My Five Favourite Films

Hello all

Well yesterday I decided to share with you five films I loved that I didn't think anyone would have seen. One or two people have thought that meant that I was effectively saying "I'm better than you because I've seen these films," that is not the case at all.

So whilst I'm on the subject of films, I figured I would talk about my five favourite films, the films I could watch over and over again.

WILLOW (1988)

CAST : Val Kilmer, Warwick Davis, Joanne Whalley and Jean Marsh

I have never really been that into Star Wars. I do like Star Wars but I've never seen the obsession that some people have with it......this was George Luca's follow up project to that.

I was 4 when Willow came out and must have seen it at around the time as I can't remember the first time that I ever saw it, but I know that it's been my favourite film for a long time.

Willow is about a farmer from a village of a race called the Nelwyn's (basically a race of dwarves, midgets, whatever you want to call them). His children discover a baby from the race of Daikini's (basically average sized humans) and after their village is attacked by beasts looking for the baby, they decide to take her to the Daikini's. Willow stays with the baby after the rest go back home and ends up having to protect the baby from a witch called Bavmorda, who's destiny is to die because of the baby, although she'll do anything to prevent that.

This film has everything I like. It's got a decent storyline, is a great mix of several genres (adventure, comedy, romance, action, etc), has some stunningly beautiful settings and it's just a film that has stuck with me for all of these years. There's sword fights, a two headed dragon thingy and a scene of Val Kilmer and Warwick Davis going down a mountain on nothing but a shield.

I may not watch this film that often but at the age of 27, I still love it as much as I did when I was a kid. There has often been talk of either a remake or a sequel, and I sincerely hope that happens.

FIGHT CLUB (1999)

Main Cast : Ed Norton, Brad Pitt, Helen Botham-Carter, Jared Leto and Meatloaf.

I'm about to break rules one and two (anyone who has seen the film will get that joke).

I first heard of this film in around 2001 from a friend, who subsequently told me everything that happened. This meant that when I did see it, the massive twist didn't hit me like it would do a lot of people, but I still loved the film. I liked the film so much that I even bought the book and at the time of writing, that was the last book I read from front to back......and that was in 2005.

For those who don't know about Fight Club, you're missing out. I can't really reveal too much without giving it all away but the general gist of the film is that an unnamed office worker (Norton) can't sleep, starts going to support groups of random diseases (that he obviously doesn't have) before meeting Tyler Durden (Pitt). Together they start a club....called Fight Club funnily enough. Eventually it turns into a terrorist outfit, all happening whilst Norton's character is having a bizarre relationship with a woman called Marla Singer (Botham-Carter).

Fight Club is one of those films which sticks with you. You remember the quotes without trying and you could even easily start living your life by some of them. It is a brilliant film. The acting is fantastic, the twist at the end of is awesome, the look and feel of the film is very suited and the fights aren't shown for the sake of having fights, they are shown to be having fights for good reasons.

REC (2007)

Main Cast : Manuela Velasco

Before I start saying why I love this film, I must say that this has since been remade by the Americans into a film called Quarantine. WATCH REC INSTEAD. REC is far, far better than Quarantine.

I surprise myself by including a foreign language film into my list of top five films as I'm not usually that big on non-English films, so much to the point where Rec and Rec 2 are the only foreign language films I would watch on a regular basis.

Anyway, REC is a Spanish horror film about a TV crew that goes into an apartment building. After one of the fire crew they are with gets attacked by a resident, they are suddenly locked into the building from the outside and anyone trying to get out is killed instantly. It turns out that the woman has been infected with a disease that turns her into a zombie-like creature and eventually more of the residents turn into this zombie-type things.

That may sound like something you've heard before but the difference between this film and others that may sound like it is that this is actually quite tense and jumpy, which I don't usually say about horror films.

The cast is excellent and I applaud the makers of the film for choosing a real life TV personality for their choice as host of the TV show in the film, it brings that sense of realism to the performance.

THE THING (1982)

MAIN CAST : Kurt Russell, Keith Childs. 

The Thing is probably one of the most simple concepts you can get for a film. It doesn't try and be clever, it doesn't try and give an important message, all it tries to do is creep you out, and that's what it does.

The plot of The Thing is that a group of scientists discover an alien in the Antarctic. It turns out that this alien can perfectly mimic anyone and as it's killing off the scientists and replicating itself (all of screen), the rest of them are left to get paranoid about which of them are human and which aren't. They all start turning against each other.

This film sparked a prequel in 2011 that wasn't actually that awful, but is nothing compared to this film.

A cast of largely unknown actors (other than Russell and Childs, who have both enjoyed good careers in Hollywood) performs very well and each puts across the feeling of paranoia exceptionally well. There's not one poor performer in the cast, which is very unusual. My one complaint is that you never really get to know any of the characters, none even have their first name revealed (they're all only refered to by their surnames).

Although this isn't scary, the concept is very interesting.

300 (2006)

Main Cast : Gerard Butler, David Wenham, Vincent Regan and Rodrigo Santoro.

Now this may surprise some of you. I talk in all my film related blogs about how characters develop, how intelligent the films are and stuff that like......and yet you don't really get ANY of that in 300.

300 is about as violent as violent gets. Arms being severed, heads being cut off, spears being impaled on people, it's just violence, violence, violence for 117 minutes.

For those who are not familiar with 300, basically it's about the ancient Greek country of Sparta and the impending invasion from Persia. Spartan law means they can't go to war unless either the king dies or the oracle decrees it, but given that the oracles are being paid off by the Persians, it means they can't go to war. In response Kings Leonidas (Butler) goes for what he describes as a walk with his 300 strong protection, in other words he has found his way around the law. They go and defend the country from the invasion and do well due to their organisation, whereas the Persians are gung-ho with their approach.

You won't get brilliant acting in this film but what you do get is 117 minutes of FUN, and that's what some movies forget, it's supposed to be fun when going to watch some films at the cinema. Also this film does what not a lot of films do and gets the small details in. For example, when you've got a slow motion of Leonidas impaling someone with his sword and then choping their leg off, you can still see other stuff going on in the background, and you don't get that very often, most films would just close in on Leonidas only.

As I say, I'm not going to pretend it's a clever or intelligent film, but it does what it's supposed to do, and the closing speech is simply awesome, spin-chilling infact. I've put the speech as the second video below.