Luc Besson Movies Ranked from Worst to Best. Too Hollywood for art houses and too art house for Hollywood, iconoclastic French filmmaker Luc Besson has always had to blaze his own trail. Unwilling or unable to compromise from the very start his debut feature was a dialogue free post apocalyptic drama about a waterless future where it occasionally rains fish, Besson continues to offset his pigheadedness with his passion. He eventually got so sick of looking for support that he launched his own production company, Europa. Corp, which has become one of the most profitable in all of Europe by churning out the kind of carnivalesque shlock that made its founder so famous in the first place. Besson may not have directed the likes of Taken, Lock Out, and Colombiana, but his fingerprints are all over them. Read More Review Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets Is Like Star Wars on Crystal Meth, and Its Almost Crazy Enough to Work. Written off as a brainless aesthete when critics belittled his early work as the cinma du look, Besson has spent the last three decades complicating that reputation in any number of ways. On the one hand, hes a perpetual teenager whose movies have only grown more deliriously juvenile as hes gotten older the guy is now 5. On the other hand, the Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets director has displayed a unique knack for layering heady concepts in a cotton candy gauze of pop spectacle, and he has pushed modern action filmmaking to a whole new level. With the biggest film of his career about to hit theaters, were taking a look back at everything Besson has ever directed. Here are all of his movies, ranked from worst to best. The Family 2. 01. The FamilyIts something of a backhanded compliment that the most anonymous film Luc Besson has ever made is also the worst. Download Full All Creatures Big And Small. A witless misfire that tries to split the difference between a gangster drama, a domestic satire, a coming of age story or two, and a fish out of water comedy about foreigners in France, The Family is ultimately none of those things. Instead, its just a stale mishmash of lazy ideas that builds to the single most contrived Goodfellas gag of all time. Robert De Niro hits bottom as a turncoat mafioso who relocates his all American family to Normandy under witness protection, only to discover that godawful screenwriting doesnt respect international borders. While hes preoccupied with notions of becoming a novelist and fantasies of murdering the locals with barbecue equipment, his wife Michelle Pfeiffer is having a spiritual crisis, his son is mobbing up the village high school, and his daughter is lusting after her tutor while dealing with sexual harassment Girls are not some toys that you fuck in the park screams Diana Agron while severely beating some horny classmates in one of the films only vintage Besson moments. Arthur and the Invisibles 2. Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard 2. Arthur 3 The War of the Two Worlds 2. Arthur and the InvisiblesIts entirely possible that Luc Besson has a pathological inability to tell the difference between his good ideas and his bad ideas  he overcommits to both of them equally. Not only did he write a hackneyed childrens book about a kid who shrinks down to the size of a bug and discovers a kingdom of sprite like creatures living in his grandmothers backyard, he wrote three of them. And then, just for good measure, he adapted the entire series into a trilogy of cinematic misfires, each installment more painful than the last. The story unfolds in an embellished version of Connecticut, where an overactive kid named Arthur Freddie Highmore lives with his grandmother Mia Farrow. Its all whimsical Jean Pierre Jeunet vibes and Rube Goldberg machines until our hero meets a magical African man oof who makes him super tiny and introduces him to the world of the Minimoys. Elfin monstrosities with orange skin and hollow eyes, these crudely animated Lilliputian eyesores look like theyve been copy and pasted directly out of a Mucinex commercial Besson embeds the Minimoys in a grassy world comprised of the worst CG since The Lawnmower Man. The graphics here are so flimsy that it becomes impossible for him to bridge the gap between his films live action and animated halves. You havent known true misery until youve heard Jason Bateman hold his nose to voice the bad guys sniveling sidekick only in the first film, thank God, or Madonna attempt to breathe life into the princess Minimoy. And I havent even gotten to. Jimmy Fallon yet. The Arthur saga is spared from last place on this list because of all the other people who Besson hired to round out the cast. You never know whose voice you might hear next. Snoop Dogg as a Rastafarian garden creature Sure. Emilio Estevez Quack Harvey Keitel Little kids love him. David Bowie Okay, hes actually really great as the Groot like villain, and you wont believe your ears when Lou Reed subs in for him in the sequel. The Lady 2. 01. The LadyMaybe it shouldnt seem so insane that the guy behind The Fifth Element also directed a biopic about Aung San Suu Kyi, a scholar who went on to become Burmas First Lady of Freedom the details are a bit complicated. In theory, this material should play to Bessons strengths, or at least his obsessions. In practice, it doesnt. At all. Maybe an action auteur wasnt the ideal person to make a movie about the nobility of non violenceDespite Michelle Yeohs Herculean effort to wrest a real woman out of the Cliffs. Notes to which Bessons reduces her, The Lady is as unfocused as anything the director has ever made. The Messenger The Story of Joan of Arc 1. The MessengerSorry, Luc, but What if Joan of Arc was hot isnt really enough of an idea to sustain an 1. The ranking continues on page 2 with an angel, a brute, and an 1. View all the Shows sorted from most popular on TVGuide. See a full list of Shows, view rankings and more on TVGuide. From disasters like The Family to modern classics like The Fifth Element, the Valerian auteur has forged quite the unique filmography.