An editor, essayist and freelance film freak living and dying in London, Sean has bylines at Empire, Fangoria and Little White Lies, bookshelves heaving with unwatched bargain-bin DVDs, and subscriptions to far too many niche streaming services. His chief interests include horror, masculinity in the western, and mid-budget mid-1990s action films with shoddy MIDI soundtracks.
Puritanical types like to scapegoat movie violence as a cause of social breakdown, but the truth is that the world has always been a violent place, and the movies merely reflect that fact. Even more to the point, while real-world violence is rarely worthy of celebration, in film, it can often be beautiful. Think the grace of Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan’s blur of motion. In cinema, interpersonal combat is an artform unto itself, one that has made careers and provides the foundation for whole genres. On this list of the greatest movie scenes ever filmed, though, the selections run the gamut, from action sequences so balletic they nearly count as dancing to brutal, sloppy brawls that nonetheless nudge us to the edge of our seats. A few caveats, though. First off, no gunplay allowed, at least not where a firearm is the primary weapon; well-orchestrated shootouts are a whole other category, and probably deserve a list of their own. For similar reasons, we’ve also omitted boxing matches, wrestling bouts or MMA fights. But that still leaves us with plenty of hard-hitting dust-ups, elegant martial arts mastery and the occasional goofy grapple that puts the slap in ‘slapstick’. All we are saying is: give violence a chance. RECOMMENDED: 🥋 The 25 best martials arts movies ever made.🧨 The 101 greatest action movies ever made.🪂 The 18 greatest stunts in cinema (picked by the greatest stunt professionals)
Bad films are like bumps of coke: every actor has done a few. But some stars have the wattage to shine bright even as a dodgy production threatens to snuff out their spark. Whether bringing hard-earned pathos to paltry attempts, elevating lacklustre screenplays or going above and beyond to strive for authenticity, these players make their presence felt against the odds. Here are 15 fantastic performances in poorly reviewed movies. RECOMMENDED: 🔥 50 great scenes in bad movies.🗑️ The 40 best bad movies ever made.
Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day – and even a terrible movie can contain flashes of genius. If you’re willing to sit through enough dreck, sometimes a miracle will unfold before your eyes: a scene that genuinely makes the ticket price seem almost like value for money and that takes the edge off right that sinking feeling you get when a movie turns into a turkey before your eyes. And, from Darth Maul’s moment of glory to everything Raul Julia does in Street Fighter, those moments deserve celebrating, because it’s not their fault that everything around them is made of potato peelings and offal. Here are the 50 best bits in the very worst movies. RECOMMENDED:🗑️ The 40 best bad movies ever made.🛵 The best cult classic movies of all time.
The movie industry has always been crawling with monsters, and we don’t just mean those old-school studio heads who use to torment starlets. We’re talking about the monsters borne from childhood nightmares, or the deranged imaginations of some very creative adults. We’re talking predatory aliens. We’re talking vampires and werewolves. We’re talking skyscraper-sized apes, sentient globs of carnivorous space goo, interdimensional leather daddies and razor-toothed sewer clowns. In some cases, the monsters of cinema have become as famous as any actor – movie stars unto themselves. It’s those most iconic beasts, demons and kaiju we’re saluting in this list of the greatest movie monsters of all-time. A few caveats: this list largely follows the same parameters as our monster movies list, meaning that it steers away from non-mutated animals – sorry, Bruce the Shark and the spiders from Arachnophobia – as well as slasher villains such as Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers. But zombies? Trolls? Brundlefly? You’ll find them all below. Recommended: 👹 The 50 best monster movies ever made💀 The 100 best horror movies of all-time🧟 The best zombie movies of all-time👹 Cinema’s creepiest anthology horror movies🩸 The 15 scariest horror movies based on true stories
No movie is ever truly, definitively ‘bad’. Yes, a movie may arrive at a critical consensus that may deem it rotten, trash, a flaming diaper of bad ideas. But somewhere, if a film ever makes it out into the wider world, you’re guaranteed to find at least one person who appreciates it. Whether the appreciation is ironic or genuine scarcely matters – if someone is deriving any kind of joy from a piece of art, that means it was worth the effort to create. Of course, some bad movies are better than others – which is to say, they’re worse. The dialogue is more stilted, the directorial choices more curious, the effects more laughable. And yet, those deficiencies make them far more memorable than a competent snoozefest. And so, let us celebrate 40 of the best bad movies of all time. Many of them – OK, all of them – can be described as trainwrecks. But who can look away from a trainwreck? Recommended: 💩The schlock and awe world of brilliantly bad movies🤘The 40 best cult movies of all-time🫠 20 great movies to watch when you’re high😵 The 15 most monstrous vanity projects ever made
2023 was a big year for little horror movies. Sure, the most dominant films of the year were full of vibrant colours, cheery vibes and decades-old IP. But if the talk around the popcorn machine wasn’t about Barbie or The Super Mario Bros. Movie, it was often about some small, freaky nightmare whose budget wouldn’t cover the catering on those other blockbusters. Like M3GAN, the year’s first mega-memed movie about a doll come to life. Or Skinamarink, another viral phenomenon borne from the world’s shared childhood nightmares. Or Evil Dead Rise, the latest reboot of the splatstick franchise that somehow manages to be bloodier and more straight-up terrifying than the original. No true horror movie made much of a dent in the box office – unless you count Oppenheimer, which is certainly horrifying, but doesn’t exactly fit under the umbrella. But several scary movies insinuated themselves into the cultural conversation, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see them make their way into the regular Halloween rotation, if nothing else. Here are the 16 horror movies of last year that left us the most shaken. RECOMMENDED: 🔪 The best horror movies and shows of 2024 (so far)💀 The 100 greatest horror films of all time🔥 The best movies of 2023 (so far)📺 The best TV shows of 2023 you need to stream
Beneath the boring blockbusters and passé multiplex programming, there lie the sewers of independent film exhibition, a kind of nether realm where Thunderstorm: The Return of Thor is more popular than Thor: Love and Thunder. Yes, bad movies are big business too. Whether presenting on pub projectors or 50-foot screens, the underworld is awash with independent exhibitors for whom low-budget genre fare is infinitely more interesting than the Marvel Cinematic Universe. ‘Bad’, ‘cult’, ‘trash’, whatever you call it, it’s all out there: slapdash 1950s sci-fi, trashy 1960s and 1970s exploitation, 1980s cop schlock, 1990s direct-to-video martial arts movies. You’ve just got to know where to find it. Welcome to the gutters of cinema, where good taste goes to die. ‘You’re at the bottom end of the cinephile gene pool when you like these kinds of movies,’ says Richard Clark, who operates as Token Homo and hosts Bar Trash at London’s Genesis Cinema. Here, fans converge to devour such demented delights as 1955’s Creature with the Atom Brain and 1973’s wickedly weird Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood. Tickets cost £1, there are competitions and prizes, and themed cocktails during the intermissions. Sure, sometimes they’re one star movies – but they’re always five star experiences Each Bar Trash screening is a celebration of an extinct kind of cinema. Many of these movies were put together by inexperienced, underfunded idealists whose, let’s say, ‘unique’ approach to problem-solving resulted i
There’s a rowdy revival underway in London. Usually, when a film begins, the room is gripped by hushed anticipation. Not here. At the Genesis Cinema in Mile End, as the lights go down the gloves come off. This is Kung Fu Cinema – and there’s only one rule: make some noise. The bimonthly event kicks off with casual drinks in the bar, soundtracked by hip-hop tracks and the thwack of arcade touchstones such as Tekken 3, before culminating in a raucous 10pm screening of a Hong Kong classic, MCed by a man for whom martial arts is a lifelong love. Marlon Palmer has been an exhibitor and distributor of Black cinema for more than 20 years and a kung fu fan for even longer. As a kid, he was introduced to martial arts by his older stepbrother. Soon he came to idolise Bruce Lee. Later, he found cinema. Photograph: CHANNEL 5 BROADCASTINGKung Fu Cinema founder Marlon Palmer grew up idolising Bruce Lee In the 1980s, Palmer was a regular at renowned late-night London picturehouses like the Rio in Dalston, the Curzon Turnpike Lane and the Odeons in Wood Green and Holloway. Back then, there were few opportunities to see non-white heroes on the big screen and, against a backdrop of racism and riots sparked by the National Front and Metropolitan Police, the genre’s themes of resistance against injustice, as well as the sheer flip-kicking cool of its protagonists, proved popular with Black audiences. Kung fu films resonate with the Black community. We’re looking for those heroes – the guy th