The Legend of Drunken Master, Enter the Dragon, and more: The 10 best Kung Fu movies you can watch online, ranked

Directed by Wong Kar Wai and starring Ziyi Yang and Tony Leung, this is a poetic and visually stunning film about the life of Ip Man. The Grandmaster focuses on themes of mentorship and legacy and is a movie that tells us about the storied Kung Fu master who trained Bruce Lee.

Moving into another style of Kung Fu film, The Legend of the Drunken Master is fun, eccentric, and hilarious as well as masterfully choreographed. Wong Fei-Hung (Jackie Chan) is a highly-skilled martial arts master, but when a gang of thugs comes into town to steal artifacts and wreak mayhem, he must decide whether to align himself with his father’s pacifist wishes or fight the wrong-doers. Employing a Kung Fu style unique to this film, Drunken Boxing (aka Drunken Fist aka Zuì Quán) is a very impractical and mysterious practice, which makes for some fantastic film choreography with Chan behind the wheel. The fight sequences throughout the film, while hilarious and a bit extravagant, are essential to the character’s morality and show the importance that balance has in everyone’s life. This film — technically a sequel to Chan’s 1978 film Drunken Master — encapsulates the star’s early career and celebrates it, kicking off his global rise to fame for his many feats in acting, choreography, directing, and writing. Any fan of Jackie Chan should have this as a staple among their favorites, showing off his incredible talent for physical comedy and timing as well as martial arts mastery.

The only film on this list that goes pedal to the comedy metal, Kung Fu Hustle is a hilariously and imaginatively cartoonish take on the Wuxia Kung Fu film genre. After the success of Shaolin Soccer (an honorable mention and a great sports movie) in 2001, writer, director, producer, and protagonist Stephen Chow capitalized by creating an endlessly rewatchable gangster-action-comedy. In 1940s Shanghai, a quirky grouping of households in a cramped complex shows their worth when the terrifying Axe Gang knocks on their door. Sing (Stephen Chow) aspires to join the Axe Gang but is restricted by his lack of ability and unshakeable morality. Inspired at a young age by the legendary Bruce Lee, Stephen Chow devoted his life to martial arts and film arts. Because he was too poor to attend proper training schools, Chow learned his fundamental skills from TV and movies, translating his experience into the lighthearted films we see him produce today. Kung Fu Hustle, however, is the only one of Chow’s films that ends on a serious note, with the protagonist mastering an ancient, magical, and mysterious style of Kung Fu known as “Buddhist Palm.” In real life, Chow has taken his initial self-training and applied it to Wing Chun Kung Fu, the same style that Bruce Lee so famously mastered.

Probably the Kung Fu-iest of the Kung Fu movies on our list today, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is a film that heavily influenced hip hop music group Wu-Tang Clan. When the Manchu government destroys his school, ravages his town, and kills his father, San Te (Chia-Hui Liu) travels to a Shaolin temple to learn the ways of Shaolin Kung Fu and be at peace. With the most fast-paced narrative out of all other films today, this one gets through all that information and on to the Kung Fu training in 30 minutes of runtime. After finally getting to the temple, he is — after some resistance — admitted as a monk for training. The rest of the film is focused solely on Kung Fu and the 35 chambers one must pass to become a master, training the wrists, shoulders, legs, eyes, mind, and so forth all one chamber at a time. Besides its naturalistic feeling and fantastic story, this film has some classically styled fight scenes that are timeless, cementing it in place as a staples in the Kung Fu film genre.

TA celebration of Kung Fu films themselves, Ip Man has no equal. When Japanese forces invade China during WWII, a wealthy and respected Wing Chun Kung Fu master called Ip Man (Donnie Yen) is forced to leave his home and survive on the Japanese-occupied streets of Foshan. A biographical tale of Wing Chun grandmaster Ip Man (Bruce Lee’s mentor), this film focuses on events that could plausibly have taken place during that time. Since it’s on our list, I will say that this is unique in that it is not just a Kung Fu film. This film made it to the top for its incredible choreography and its charming yet moving performance from Yen. From the beginning, the fight scenes are crisp, clean, and frequent, starting on a lighter note while friendly neighborhood masters spar with each other. As the film progresses, however, the motives become much darker, forcing respected Kung Fu masters to fight Japanese masters just to get a bag of rice. The character arc at this movie’s center is incredible, with Donnie Yen portraying at first the kind-hearted and calm-minded Ip Man as he transforms into an emotionally driven and physically incapacitating version of himself. His drive comes from the frustration he feels with the Japanese invasion of his homeland, which you can see in his eyes throughout the film. This film is astounding on all fronts, especially when you’ve seen enough Kung Fu cinema to appreciate how it was shaped by the other films on this list.