And Here's Ten More!
by Lawrence Person

1. Wicked City-When Walter Jon labeled this the strangest film he ever saw, he lied. It's much, much stranger than that. He didn't even mention the telekinetic cops. Or the Flying Clock of Death. Or the living elevator. Or the part where Daishu turns Ms. Mechanical Rapter into a motorcycle and rides her to exhaustion. Trust me, you've never seen anything like it. The Japanese anime original is worth a look as well. The animation is a bit static by modern anime standards (though the dubbing on the copy I saw was surprisingly good), but the story diverges quite a bit from the Hong Kong remake, and the original has those disturbing sexual overtones the Japanese do so well ("Gee, sorry you had to be raped by hideous shapechanging fiends from the Black World three times to fulfill the mandate of my secret plan!").
2. Hard-Boiled-Though most critics nominate The Killer (see below) as John Woo's best film, I'd have to give the nod to this hyperkenetic bullet fest. The villains are better and the action more intense. The climax takes place in a hospital whose basement doubles as the bad guy's secret armory. The running hospital corridor gun-battle between Tony Leung and Philip Kwok's Mad Dog has to be seen to be believed. Costars Chow Yun-Fat and several hundred thousand rounds of ammunition.
3. Police Story III: Supercop-Jackie Chan's best, with Michelle Khan on hand as Jackie's equally ass-kicking partner. With not one, but two spectacular action sequences that rank among the best ever filmed! One set in Pol Pot's secret jungle fortress, where things Blow Up Real Good, and the famed climax featuring a helicopter, a train, and a motorcycle.
4. Mr. Vampire-A "hopping vampire" film that can be recommended to all fans of the genre. SEE! Priests who keep hopping vampires as clients! SEE! Erotic female ghosts get knocked off bicycles by tree limbs! SEE! Sticky rice used to combat the reanimated corpse menace! SEE! Comic martial arts duels between the living and the undead! SEE! Bloodthirsty ghouls stopped dead (!) in their tracks by tiny pieces of paper stuck to their forehead! SEE! People hide from hopping vampires by holding their breath! SEE! Occult rituals so goofy they wouldn't even be used in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons or the Church of Scientology!
5. The Killer-Another John Woo film staring Chow Yun-Fat, this time as an assassin who accidentally blinds a nightclub signer during the course of a hit. He tries to help her out while simultaneously evading the policeman looking for him and the evil mob Überboss who is Not Pleased that he wants out of the assassination business. Gun battles. Manly honor. More gun battles. Explosion-Fu, Church-Fu, Gun-Fu. And, of course, still more gun battles. Rael Bob says check it out.
6. Holy Virgin vs. the Evil Dead-A strange film. It's pretty much your basic "vampire moon monster starts killing naked Hong Kong women until police find flying, sword wielding Cambodian princess to waste it" flick, including the requisite gravity-optional martial arts duels, explosions, cheesy special effects, and hundreds of identically dressed stupid henchmen mowed down by automatic weapons fire. On the minus side, it's only half as weird as Wicked City. On the plus side, there's a whole lot more nudity.
7. Drunken Master II-Another Jackie Chan film. The climatic fight scene in an iron mill (with a kick specialist who can stretch one leg over his head while standing up straight on the other) is among Jackie's best. And Anita Mui as Jackie's mom is a riot.
8. Armor of God II-Yet another Jackie Chan film. In addition to Jackie plunging down a mountain in a giant plastic bubble, there's a spectacular climax set in a huge, abandoned secret Nazi underground base in North Africa (including a wind tunnel!).
9. Twin Dragons-Starring Jackie Chan and Jackie Chan. Yes, it's Jackie doing the "twins separated a birth" bit, one a concert pianist, the other a quasi-hoodlum. The climatic battle (notice a trend here?) in an automobile test facility has to be seen to be believed. So good I felt my brain shut off!
10. Winners & Sinners-If you're in the mood for a truly goofy Hong Kong film, you could do a lot worse than renting Winners & Sinners, which, though billed as a Jackie Chan film, is actually a Samo Hung film (both as director and star) with about ten minutes of Jackie Chan (he must have been making two other films that week). Made in 1982 (and thus having the soundtrack and fashions of an American movie made in the mid-to-late 1970s), it follows the exploits of five lovable rouges who meet in prison, form a cleaning company, and later (accidentally and unknowingly) end up with some U.S. $100 counterfeit plates (a McGuffin that occurs in only about 100 other Hong Kong films). In addition to a lot of goofy sight gags (such as an extended sequence where four of them pretend that the fifth has actually succeeded in his Zen attempt at invisibility), there's a scene with Jackie chasing two thieves through heavy traffic on roller skates that ends up like all the car crashes scenes from The Blues Brothers rolled into one, only better. The only mar, at least on the copy I saw, was the atrocious Australian dubbing.

Runners-Up: Armor of God, Armor of God 2: Operation Condor, A Better Tomorrow, The Blade, Bullet in the Head, Eastern Condors, City Hunter, Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind II, Dragon's Forever, Drunken Master, Legend of Fong Sai Yuk, Once Upon a Time in China, Prodigal Son, Project A, Project A Part II, Police Story, Police Story II, Rumble in the Bronx, Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain

I've expanded the Honorable Mention list from the printed version. If I had seen Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain before I did this list, it would have come in at Number 4.