I actually haven't seen Shaolin because it's a little too new for my general repetoire, but now I have something to look forward to and definitely not procrastinate with. Anyway, here's a few of my own that I've picked up over the years.
Martial Arts Movies:
The Mystery of Chessboxing If you ever wondered where notorious Wu Tang Clan rapper Ghostface Killah got his name- Here you go. Hear the brutal tale of the last surviving general of the Old Regime, taking brutal bloody revenge against confused and terrified kung fu masters who cannot compete with his skill. The Ghost-Faced Killer claims revenge against his retired colleagues one by one, and he would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for some snotnosed 30 year old man playing a teenager and his crazy old man teacher. Cameo appearance by the actor who plays Beggar So in the first Drunken Master movie, and also the "5 deadly Elements Style" that gets referenced in nearly everything.
Six String Samurai If you ever wanted to see a katana-wielding Buddy Holly eviscerate a bowling team of hitmen in an early 60s rock/counterculture interpretation of the post apocalypse, now's your time to be grateful that we don't live in a world where that hasn't been done.
Hard Boiled chances are, if you haven't seen this movie, and you're anything like I was before I saw this movie, you thought that gun fight scenes were boring and stupid. Then I saw this movie, and realized I had only ever seen bad Arnold Schwarzenegger gun fight scenes before. Take a look at the archetypal work of John Woo, a man who singlehandedly inspired The Matrix and Sleeping Dogs... Okay I guess a lot of things inspired Sleeping Dogs, but y'know, the gun police parts.
By the Sword a lesser-known but very wholesome fencing movie that kinda takes the martial arts archetypes of the guy driven by mastery and killing and puts a sensible, modern twist on them. It's sort of the reverse of Karate Kid, following the journey of a teacher rather than the student, and the last fight scene is just an excellent capsule of everything the entire movie was and was building up to. It was the story in and of itself.
Riki Oh- Ah wait, all the movie versions were taken down from youtube and now only the vastly inferior anime movie still yet exists. This is a sad time we live in, ladies and gentlemen. A sad time indeed. You do not know what you missed. I hope at least one of you watched the last hundred times I shamelessly shilled it.
Kung Fu Chefs it's exactly what it sounds like.
ARENA (1989) a movie about interspecies boxing in a sci-fi galaxy that's just as densely populated with intelligent life (that also wants to punch you in the face) as Star Wars, but even Mos Eisley has nothing on the seedy vegas atmosphere of this intergalactic space station... Eugh that really sounds like something a 'geek culture' podcaster would say, somebody please choke me to death. Just, look, honestly I've never seen such dense and elegant worldbuilding in a movie that could still be seen for free on youtube than in this film. And if that's up your alley, then watch this.
Good Ol' Family Films:
Dirty Work Norm Macdonald's most Norm Macdonald production. Features Chris Farley and that one guy who was on SNL for five minutes that I randomly see in everything these days specifically. He looks like his name is Troy. Also features probably the best joke about a particular favorite joke topic of ours ever put to the silver screen, but I don't want to name what it is because it will spoil the joke a little bit.
Brannigan John Wayne plays Dirty Harry. In fabulous England!
Krull Remember when I said I've never seen so much worldbuilding in a budget movie that's still underground enough to still be shown on youtube for free without also being basically owned by youtube? Yeah I lied that's also this movie. Enjoy the wild and wacky medieval sci fi of the 80s, with all the corny story beats to be expected from an 80s fantasy movie that plays everything completely straight. The anticlimactic ending doubles back on itself and becomes hilarious, and Liam Neeson just so happens to be a noticeable extra.
Trouble Man details the exploits of a black-belt private investigator who keeps his neighborhood clean and doesn't take shit from anybody. When you have trouble, you come to this man. Nothing can stop Trouble Man- Not even a scheming drug ring organized by whitey to siphon money out of underprivileged neighborhoods.
Slaughter's Big Ripoff The sequel to Slaughter, a name you might recognize from basically any interview Quentin Tarrantino has ever given. It's about the baddest cat that's ever lived, and if that doesn't clue you in to what's happening here, the movie opens with an attempt on Slaughter's life as an assassin shoots up his afternoon brunch in a fucking WWI Biplane. Naturally, Slaughter travels all over california kicking ass to get to the bottom of this mystery, and there's a sequence where he basically goes full Rambo on the Italian Mafia. Yeah, it sure is a ripoff. A ripoff that they let you watch this movie for free, that is.
Waterloo I don't have a lot to say about it because I'm not very cerebral right now, it's just a good movie about a complicated dude during a deeply interesting period of history, and a lot of shit explodes at the end.
Spooky moovies:
CAPTAIN KRONOS A spooky vampire movie from the 70s. This was a late Hammer Film, and it was dipping its toes into the pulpy action/whodunnit side of things. For whatever reason, it never took off. Possibly because it was still slow-paced like a normal hammer film, despite the premise being a little too cheesy for that pacing to create tension and drama. However the cheesiness makes it one of the more enjoyable Hammer Films in general and has embedded itself so far in my brain that I randomly and autistically reference it in everything I ever write with vampires in it. Go ahead and watch, you'll see what I did pretty quickly.
The Abominable Dr. Phibes when somebody asks you about 1970s horror movies, what do you think about? Are they magical and mysterious like Suspiria or the Exorcist? Lower budget exploitation works like The Hills have Eyes? Are they progressive horror tales from the newly formed African American voices of cinema, like Ganja and Hess or... Uh... Blacula? Do Leatherface, Micheal Meyers, and H.R. Giger's Xenomorphs come to mind? Do you think of Vampyros Lesbos? Well if you didn't even stop to think for one goddamn second about a serial-killing mastermind who zaps people to death with an actual freezeray, fills airplane cockpits with rats, and spends nights playing the double organ with a full band of of ambiguously living humanoid automatons, then you're an uncultured swine in need of some reccommended watching, buddy. And also if fucking Vampyros Lesbos is the first thing that comes to mind when somebody asks you about 70s horror movies, stop it, get some help.
Vampire Hunter D. Look, I know it's a weeb thing, just bear with me! I know it opens with a girl in a ridiculously short skirt making squeaky noises as she runs away from a monster- No it isn't porn, it's just japanese. Look man, it was the 80s, this sort of thing was very new to Japan. Don't lose faith in me yet! Are you still here? Okay good. So it's a post-apocalypse story about a badass vampire-slaying vampire in a post-apocalyptic gothic-sci-fi world where people rely on laser forcefields to protect them from the creatures of the night that crawl up out of the wasteland and eat people. See? It's not so bad, right? There's more cool stuff, too. Just bear with it!
Spooky Spooky No that's the actual name of the movie. (Translated to English anyway) Certain people among you can attest to this movie's magical qualities. This is a movie directed by Sammo Hung (that's a name that means something to chineaboos, normies don't worry about it) that provides a delightfully stupid take on Ancient Chinese Mysticism. Watch some wacky Hong Kong Police struggle to survive the trials and tribulations that naturally come with fighting a deadly water ghost from Hell.
That's enough movies for now. I know there's more if I were to go through them, but 90% of my Movies Playlist is deleted or private now (RIP Mean Johnny Barrows, you had the best theme song in movie history) and I don't have the heart to keep looking through this sad savaged wasteland of erased obscure culture. Especially not when I should be doing something else! Dammit, Mizal.