family safe from assassins. See, De Niro’s dad snitched his mafia bosses and is now wanted. Director Luc Besson -– he made “The Professional” –- eyes slapstick comedy upfront, and drama and suspense later, asking us to sympathize with these hard-ass ’Mericans when the guns come. It’s an ugly shift: We’re not talking Bernstein Bears here. This family proudly dishes cruelty, yet when tables turn, suddenly violence is wrong? (Never mind the high body count of innocents.) Love the “Goodfellas” bit, though. B-

North by Northwest (1959)

I forgot just how funny Alfred Hitchcock’s early, genius spy-flick thriller “North by Northwest” is, until a recent watch on cable. Coolest Man Ever Cary Grant plays NYC ad guy Roger Thornhill, who gets stuck in a giddily preposterous mistaken identity chase across the U.S. of A with silent killers, the CIA, a dame, and Mount Rushmore all to follow. Early in, Grant as Thornhill is seized by two goons who try to kill him via a bottle of bourbon and a fake DUI car crash. Comedy gold hits: Smashed-ass Grant drives his way to jail, where his first and only call is to his mother. Literally, his mommy. Roger’s indignant. The cop near busts a tooth smirking. Hitchcock and writer Ernest Lehman (“Sweet Smell of Success”) turn 500 screws, add in murder, a mystery woman (Eva Marie Saint) with stranger/train sex on her inscrutable mind, and James Mason as a smooth villain with his own slippery identity. Oh, and that crop duster. So cool, Bond soon ripped it off. Hitchcock is having a cackling ball, yanking his camera to dizzy high spots, and letting Mason “punch” the screen. Knock out. Hitchcock kills it. A+

Frances Ha and Stories We Tell (both 2013)

Two recent art-house hit films came my way that focus on women, with females in partial control (directing, producing, writing) behind the camera. Films about women by women are too rare. I wish they would flood cinemas as do superhero flicks. Imagine having to choose which female-directed film you will see this weekend. Enough dreaming, onward…

Greta Gerwig co-wrote and is in every scene of “Frances Ha,” a black-and-white comedy/drama/ love letter to French films about a New Yorker facing a gasping dance career, the looming age of 30, and an emotional bounce after her BFF and roommate moves on to live with a fiancé. Directed and co-written by Gerwig’s real-life squeeze, Noah Baumbach, famous for “Squid and the Whale,” one expects quirks and awkward laughs with the drama, and we are served: Frances is a conversation assassin at social gatherings, and at one point -– deep in debt -– foolishly decides to jet to Paris for two days, only to take sleeping pills for jet lag and snooze trough half the trip. That’s truly hilarious, and I laughed heartily. The simple story rocks and soothes as it follows Frances getting on her feet again, but feels equally forced when the screenplay tosses in coincidences and run-ins, especially at a party I won’t even delve into. Frances (the “Ha” part you’ll learn at the end) is all the more wonderful for having no super powers. No matter how dire she needs them. B

“Stories We Tell” is –- halfway through the year -– my favorite film of 2013. Actress-turned-director Sarah Polley (“The Sweet Hereafter”) turns her eyes and camera on her own family as she asks the question we all do, “Where do I come from?” The answers are surprising and I will not divulge one moment of this gem, for watching “Stories” blind, with no knowledge of what is to come, is flat out the best time I’ve had at the movies this year. The film really is Polley speaking to her parents, siblings, and family friends, and about her own birth and her dead-from-cancer mother. With great assist from her father, Michael, a former actor who serves as narrator, Polley pulls back family stories like a series of curtains, each one leading to a new revelation or truth, entire histories of joys, mistakes, hurts, happy or foggy memories. It’s a reminder that our greatest stories are not -– and here Polley turns the cameras on herself and her editors -– found in cinemas or novels, but at the dinner table, across from parents, siblings, and friends. An exceptional watch that will even make you want to re-visit home. A

The Black Hand (1950)

Unusually bleak for 1950s Hollywood rah-rah American films, “The Black Hand” opens in 1900’s Little Italy, New York, as a local attorney/doting father and husband is killed for daring to cross the Italian mob. The attorney’s teenage son -– a strapping with a thick Italian accent who could pass for young Brando -– vows revenge, and delivers eight years later after he returns to New York in the bodily form of 40-year-old Gene Kelly. A man as Italian as I am not. If you can get past that, this is a damn good film that takes head-on the disappointment of the American Dream for thousands of immigrants as they lived (and do still) under the thumb of petty thug dictators who hold more power and sway than the police or courts. There’s no “Singin’ in the Rain” here. In full dramatic mode singed with anger, Kelly pulls a knife on a guy for information and wields the dagger late in the film for more permanent deeds. Director Richard Thorpe (he later made “Jailhouse Rock”) makes the film feel authentic and lets Italians speak Italian for long periods, no subtitles, and takes the gritty, dark action to Naples. Seriously, Kelly is eccellente. A-

Now You See Me (2013)

As a comic book geek, I love the crop of summer superhero flicks. This year alone, “Iron Man 3” and “Man of Steel” roar loud, and more Avengers and Spider-Man are on the way. But it’s a genre that is now well-worn, so all the more welcome to “Now You See Me,” what I call a One-Upper Film. That is, a group of great actors play out action -– here’s it’s magicians bent on Robin Hood thievery and the FBI agent on the hunt –- as they try to outsmart, out-trick, and show off to one another. Not just as characters they play, but as actors, too. Yes, CGI and big explosions abound, but “Now” is about the cast: Sharp curious eyes and bows of pleasurable worship as Woody Harrelson, Mark Ruffalo, Jesse Eisenberg, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Caine, among others, show off for us and themselves on camera. Director/ writer Louis Leterrier’s complicated, can you top me?, magic trick plot pitches illusion, flashbacks, and double- and triple-takes, and it all may not stand up to deep scrutiny, but damn, I dug this. A wild card summer hit that’s as popcorn bright fun as “Prestige” –- another magic tale with Caine -– was dark. A-

The Place Beyond the Pines (2013)

“The Place Beyond the Pines” is a rare piece of work, a three-act morality crime thriller heavy on family throes, modeled -– in scope, length, and music-heavy beat -- on “Heat,” but subbing tiny New York town called Schenectady (great name!) for sprawling  Los Angeles. Director/co-writer Derek Cianfrance (“Blue Valentine”) casts Ryan Gosling as Luke, a carny motorcycle stuntman who learns that a one-night stand has produced a son. His jailhouse tattoos signify a hard-scrabble life, Luke but sees the Light in that baby boy’s face. But his way to get cash is criminally stupid, and with a crook, we must have a cop. Bradley Cooper is Avery, a law-school grad who drives a squad car. His story is Act 2. Act 3 jumps 15 years to the sons of cop and crook as the youth play out a track the other chapters deftly avoided: a finger-waving melodrama that fails against the previous action, including a true gut-punch shocker. Gosling and Cooper bring their best, and the actors playing the sons –- Emory Cohen and Dane DeHaan -– leap over the cliché roles. “Pines” could have been massive, daring follow-up for Cianfrance, but his need to dispel lessons breaks the spell. B-

Sleepy Hollow (1999)

“Sleepy Hollow” is perfect Tim Burton id: Gloriously dark atmosphere spiked with a wicked sense of humor, misfit characters that can only be saved by love, surreal violence, and a god-awful story with stabs of brilliance, but mostly ugly exposition. Burton and screenwriters Andrew Kevin Walker and (un-credited) Tom Stoppard take the Irving story and dump the school teacher for a NYC police constable (Johnny Depp, brilliantly good) advocating science forensics to his detriment in an age -– 1799 -– drunk on religion. Crane is sent to Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of lobbed-off heads by a demonic man on a horse, minus his own head, and the latter is no joke, because this is Burton, and magic, evil, and trees of death puking blood abound. Crane’s arrival –- filmed by Emmanuel Lubezki, scored by Danny Elfman, with a set from purgatory –- is marvelous, fused with old Hammer Films and 1931’s classic “Frankenstein.” Brilliant: Depp plays Crane as a heinous wus, using a teenage boy as a human shield. Weak: Huge story errors and a conspiracy-heavy reveal that defies reason. Christopher Walken plays the horseman, growling with devotion to Burton’s majestic dark yearnings. I miss this Burton. B

Safe (2012)

Jason Statham does what Jason Statham does best in “Safe,” an action thriller that has our hero playing a haunted, homeless, lonely ex-policeman having a bad day as he slices, punches, kicks, stomps, and shoots his way through 100 gangsters, thugs, loons, and dirty cops. No shit seriously, some 200 people die in this film as Statham’s Luke Wright vows to safe a girl (Catherine Chan) enslaved to Chinese mobsters for her mad math skills, the Russian mobsters who want what’s in that brain (one way or another), and the corrupt cops who work for the highest bidder. In short, everyone in New York, even the mayor, is out to kill Wright. Most Breitbart fans will understand this as normal. I mean, foreigners, right? Look, director/writer Boaz Yakin (“Remember the Titans” must have been a fluke) knows we are not in this for the brains, but the blood. And much blood is spilt. Untold gallons. In the real world, the National Guard would have been called in after the first civilian massacre. Much less the fifth. But not here. This realm belongs to Statham. Take it or leave it, or die... C+

Marvel’s The Avengers (2012)

It all leads up to this, “The Avengers.” Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, assembled in one massive movie, based on the must-read comic book that tied together the vast Marvel Universe like the quickest game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, month after month for decades. And still going strong, print-wise. Cinema-wise, after “Iron Man” 1 and 2, two “Hulk” movies (one in 2003 now disowned, the other in 2008 grudgingly accepted), “Thor” and “Captain America,” we now have the comic book movie of the year. 

Sorry, “Dark Knight Rises.” (For now.)

The Avengers is an unlikely team of super heroes: Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Hawkeye and Black Widow, joined by SHIELD Agent Nick Fury in one massive film. (Classic B-side comic book characters such as Ant-Man and Wasp must wait for a sequel I guess.) The plot follows the book’s lead: The team fights intergalactic threats, a power-mad super villain, and/or more likely each other or another Marvel hero, Iron Man vs. Thor, Wolverine vs. Hulk, or everyone vs. Hulk. Those later fights were more exciting than any run-of-the-mill story of hero against villain, on the page. Who to root for? 

Does the “Avengers” movie live up to the years of hype? Never could. I dreamed about this movie all the childhood, and it’s a work of pop-art summer flick beauty for a boy who got himself happily lost inside three-color panels and myriad crossover cliffhangers for much of his childhood. It contains the single greatest ripped-from-a-comic-book-scene ever on film: The Hulk smashes a villain around as if he were a sock monkey, and drops a one-liner as he walks off, satisfied with his big, green, angry self. Cheer!

But that comes at the end, and I need to start at the beginning: We open in space – evil mumbling abound about the destruction of Earth, by a freakish, hooded alien of some sort. Loki – the villainous brother of Thor, both the hero and the namesake 2011 film, played by Tom Hiddleston – is to lead the charge. He zaps to Earth through a portal that opens at the headquarters of the super-secret spy group SHIELD, the latter tinkering with a glowing blue Cosmic Cube thingy that promises unlimited energy. (Confused? You have not watched the earlier films. Go back to start.) Loki wreaks havoc, taking prisoners and under-mining the Mo-Fo that is Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). 

The first 20 minutes is all SHIELD, an odd introduction, but director/ screenwriter Joss Whedon (TV’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Firefly”) is easing us into this massive universe, bringing in his team one member at a time. We hop from America to Germany then to a massive floating aircraft carrier (straight out of the comic books) and then to New York City for a 40-odd minute battle finale, complete with massive creatures reminiscent of the sandworms in “Dune,” floating above the skyline. 

So, yes, it’s a Michael Bay “Transformers” finale with smashed buildings and fleeing extras, but Whedon whets our appetites (mine anyway) with long shots of the heroes, standing in a circle, backs to each other, ready to fight, and every hero -– even the relatively unexplored Hawkeye and Black Widow – gets a shining moment. Captain America, in the middle of the battle, takes charge of the team as the only man with real-war experience. Iron Man blasts his way through canyons of skyscrapers. 

Then there’s that beaut scene with Hulk and sock monkey Loki. It’s everything you want in a comic book, outlandish action with wit as Loki lays hyper-ventilating and thinks, “What am I doing?” It’s a stellar Whedon moment, and one of many surprises, including the strong touches of humor (Harry Dean Stanton as a security guard) and sad (a major character dies, but he’s not that major). 

The real Whedon coup, though, is fitting all these heroes and actors into one film and making it work – Chris Evans as Captain, Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, and Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/Hulk. Major names mixed in with minor names, and of course Downey rules the roost with his Tony Stark strut and outsize ego, but Ruffalo uses nerdy charm to win scene after scene. When minor-league Evans -- he can’t compete with Oscar nominees -– steps up to the plate to take over the team, we’re cheering for the actor as much as we are the character. 

I never thought a live-action film of the Avengers could be pulled off, but Whedon has done it. It’s not perfect -- that plot is weak, in case you didn't notice, Loki’s lizard baddies are faceless and void of personality, but Downey’s Stark can drop a shawarma reference out of the blue, and make it sing. Comic book love. If “Dark Knight Rises” threatens to lean too far to tragic importance, “Avengers” is bright, bold fun, with the inner-fights of heroes, and their coming together against a world threat a reminder of the best of all humanity. So, in the sequel, Vision please! Confused? Go back to the comic books. And as Stan Lee always said, “Exclsior!” A-