Lots of interesting titles here. I've got Lola Rennt (original title) on DVD, as well as Big Trouble in Little China, in a special collectors widescreen edition with some original scenes restored and everything, which suggests to me the movie might just be too commonly appreciated for this thread.
Btw, most girls I know like it, because there are two actors in there that they can relate to (Kurt Russell and Kim Catrell). I saw Raising Arizona too, which is very famous over here (as in 'in Europe')
Movies that just about no-one here seems to know, but you might, is Real Genius, first movie I saw with Val Kilmer (well I think I saw Top Gun before but he didn't register then) and I thought it was absolutely the best he was ever in. There were many pretty famous actors in there with some really great roles, and the movie is just too funny (though I was a pretty young kid when I saw it). It ends with a house blown up by popcorn ...
I also saw a movie which I think was called 'Barcelona' about two Americans in Spain who get caught up in some early anti-Americanism and meet two Spanish girls, and the movie ends with all four of them in a beautiful green garden in the U.S. enjoying real hamburgers from the grill. Absolutely great - it is one of those movies that can be funny and serious at once, like series such as the Gilmore Girls, Everwood, or Cold Feet.
In case you're worried, it's mostly the Europeans that look stupid in it, as the end-scene already suggests.
Another obscure one is the original Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie. It's the worst film I've ever seen with that many famous people in it (including the Dutch actor "Blind Fury" Rutger Hauer as the ultimate evil vamp, Donald Sutherland as the watcher, one of those Beverly Hills 90210 guys as Xander, and some sturdy, big breasted, athletic Buffy who at least was convincing for the fight scenes, but didn't have a lot of style or charm) and it is incredibly funny partly because everyone knows the series that eventually came out of it but is so completely different. It reminds me of The Tall Guy, a very funny British film with Rowan Atkinson as someone who is not funny and a leading 'guest' role by the American guy who's name I just now lost but we all know and love from The Fly - everyone has still seen that one, right?).
There are many other movies out there, but I can recommend some early Dutch movies made by Paul Verhoeven like "Soldaat van Oranje" (a Dutch WW2 movie) or "Turks Fruit" (no idea what the English titles would be).
I also love a lot of Scandinavian movies, one of the best of which I find to be Tomten Ar Far Till Alla Barnen, about a woman who has children from 4 or 5 ex-husbands, and who has managed to convince all of them to join her with their new wives/girlfriends and her own new husband to celebrate Christmas together. I laughed so hard when I first saw that movie, it is really awesome and I'm looking to get it on DVD (so far only available in Sweden Apparently). I have another movie from the same director which is very sweet, but a lot more standard fare Romance called something like The Boy from the Grave Next Door. Two other DVDs I have are ****ing Amal and Festen, which are both very famous over here and I've gotten great reviews of them from friends, but I'm waiting to see them with a few friends of mine with whom I once a month or so watch a film from Scandinavia.
There is so much more out there, like films that were originally low budget European movies and were turned into big Hollywood productions later, but were often ironed out then (e.g. bad endings replaced with good ones) and although the acting and production can often be better in the Hollywood version, the original ones can be very interesting. Like this one about a man who's wife suddently disappears completely, and he ends up being fooled into being buried alive next to his wife who died the same way, very gruesome, but in the U.S. version he gets rescued by a new girlfriend, but in the original he just dies. Or the movie about the female assassin, I think it is called Nikita (I can be very bad with names), which is very good, very moody in the French original. And of course Luc Besson did some great things in France before he came to the U.S.
I just saw a pretty funny German movie a week ago, I think it was called 'Wass Tun Wenn Es Brennt", about a gang of anarchists whose bomb they planted but never went off goes off 12 years after the fact, when most of them have gotten on with their lives. Very funny at times, sometimes also touching, and very interesting. Not great, but very good.
I'll leave it at that for now, I'm sure a lot more great stuff will come up here ... very nice thread this by the way!
