My Favorite Movies

Many think when watching this that Ash returns to the cabin but it is not so. The rushed beginning is just a recap of the first film. The reason only he and his girlfriend appear in it is because the other actors didn't want to do the sequel. The film properly starts with Ash being possessed by the spirit like the first film ends. This film mixes some humour in and creates a slapstick approach to the horror but carries it off. The laughing cabin, the spirit chasing Ash around the cabin and even beating himself up - it's all pulled-off in a ludricously great fashion but the blood comes by the barrel-load when the relative of the cabins' owner comes to visit and then the gore begins. Awesome sequel.

Awesome start of a B-Movie trilogy starring the Man With The Golden Chin aka Bruce Campbell. Directed by Sam Raimi, who went onto direct the Spider-Man Trilogy, the film was made by a group of friends with local funding and it inspired many film-makers. A low budget gorefest, Evil Dead tells the tale of friends who go to a cabin for the weekend only to awake the spirits living in the woods These spirits possess the teens, using their chosen host to kill the others. Brilliant movie. After reading Bruce's book 'If Chins Could Kill', I got a great behind-the-scenes look on this film and the general making-of and how depite the low budget, certain parts were acheived, which made it more fun to watch. It's a classic piece of horror history and still stands the test of time. Oh, my copy happened to be the special version in the form of the 'Book of the Dead' and I would highly reccomend it. If not for the sponge-like cover or the Necronomicon artwork gracing the pages (the DVD insides are like a book) then the free movie you get! Yes, you get a free copy of 'Running Time' inside the 'book'. Best £7 I have EVER spent!

Set in a different time than the other two, the tormented hero finds miself captured by knights who believe he is the Chosen One that'll bring an end to the Deadite threat but unwittingly unleashes the army of the dead led by his evil twin! Cue hilarious exploding skeletons, brilliant one-liners and the best ending to any trilogy, or possibly any film! Any wonder why this series will go down in history! Hail to the king baby!

Japanese cult-classic with cult icon Takashi Kitano playing the dark-humoured teacher of the ill-fated class. Delinquents are about to be taught a harsh lesson for their behaviour: kill or be killed. There can only be one survivor and a remote island is their playground. Friends soon turn to foes, lovers hang each other and the killings begin all the while a countdown ticks down. In order to prevent escapees everyone is fitted with an explosive necklace that detonate in certain areas, if took off or if there's more than one survivor. An awesome film and an instant must-see. Could you kill your best friend?

I've always been a big Chow Yun-Fat fan, A Better Tomorrow made him my favourite Asian actor and I've followed his films from Hard Boiled and The Killer to God of Gamblers and Tiger on the Beat. However, one thing in movies I've never been a big fan of is wire-fu. Jet Li annoys me so much with his constant defiance of gravity - I like my martial artists to have solid fights without the trickery so I can see what they're really capable of. So I was torn when I heard of this film - Chow Yun-Fat and wire-fu but despite my sense of dread, it played out perfectly. This is miles ahead of the likes of Hero and House of Flying Daggers, sure this has the odd flying scene but nothing compared to the others and the action scenes are top-notch, Chow showing he's not only capable with guns. This is the best wire-fu film ever!

Neil Marshall (The Descent) rips up the screen with this brilliant Brit horror where British soldiers on a training exercise find themselves the target of a pack of werewolves who have laid waste to most of the other team and find themselves holed up in a cottage awaiting their fate. Football jokes, blood and guts and a hilarious kitchen punch-out - best Brit horror ever!

Stephen Chow is to comedy what Jackie Chan is to martial arts - a genius. Sing (Chow) wants to show the world the martial arts but fails to find a medium for it until he meets a down-on-his-luck coach who reckons football is the perfect medium! Rallying his old friends, they combine their Shaolin martial arts skills to form the ultimate football team but their greatest challenge lies in the form of a rival coach who crippled their current coach years ago and has a team as bad-ass as them. Hilarious with amazing CGI and great comedy touches! Even if you hate football - this is a must see!

Part of the 'Vengeance Trilogy' alongside Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance and Lady Vengeance. Oh Dae-su, after a drunken night, is imprisoned without explanation in a hotel-like room, where, while there, he learns on TV that he has been framed for the murder of his wife. Released after 15 years he is contacted via phone and told if he can work out who his captor is and what he did to deserve it, then the captor will kill himself. If not, then everyone he has ever loved will be killed. Joined by a schoolfriend and a sushi-bar girl who has taken him in, the three set out to unravel the mystery but who will suffer most in the end? A memorable film with a great one-shot brawl with a clawhammer and one of the best endings to a film. Not for the squeamish but one of the best Korean films out there.

French fantasy horror based on a true story where a killer beast roamed the French countryside and the king turns the matter to a hunter and his friend (Mark Dacascos) to track and stop the beast before more bodies pile up. While Mark Dacascos is the fiction-in-the-fact, put in for the kick-ass martial arts scenes, a very sexy Monica Belluci is there for the eye-candy although she does play an important role in the film. A great mix of fantasy, horror and adventure rolled into one package. Ass-kickingly great film from the director of Crying Freeman and Silent Hill.

Everyone knows the story by now - watch the tape and you have 7 days to live. Well, that's the legend so a female reporter checks out the legend and soon she and her son are in a race against time to lift the curse with the help of her ex-husband but what will come of the 7th day? No blood and guts here, this is pure atmospheric horror with matching music and a believable cast. Out of all the Asian horrors I've seen, this is the best I've seen so far. Highly recommended.

Another Miyazaki masterpiece, and one I wanted to see for years. Two sisters move to the countryside with their father while their mother is in hospital nearby and the girls soon befriend the local forest spirit Totoro and his friends. It's beautifully animated, funny and imaginative and I doubt you'll find many better.

For an Asian movie, it has a pretty big budgets, some amazing special effects and a decent story. Returner is a combination of numerous Hollywood sci-fi films you've seen before but Hollywood borrows Asian inspiration all the time (The Matrix) so this should be forgiven. The gizmo that Milly uses is cool - a reversal of the Bullet Time technique where rather than her slowing down to evade attack, everything else slows down around her. It may not be the greatest sci-fi in the world and there are its unrealistic moments (very few) but its' most definetely fun and cool.

Forget Van Damme and Seagal, move over Li and Chan - this is martial arts at its' finest. This Thai film may have a wafer-thin plot but action-wise it delivers in pain with no CGI, stuntmen or wires just a flurry of knees, elbows and amazing acrobatics done by leading man Tony Jaa. The action scenes are superb and the finale against the Burmese boxer is great. Check out this film if you love martial arts.

Lee Byeong-gu, a very paranoid individual believes that the world is going to end in a few days at the hands of an alien prince so he and his circus-performing girlfriend kidnap his ex-boss who he believes is in cahoots with it. As the police close in on the individual, will the boss still be alive at the end of the ordeal or is there a hint of truth to Lee Byeong-gu's crazy logic?

This is a Korean directorial debut that combines genres, throwing horrific torture scenes, dark humour and sci-fi with a little bit of drama and romance but it all mixs together perfectly and a film this crazy can only have an equally crazy theme tune - in this case, a punk rock version of 'Over The Rainbow'!

Do not miss this! This is one-of-a-kind! See it before Hollywood try to remake it!

Franke Potente (Bourne Identity) stars in this stylish Sliding Doors-esque mix of fast music and faster-paced film about a girl (Lola) who has to help her boyfriend out of trouble by coming up with a large amount of money quickly. The film is broke into 3, each one ending depending on the choices she makes and routes she takes. Original and interesting film that's worth a look.

Despite being one of the slightlier bloody of Miyazaki's collection, that doesn't stop it wiping the floor with all its' competition. A prince is infected with a curse by a possessed animal God and is to die unless he can find a way to lift it. His only hope is to travel to the far East to get help from the Spirit of the Forest but finds himself in the middle of a battle between the animal inhabitants of the forest, led by San, a girl raised by wolves, and an iron mining town, led by the fearless Lady Eboshi, who is destroying the forest for ore.

What if Elvis Presley never died but instead traded lives with an impersonator ? Stuck in a rest home where no-one believes his true identity, an elderly Elvis (Bruce Campbell) lays, contemplating his regrets in regards to his old lifestyle, family and what the hell the weird growth is on the end of his pecker that requires a nurse lubing it!!! When scarab beetles start attacking residents, zimmer-frame wielding Elvis and his friend, a black J.F.Kennedy (according to him he never died, they 'dyed' him black to conceal him from enemies!) they must team up and stop an even greater threat - a soul-sucking Egyptian mummy roaming the retirement home at night! Only the legend that is Bruce Campbell could get away with a random film like this. It's still great fun to watch and has some great lines in it delivered by the man himself, You gotta be intrigued by the concept - where else you going to find an elderly King of Rock 'n' Roll battle the King of the Dead?