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Showing posts from July, 2018

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #227: Léon

Now this is a tough movie to review in the post #MeToo era. Luc Besson’s Léon (1994) is a terrific action movie that launched Natalie Portman’s career, introduced French actor Jean Reno to American audiences and gave us another great villain performance from Gary Oldman. The problem is it suggests at times a romantic relationship between an underage girl and a grown man, which was apparently based on Besson’s relationship with his first wife who was 15 when they began dating. Making matters much, much worse, this year Besson has been accused of rape, sexual assault, harassment and workplace abuse ( https://bit.ly/2JHi5he ).   I still want to get through this list of greatest films, and then possibly move on to another one, so I can’t just strike off a movie because one person who helped get it to the screen has been accused of a crime. Sadly, that would mean I would have to take at least 100 out of 500 movies off the list. Alfred Hitchcock alone would negate a bunch of movies, i