Sean McGeady

Great movie dust-ups come in all shapes and sizes. Asian action cinema has blessed us with balletic beat downs that deliver high-speed martial artistry from legendary figures like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Gordon Liu; the western has chucked a thousand and one window-smashing saloon-bar rumbles into the mix, leaving Tombstone glaziers overworked and our eyeballs in need of ice packs. Then, of course, there’s the big Hollywood action movies, which send valiant heroes into action against evil baddies and leave a trail of destruction in their wake. The hero usually wins, but they’re defnitely going to take a beating first. To continue Time Out’s celebration of great action movies, we’ve dug through the medium’s greatest fight scenes to pick the best of the best: the wince-worthy smash-ups that keep us coming back for more. But first, a few criteria: improvised weapons – staffs, clubs, arm cannons, hose pipes, toasters, forks, golf clubs, etc – are all fine, but guns don’t quality here (even if one or two firearms do feature). Also omitted are boxing bouts, a whole list in itself, although the dojo is well-represented. What’s left, though, are the most impactful, visceral and spectacular examples of close combat cinema. Find a sofa, hide behind it and prepare for impact. 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)

Great movie monsters come in all shapes and forms – some, more than one. Of course, they’re usually frightening and seriously uncanny. But what unites them all is their gift for skulking into our subconscious and making a home there. Every movie lover’s brain contains a crypt of demons, beasts and critters waiting to lurch forth at unexpected moments.  The finest cine-critters don’t even necessarily haunt the greatest films. B-movies, VHS schlockers and even the odd forgettable blockbuster have yielded some of the best beasts on this list. Salutes are due to special effects wizards like Ray Harryhausen and make-up legends Rob Bottin, Ve Neill and Stan Winston who brought so many of them to life, conjuring dread in their every design flourish and appreciating the power to alarm of an unexpected mandible or warty haunch. Before we start the countdown, a few parameters: this list steers away from human and animal forms. So Jaws and Arachnophobia are out, shark-octopus hybrids and flying monkeys are in. Slasher villains are barred, so there’s no Freddy or Jason here, but zombies, vampires and trolls are all eligible.Having already celebrated the best monster movies features in the canon, it’s time to switch on a torch, grab a pitchfork and take a walk through the gory, shiversome and plain unnerving pantheon of the monsters themselves to find out what makes them tick – or growl. Oh, and if you want to see a few of these critters in their natural environment – the big screen – the

Nobody sets out to make a bad movie. But strange things can happen between the thwack of the clapperboard and a film’s release date: ever so slowly, they mutate, swelling and splitting until they ooze onto screens as malformed beings far removed from their authors’ intentions. ‘No, this is a serious movie…’. ‘Actually that’s not meant to be funny…’. ‘Audiences just didn’t get it…’. Oh, we got it alright. The thing is, it’s ours now – and we can do what we want with it. It’s the audience’s job to decide what’s good, what’s bad, and what occupies that genre Elysian in between. We’ve been doing it for decades, though bad films are by no means a thing of the past. It’s unwise to look at a 1950s sci-fi and deem it poor on the basis of dated effects and performances alone, just as it’s foolish to assume that modern blockbusters can’t be every bit as shambolic as the works of Ed Wood. Sometimes it’s studio interference, sometimes it’s the wrong actor in the wrong role, sometimes it’s the director’s bone-deep (and bone-headed) misunderstanding of the material – the hurdles are legion. You’ll notice recurrent hurdles throughout this list too, small details that inexorably lead to dodgy movies: directors for whom English was far from a first language; excessively horny children’s characters that’ll have you reconsidering your views on childcare; the presence of John Travolta – the list goes on. Yes, there are infinite flavours of bad film. Here we present 40 of the most palatable (most

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