Films that never made it big - but must be seen!

Top Secret
The jokes are from the Airplane/Naked Gun school of humour and there are so many crammed into each scene you need to watch the film over and over again just to pick up on them. The plot revolves around a very young Val Kilmer, who plays Nick, an American rock 'n' roll star who is sent on a public relations project as he has been enlisted to sing for a concert in Germany - just as they are about to take over the world... Nick is soon mixed up in hostages, jails, the resistance movement and falling for the woman in the middle of it all - all while singing *yes he actually does the singing!* songs lovingly ripped from every Beach Boys classic.


The main humour of the whole film is that it pretends to take itself seriously. I'd say it has some of the greatest one-liners in cinema history - but I've seen Monty Python. It does come close though with lines like "I know a little German, he's sitting over there" and "Nick? What does that mean?" "I don't know my father thought of it while he was shaving."


Absolutely worth buying and watching over and over. Then when you think you can't watch it any more, invite friends over and make them watch it! :)

Point Break
Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze, guns, jumping out of planes, surfing and half naked hotties. Need I say more?


Soapdish
Amazing amazing cast includes Kevin Kline, Robert Downey Junior, Sally Field, Teri Hatcher, Whoopi Goldberg... the list is endless. Takes the piss out of soap operas from behind the scenes of the fictitious soap opera "The Sun Also Sets" as life begins to immitate art.


Saved

Mandy Moore is hilarious alongside other brilliant young actors including the fab and all grown up Macauley Culkin. Set in a modern day "cool" Christian school it chronicles a bunch of teens as their lives take turns they could not have seen coming. Deals with acceptance, forgiveness, homosexuality and even Judaism all within a Christian school in the funniest, coolest way imaginable. Absolute comedy genius mixed with some real drama.


Battle Royale
A class of school children are put on an island and forced to kill each other. Brutal but fascinating and compelling from start to finish. Must see foreign film!

Kevin Kline: Dave of all trades

After sitting through the delectable French Kiss, I am reminded of the brilliance of actor Kevin Kline! Star of fantastic films Cry Freedom, Soapdish, A Fish Called Wanda and Dave, Kline is one of the most underrated and versatile actors of the last twenty plus years. And yet I will admit to being guilty of forgetting this most of the time.  I hear that Kline is to star in the new Natalie Portman film No Strings Attached but as he isn't even in the trailer I'm starting to think it might be a fleeting visit.

He has played such a variety of roles and is totally believable in each (I know - this should be normal for actors surely!) but every actor has their role of shame.

Dave was such a low-key film unheard of by many yet it had Kline playing two roles, both pitted against Sigourney Weaver and both brilliant. He was the cheating President and the completely adorable and very endearing nice-guy-next-door.

In Soapdish he goes from washed up bad actor to suave soap star - and for anyone who hasn't seen it - go and see Soapdish. The cast list is a thing of magic with Teri Hatcher, Robert Downey Jnr, Whoopi Goldberg and Sally Field to name but a few!

He's endearing once more in In and Out as the bumbling musical lover who is outed by his hot celebrity student and in French Kiss, he is the loveable rogue Luc who is a thief, a brute, a dirty Frenchman with a bad moustache... and yet when he falls in love with the irritating yank Meg Ryan you can totally see how and it's beautiful to watch (helped largely by the stunning French backdrop).

In Cry Freedom, Kevin Kline was arguably at his acting best in a based-on-reality tale of the Apartheid ridden South Africa  - but it was the infamous Otto "dont call me stupid" alongside Jamie Lee Curtis and John Cleese in A Fish Called Wanda that won him his one and only Oscar back in 1989 for Best Supporting Actor. Go figure!

So if you have a Kline favourite in your DVD collection then go and watch it and if you don't then start with Soapdish or A Fish Called Wanda and let the fun begin...

LE xx