New Mexico (6/26/97)
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Midway through the usual run of summer trailers, a run with which I’ve begun to grow impatient, sure enough, just as I was about to get up and go back to the lobby to try my luck again among the Gummi Bears, lo and behold and cowabunga a huge spaceship began to pass across the screen, a chorus of Brownies began singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, and with a quick series of rapid cuts I was treated to a fragmentary but dazzling preview of
Alien Resurrection not at all dissimilar from what the screenplay had led me to expect. — Sigourney looks good, somewhat pumped up, I think, for the role, which will require that she kick even more ass than usual; the [strong] second female lead will be filled by Winona Ryder. — This could be fun.
But we’ve got to get through the summer first, of course. And next on the agenda is
Speed Two: Cruise Control, which returns Sandra Bullock to the helm of a large transportational object hurtling toward disaster. Her erstwhile partner in velocity Keanu Reeves apparently begged out of the sequel, possibly on some issue of principle or perhaps simply because the screenplay had too many big words in it, and his shoes [a pair of black hightop tennies] are accordingly filled by Jason Patric, who has also been spending a lot of time in the gym lately and can in addition form complete English sentences without swallowing his tongue. — So far, so good.
But since the success, such as it was, of the first picture rested on its uncompromising kineticism [Act One: a bunch of people are trapped on an elevator and it’s going to blow up and they’re going to die! Act Two: a bunch of people are trapped on a bus and it’s going to blow up and they’re going to die! Act Three: a bunch of people [well, Keanu and Sandra] are trapped on a subway train and it’s going to blow up and they’re going to die!] it seems odd that this one starts off so unevenly: in fact, after a fairly engaging opening motorcycle chase Jason and Sandra run off to vacation in the Caribbean and a good ten or fifteen minutes are pissed away while the authors attempt to interest us in a fairly lame rerun of the
Love Boat. — Fortunately mastermind computer hacker and leechloving lunatic Willem Dafoe [they killed off Hopper in the last round, Gary Oldman is obviously overbooked, and Malkovich is committed on the other side of the multiplex, who else is left] has sneaked aboard to mingle with the cute swinging singles and the cute fat people and the really cute deaf girl and her predictably selfabsorbed and therefore slightly less cute parents, and, exerting his will over the ship’s systems by directing many wildeyed glares and maniacal grins at the screen of his laptop, seizes control of the vessel and aims it at catastrophe. After an hour during which Patric keeps falling over the side and trapping himself underwater, everything ends well; though not without the obligatory near-nuclear explosion. — Rest assured that no sympathetic character comes to significant harm; and that the dog, as always, escapes without a scratch.
JonBenet fans are again doomed to disappointment: though Sandra spends a moment watching Kubrick’s interpretation of Nabokov on her cabin television and the cute deaf girl declares her undying love to Jason after he rescues her [signing that her next birthday will be her fifteenth], the Lolita subtext is not adequately developed. — Personally, if I’d been handling the denouement, I’d have let Dafoe get away with Sandra and set Patric up with the little girl. After all, no one who enjoys this movie is pretending to be grown up. And why should they?
Incidental note: Joan Severance is up for a couple of Joe Bob’s coveted Hubbie awards for her performance as the Black Scorpion; if you want to make your voice heard you’d better hop on over to his website and cast your vote.
Later.
____________Mad dogs and martinis (6/17/97)
