Films To Watch - Recommendations

Number 40




Hard Boiled,one of the best action films i have seen,John Woo directed lots of great action thrillers like this but has lost the plot lately with his previous films,only Face/Off being any good,but here is his masterpiece,a Hong Kong policeman wants to take down a gangster and there is loads of shooting and death,the opening shootout in the tea room has a bigger bodycount than Die Hard,i like Empire magazine's quote on this film "Better than a dozen Die Hards",sure is

Number 39



The Thing


I remember first seeing this film when i was about 8 and bloody loved it,loved all the gore and tension,years later i still feel the same way,this is an excellent sci fi horror from John Carpenter,another one of his films will be in my list,this is about an alien that attacks a group of men on an Arctic base and can then become a duplicate of it's victim,which makes the men question : who is the Thing?,very good,the effects,like the alien,are out of this world,still hold up to today's CGI,recommended,even the prequel is decent

Number 38




Psycho,one of Hitchcock's best,a classic horror thriller that is said to be the first ever slasher film,it is about a woman working in real estate who steals money from her work and runs off to meet with her lover,she checks into the Bates Motel for the night and then probably wishes she hadn't,this is brilliant,over 50 years old and it is still a well executed thriller,the shower scene is up there in the greatest film scenes ever,almost as good as the interrogation scene in Basic Instinct

Number 37




Kick Ass,and this film does kick ass,a geeky high school student wants to become a hero in his city,so he orders a costume and goes out to fight crime and gets involved with a mob boss and his spoilt dorky son and meets other wannabe vigilante hero types,great fun this film,a very good adaptation of the graphic novel and it is loaded with violence and good humour,surprised it didn't get an 18 certificate,rumours of a sequel,i hope it is not going to be a bollocks sequel

Number 36




Menace II Society,the Hughes Brothers' only good film and how good it is,the life of young african americans in the hood,the ghetto whatever you want to call it,excellent drama with no bad performances,even has a cameo from Samuel L. Jackson,pretty violent in places and loaded with swearing,but it is not a kids film,recommended

Number 35




Bad Taste,some people think Citizen Kane is the greatest film ever made,but it won't be on my list,but Bad Taste is,this is a sci fi horror comedy from Peter Jackson,ultra low budget but who cares cause this is good fun,aliens land in New Zealand and have cut up all the human population of a small town to have for their fast food business in space,so a team of guys have to stop them,very daft really but great gory fun,Jackson would of course go on to direct Lord of the Rings later in his career

Number 34



Cloverfield


I picked this as best film of 2008 in my film club,and no wonder,what a great and original monster horror this is,all filmed with hand held camera,it follows a group of friends trying to survive in the streets of New York when a giant monster attacks,sounds like Godzilla but it is so much better than that,something a bit different in the horror genre and it worked well,the subway tunnel scene is brilliant

Number 33




Straw Dogs,a gritty thriller from Sam Peckinpah,who has done quite a few violent films,this one is set in a village in Cornwall and the local thugs don't like american Dustin Hoffman cause he married the village bike,tensions rise and soon all Hell breaks loose,considered quite a disturbing film for it's violence and gang rape scene,still a good film to watch but some may consider it dated,avoid the pointless awful remake

Number 32




Inglourious Basterds,a war film done Tarantino's way,and brilliantly done,a team of jewish american soldiers are on the hunt for nazi scalps,a young french woman plots to kill Hitler in an ingenious way and a Nazi officer wants to be a war hero,great action and humour as in all Tarantino films,Christophe Waltz stands out as Colonel Landa,Diane Kruger looks stunning and even Mike Meyers is good in it,not QT's best but entertaining,the scene in the tavern is excellent and the David Bowie song is cool too

Number 31




Halloween,the horror that inspired the slasher boom in the 1980s,this is John Carpenter's masterpiece,made a star out of Jamie Lee Curtis and a horror icon in the form of the killer Michael Meyers,simple stalk and slash film,a guy escapes from a mental home and starts killing people on Halloween night,not even dated this is still good and creepy in places and that is helped by Carpenter's music score,this film had several sequels and a re-imagining by Rob Zombie,all crap compared to this,the original and the best