Screen_shot_2011-03-31_at_12.26.27_PM.png
If you asked me to pick one movie to represent the best of dumb American cinematic excess, I think I'd have to go with Con Air. The premise—Nic Cage is on a plane with the most dangerous convicts in the country, including John Malkovich doing his best Hannibal Lecter impersonation, and the plane gets hijacked—is so over the top, you can practically smell the drugs that made that pitch meeting possible*. It stars absolutely everyone. And the screenplay takes everything at face value, resulting in some of the weirdest lines of dialogue to ever appear in a blockbuster.

Tonight, Central Cinema is hosting a Con Air Quote Along at 8 pm. Choice lines will be displayed on the screen for the audience to read aloud, and they're providing everyone in attendance with a cap gun to fire as they please during the performance. (Remember to save a couple caps for the climactic explosion!) Cinematic purists should stay home; this will be a loud, boozy, distracted and distracting night at the movies, for Cage/Bruckheimer fans only.

* Here's my best elevator pitch: Harrison Ford plays the ex-President of the United States, who has been impeached and found guilty of treasonous crimes he did not commit. En route to prison, he's mistakenly placed on a plane full of the most dangerous criminals in the country—including the evil mastermind (Crispin Glover) who arranged to frame him! When the criminals get loose, can the president stay alive, stop the bad guys from flying the plane into the New York Stock Exchange in a fiendish plot to cripple the U.S. economy, and clear his good name? Find out in...Con Air Force One Two!