‘A very particular set of skills’: A look at late-career Liam Neeson movies

If I say “Liam Neeson movie,” you picture, at this point, a pretty specific thing, right? It’s kind of an action-thriller. Neeson is avenging some wrong. It’s usually some wrong against his family. And it’s usually avenged with Neeson’s “particular set of skills.”

Basically, the movie is some version of Taken, right?

Well, Taken came out in 2008. Liam Neeson has been making these movies for 15 years now. He just turned 70, and he says he just made his 100th movie. (I’ve put a certain amount of effort into trying to figure out just what he’s counting to get to exactly 100, and I can’t quite do it, but I’ve decided we should just accept the guy’s count. Right?)

The Nose is off this week. In its place, a Not Necessarily the Nose-style look at late-career Liam Neeson, post-Taken Liam Neeson, doing-action-movies-into-his-70s Liam Neeson.

Some other stuff that happened this week, give or take:

• Louise Fletcher, 88, Dies; Oscar Winner for ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ She was largely unknown to the public when she was cast as what the American Film Institute called one of cinema’s most memorable villains.
• Trevor Noah Leaving ‘Daily Show’ After Seven Years The host, who took over for Jon Stewart in 2015, told the audience Thursday, “My time is up.”
• Lizzo Played A 200-Year-Old Crystal Flute In Concert, And Its History Is Fascinating The rare crystal flute was rescued from the White House in 1814, and no one alive had heard its sound before.
• An Apology From the Missing Comma in Don’t Worry Darling
• Sorry, But Avatar Still Rules
• The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time A ranking of the most game-changing, side-splitting, tear-jerking, mind-blowing, world-building, genre-busting programs in television history, from the medium’s inception in the early 20th century through the ever-metastasizing era of Peak TV
• Maybe We Won’t End Up Like the Dinosaurs NASA has taken a major step toward protecting Earth from dangerous asteroids.
• Hannah Gadsby Has Signed A New Deal With Netflix To Hopefully Change The ‘Notoriously Transphobic Industry’
• We’re Witnessing the Birth of a New Artistic Medium Expect AI art to go the way of Warhol.
• It’s Official: Wife Guys Are Out Ned Fulmer and Adam Levine are proof that nothing good comes from monetizing your role as a patriarchal monogamy doer — especially when you can’t even do the monogamy part.
• Where Does “Saturday Night Live” Go From Here? After its biggest cast shakeup in decades, the long-running sketch show enters a period of uncertainty
• In Praise of TK: Why the Handy Shorthand Has a Surprising Emotional Hold on Me
• Danny Boyle to Direct Dance Adaptation of ‘The Matrix’
• Actor Bruce Willis Becomes First Celebrity to Sell Rights to Deepfake Firm The actor calls the technology “a great opportunity to go back in time.”

GUESTS:

• David Edelstein: America’s Greatest Living Film Critic
• Nate Fisher: A writer and comedian and cohost of the podcast A Closer Look
• Ben Lindbergh: Senior editor at The Ringer
• Stephen Marche: A novelist and essayist; his most recent book is The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future

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Colin McEnroe, Eugene Amatruda, and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.

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