The Aisle Seat: June Ramblings

CUT OUT BIN AWARD OF THE YEAR: Not to brag any (OK, maybe a little bit), but I'd just like to thank the Member of the Academy who decided to sell their FLY AWAY HOME Oscar campaign CD to a "Record Theater" store in Syracuse, NY. I had the distinct pleasure of snatching up this much-in-demand, massively limited edition CD on a trip to the region last week—for $4.95!! It's a shame they only had one, but I'm not about to complain, seeing that I might be able to unload this album—with the decimal spot moved over to the right a couple of places—in the near future in FSM. Anybody got any great trades??

SUMMER MOVIE SORT-OF MANIA: Well, here we are, less than a month into the unofficial "summer film season" and I'm already looking forward to the Christmas movies more than what Hollywood plans to send our way over the next two and a half months. Don't believe me, or haven't given it much thought? Well, at Christmas time we're going to finally get—among other things—Cameron's TITANIC, Paul Verhoeven's STARSHIP TROOPERS, plus ALIEN: RESURRECTION, Spielberg's AMISTAD (Steven without dinosaurs sounds good to me), the new James Bond outing TOMORROW NEVER DIES (though I'm not holding my breath), and some other exciting fare. (HOME ALONE 3 and MORTAL KOMBAT 2 are also being released, for the die- hard sequelitis victim in all of us). What do we get for the rest of this summer? Aside from MEN IN BLACK, which is poised to become the #1 film of the year (after LOST WORLD's 60% box-office drop in its second weekend, clearly anything is possible now), we've got SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL, BATMAN & ROBIN, a pair of Julia Roberts movies, and a Tim Robbins-Martin Lawrence buddy movie. If you could possibly freeze yourself and wake up in November, I don't think you will miss anything.

That said, I'd still keep my eye on a pair of potential summer sleepers—MIMIC, a movie that could be a classier version of SPECIES, this one starring Mira Sorvino and featuring a script by (get this) John Sayles and Steven Soderbergh. And I don't know why I think this could be good, but the big-screen edition of Todd MacFarlane's comic SPAWN has some potential, at least from the trailer I saw. So, maybe there are some things out there that I'm not aware of, and these will be the summer movies we'll end up actually liking in '97. But as of right now, there's only one movie I can strongly recommend...

CHECK OUT "TRIAL & ERROR": Every once in a while a movie comes out, gets great reviews, is genuinely entertaining, and disappears without a trace from theaters because nobody went to see it. It ends up on video where a few friends see it, rave about how surprised they were that it was funny, and later becomes part of "Video Sleepers" columns in places like Entertainment Weekly. One of those sure-fire candidates for future success is easily TRIAL AND ERROR, the hysterically funny, clever and downright romantic comedy starring a toned-down Michael Richards and the always appealing Jeff Daniels.

The film, directed by Jonathan Lynn, is reminiscent of his MY COUSIN VINNY somewhat, but this film is less cartoonish, boasting more developed, realistic characters and situations. The interplay between Daniels and waitress Charlize Theron in particular is great; their scenes are well-written, superbly acted and expertly directed. So, this movie pretty much has it all—big laughs, romantic situations, and a tendency to keep things on a surprisingly lifelike level all the way through. And Charlize is, in addition to giving a terrific performance, one hot babe—we'll no doubt be seeing more of her in the future. And see this movie if you want to see a GENUINELY good film!!!! But if not...

CON-AIR NOT A TOTAL DISASTER: I hated The Rock. If you've read FSM, you certainly know that I detested that movie, along with the godawful music by Nick Glennie-Smith, Hans Zimmer, and whoever else is on his writing team. CON-AIR is a better movie. It's more fun, has a more exciting climax, and offers us more veteran character actors to relish as guns fire away, things blow up, and director Simon West uses annoying slow-motion whenever things start to get cooking. Even so, this is still one stupid flick; movies like DIE HARD and even CLIFFHANGER were successful because, far fetched as they were, they at least treated some of the dramatic situations in the films with—let's say—a small degree of realism. And the plots were logically developed, with sharper dialogue than your typical genre film. CON-AIR is dumb dumb dumb, just a programmer to get you to spend your $16, take your date so she can watch Nicolas Cage and John Cusack, and be happy that you weren't totally ripped off. Still, as a mindless action movie, the film has its moments, though it certainly could have been better.

Same goes for the Mark Mancina-Trevor Rabin score, sounding like it has come right out of a Bud Lite spot with guitars a-blazin'. But again, it's a lot easier to take than THE ROCK, so I'm not going to complain too much. And the country ballad that opens and closes the movie, performed by Trisha Yearwood, is genuinely good if you like that sort of thing—I hate to say it, but there should have been more of THAT music in the movie.

At any rate, I hope your summer is off to a good start. I'm all Tarzan-ed out after last weekend's marathon on AMC, otherwise I would have gone into some neat trivia about those movies, but no matter, it's over anyway, and so (finally) is this column. Until next time, excelsior!!