Breaking the Ice

WEDNESDAY

Sprung. Pals Joe Torry and Paula Jai Parker regret their matchmaking when true love threatens to take friends Rusty Cundieff and Tisha Campbell away from them. Cundieff (“Tales From the Hood”) also co-wrote and directs. (Trimark)

FRIDAY

Fetishes. Documentarian Nick Bloomfield, who excavated a world of sleaze in “Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam,” checks up on the dungeons-and-domination crowd. (Lafayette Film)

Irma Vep. Hong Kong star Maggie Cheung goes to Paris, where she lands in the middle of a chaotic film production. Jean-Pierre Leaud plays the temperamental director in this cineaste satire. (Zeitgeist Films)

Love! Valour! Compassion! Jason Alexander joins the Broadway cast in the film version of Terrence McNally’s Tony Award winner about eight gay friends. The play’s director Joe Mantello does the honors. (Fine Line)

A Mongolian Tale. Xie Fei directs a time-spanning love story about a Chinese boy raised by a nomadic Mongolian family. (New Yorker Films)

Night Falls on Manhattan. Sidney Lumet’s film stars Andy Garcia as an idealistic New York D.A. whose encounters with the system’s corruption shatter his world. Richard Dreyfuss plays his courtroom adversary. (Paramount)

Rudyard Kipling’s the Second Jungle Book. Jamie Williams plays the 10-year-old Mowgli in a family adventure based on the classic story. (TriStar)

Twin Town. This black comedy is set in South Wales, where the twin sons of an injured worker hatch a revenge scheme against the town’s kingpin. (Gramercy)

MAY 23

Addicted to Love. Meg Ryan, Matthew Broderick, Kelly Preston and Tcheky Karyo star in a romantic roundelay about two spurned lovers who team up to spy on their exes. (Warner Bros.)

Brassed Off. Conflicts and harmony both surface in this story of a brass band in Yorkshire, England, set against the controversial mining pit closures of 1992-93. (Miramax)

The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Director Steven Spielberg and star Jeff Goldblum return for the sequel--and so does something else, as Goldblum’s Dr. Malcolm discovers. (Universal)

Schizopolis. This Dada-esque entry from “sex, lies, and videotape” director Steven Soderbergh features the filmmaker in dual roles--as a gray bureaucrat and a lecherous dentist. (Northern Arts)

MAY 30

Drunks. Richard Lewis, Dianne Wiest, Faye Dunaway, Spalding Gray, Parker Posey, Amanda Plummer and the late Howard Rollins form the cast in the story of a group of recovering alcoholics. (Northern Arts)

Gone Fishin’. Pals Joe Pesci and Danny Glover become embroiled with detectives Rosanna Arquette and Lynn Whitfield and con man Nick Brimble. (Walt Disney)

La Promesse. In this French entry, a 15-year-old boy is torn between loyalty to his unscrupulous father and his friendship with his victims--as well as his own developing morality. (New Yorker Films)

Ripe. Twin sisters are freed by fate from their sadistic father, but his legacy resurfaces. Written and directed by Mo Ogrodnik. (Trimark)

Rough Magic. Bridget Fonda and Russell Crowe star in a romantic adventure based on James Hadley Chase’s novel “Miss Shumway Waves a Wand.” (Goldwyn Entertainment Co.)

‘Til There Was You. “Thirtysomething” honcho Scott Winant (director) and “My So-Called Life” creator Winnie Holzman (writer) tell the story of a destined romance between Jeanne Tripplehorn and Dylan McDermott. (Paramount)

Timothy Leary’s Dead. The LSD guru’s final days are documented by director Paul Davids, whose overview combines vintage footage with film of Leary before his death. (Strand)

Trial and Error. “My Cousin Vinny” director Jonathan Lynn returns to the comic courtroom, with Michael Richards as an actor who fills in for his attorney friend Jeff Daniels to defend a man in a fraud trial. (New Line)

The Van. Director Stephen Frears follows “The Commitments” and “The Snapper” with the third installment of Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown trilogy, about two friends and their mobile fish-and-chips enterprise. (Fox Searchlight)

JUNE 6

Bliss. Unconventional sex therapist Terence Stamp is the focus of a journey of self-discovery for young couple Craig Sheffer and Sheryl Lee. (Triumph)

Buddy. The true story of an eccentric socialite (Rene Russo) who raises an infant gorilla. Caroline Thompson directs from her own script. (Columbia)

Con Air. Parolee Nicolas Cage and U.S. Marshal John Cusack contend with John Malkovich and his band of hardened federal prisoners, who have hijacked a plane on the way to a new prison. (Touchstone)

The Designated Mourner. In his on-screen debut, Mike Nichols joins Miranda Richardson in a film version of the Wallace Shawn-David Hare stage success about the death of culture. (First Look)

Late Bloomers. The title characters in this romantic comedy are a geometry teacher and a high school secretary whose lesbian affair throws their community into an uproar. (Strand)

Mouth to Mouth. Spain’s Manuel Gomez Pereira directs Javier Berdem as a struggling actor who gets sidetracked by a phone sex job. (Miramax)

The Pillow Book. Controversial director Peter Greenaway offers a study of a Japanese woman whose fetish for writing on flesh leads to a grim resolution. (Cinepix)

JUNE 13

Speed 2: Cruise Control. Sandra Bullock gets off the bus and boards a cruise ship with new beau Jason Patric. Under Jan De Bont’s direction, it’s not long before hijackers send it hurtling toward disaster. (Fox)

Squeeze. Three at-risk 13-year-olds from a Boston gang-prevention center take the leading roles in this look at the conflicts and pressures of urban street life. (Miramax)

Temptress Moon. An epic story stretching from China’s last imperial dynasty to the post-revolution underground. Chen Kaige directs Gong Li and Leslie Cheung. (Miramax)

Ulee’s Gold. Beekeeper Peter Fonda lives an isolated life with his two granddaughters, until a call from his jailed son sets him on a mission to save his family. Written and directed by Victor Nunez. (Orion)

Wedding Bell Blues. Paulina Porizkova, Illeana Douglas and Julie Warner don’t want to hit 30 without being married, so the three pals head to Vegas to correct the situation. (Legacy Releasing)

JUNE 20

Alaska: Spirit of the Wild. The wildlife and other natural wonders of the state are displayed on the giant Imax screen.

Batman & Robin. George Clooney assumes the cape and cowl and is joined by Batgirl (Alicia Silverstone) and Robin (Chris O’Donnell) against Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman). Joel Schumacher directs. (Warner Bros.)

Dream With the Fishes. Suicidal voyeur David Arquette is transformed through an unusual bargain he strikes with a terminally ill man. (Sony Classics)

Head Above Water. Harvey Keitel is a judge, Cameron Diaz his wife and Billy Zane her ex-lover and now a dead body. Jim Wilson wrote and directs this black comedy. (Fine Line)

Love Serenade. Barry White’s title song is one of the ‘70s sounds that backs this comedy about two sisters competing for an unlikely prize--the 40-plus, thrice-divorced new man in their rural Australian town. (Miramax)

When the Cat’s Away. The search for her pet sends a young woman on a series of picaresque adventures in the colorful neighborhoods of Paris, captured in writer-director Cedric Klapisch’s freewheeling, improvisational style. (Sony Classics)

JUNE 25

Hercules. The “Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin” team helms Disney’s 35th animated feature, with voices by James Woods, Danny DeVito, Bobcat Goldthwaite, Rip Torn, Charlton Heston and others, and songs by Alan Menken and David Zippel. (Walt Disney)

JUNE 26

Gabbeh. A love story is revealed in the patterns of a Persian carpet in this fable from young Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. (New Yorker Films)

JUNE 27

End of Summer. Jacqueline Bisset, Peter Weller, Julian Sands and Amy Locane star in a study of love and repressed passion set in an Eastern resort in the 1890s. (Castle Hill)

Face/Off. The team of director John Woo and star John Travolta (“Broken Arrow”) reunites, with Travolta as an FBI agent who exchanges identities with terrorist Nicolas Cage. (Paramount)

Fall. Writer-director Eric Schaeffer (“If Lucy Fell”) plays a cabby with a best-selling novel in his past and a love affair with a married model at hand. (Capella International).

The Innocent Sleep. A series of ritual hangings is being reported as suicides, but Rupert Graves knows they’re executions--knowledge that pits him against the International Secret Societies. (Castle Hill)

Mondo. The fable’s title character is a 10-year-old Gypsy boy who touches the lives of a diverse group of people in Nice, France. (Shadow Distribution)

My Best Friend’s Wedding. Dermot Mulroney sets the date with Cameron Diaz, but his best friend, Julia Roberts, doesn’t take it real well. A classic triangle ensues in this romantic comedy. (TriStar)

Shall We Dance? A Japanese businessman fills a void in his life by taking up ballroom dancing. His teacher is a former competitive dancer haunted by a past failure. (Miramax)

Talk of Angels. Political and sexual passions boil over for an Irish governess (Polly Walker) and the son (Vincent Perez) of an aristocratic family in Spain on the brink of civil war. (Miramax)

JULY 2

Men in Black. Will Smith is back in the stratosphere, as an immigration officer who teams with Tommy Lee Jones to track down an intergalactic terrorist. Barry Sonnenfeld directs Ed Solomon’s script, based on the “Men in Black” comic. (Columbia)

Out to Sea. Brothers-in-law Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon are larcenous dance instructors on a luxury cruise line. Martha Coolidge directs. (Fox)

Titanic. The romance of aristocratic Kate Winslet and lowly Leonardo DiCaprio provides a human element in writer-director James Cameron’s monumental depiction of the ill-fated voyage. (Paramount)

Wild America. Jonathan Taylor Thomas stars in the true story of the Stouffer brothers, the prominent wildlife documentarians. (Warner Bros.)

JULY 4

Contempt. This re-release of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 classic is presented by Martin Scorsese--who paid homage to the film by incorporating part of its score in his “Casino.” Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance and Michel Piccoli star. (Strand)

For Roseanna. Italian villager Jean Reno goes to extravagant lengths to ensure that his wife will fulfill her wish to be buried in the local cemetery, where plots are at a premium. (Fine Line)

JULY 11

Contact. Robert Zemeckis directs Jodie Foster as an astronomer who detects radio signals from deep space. Michael Goldenberg’s screen treatment is based on the novel by the late Carl Sagan. (Warner Bros.)

Dirty Weekend. A woman responds in extreme fashion to her lifelong inability to deal with abusive men. Lia Williams, David McCallum and Rufus Sewell head the cast. (Theafilm)

Mrs. Brown. Judi Dench and Billy Connolly take the leads in the story of the relationship between grief-stricken Queen Victoria and irreverent Highlander John Brown in 1864. (Miramax)

A Simple Wish. Martin Short is an inept fairy godfather dueling with rival wand wielder Kathleen Turner while trying to grant young Mara Wilson’s wish. Michael Ritchie directs. (Universal)

Thrill Ride--The Science of Fun. Too timid to try the Big Shot in Vegas or the other new roller coasters? This film puts you in the front car for an Imax-scale ride. (Sony Classics)

JULY 16

Nothing to Lose. Tim Robbins and Martin Lawrence are the principals in writer-director Steve Oederkirk’s story of a topsy-turvy carjacking. (Touchstone)

JULY 18

Anthem. Michael Stipe, Robert Redford and John Waters are among the subjects encountered in this documentary about two young women in search of American cultural icons. (Zeitgeist Films)

George of the Jungle. Brendan Fraser brings to life the Jay Ward cartoon hero. Leslie Mann plays the love interest. (Walt Disney)

Mimic. Mira Sorvino and Jeremy Northam are a scientist couple whose life-saving genetic engineering has come back to haunt them--and the rest of New York. (Dimension)

This World, Then the Fireworks. More noir from novelist Jim Thompson, with Billy Zane and Gina Gershon as a deadly and deviant brother and sister team on the make and on the run in a California coastal town.

The Winner. Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) directs the story of an elaborate scheme to separate a Vegas gambler from his winnings. (Live Entertainment)

JULY 25

Air Force One. Russian nationalists hijack the First Airliner, with President Harrison Ford and his family on board. Wolfgang Petersen (“In the Line of Fire”) directs. (Columbia)

Alive and Kicking. Jason Flemyng (“Rob Roy,” “Stealing Beauty”) is a dancer living with AIDS, and Antony Sher is the therapist who becomes his lover in a turbulent romance. (First Look)

Conspiracy Theory. Cabby Mel Gibson’s seemingly harmless obsession with sinister plots lands him and Justice Department attorney Julia Roberts in hot water. Richard Donner directs. (Warner Bros.)

Good Burger. Teens Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell transform a failing fast-foodery into a sizzling operation, earning the enmity of a rival meat mogul. Based on a sketch from TV’s “All That,” whose stars and production team are behind this comedy. (Paramount)

Latin Boys Go to Hell. Experimental Cuban American director Ela Troyano adapts Andre Salas’ novel about a Brooklyn youngster whose fantasy world is disrupted by his visiting cousin. (Strand)

Star Maps. Writer-director Miguel Arteta makes his feature debut with the dark-humored story of a second-generation immigrant with his sights set on stardom. (Fox Searchlight)

JULY 30

187. Teacher Samuel L. Jackson inspires some troubled high school students, but when he’s challenged, he has a surprising response in store. (Warner Bros.)

JULY UNSCHEDULED

Brilliant Lies. Gia Carides stars as a young woman whose sexual harassment complaint raises issues of truth and family history. Based on David Williamson’s play. (Castle Hill)

Cabbage Patch Kids Festival. The three short stop-action films include the world premiere of “The Screen Test.” (BMG Independents)

AUG. 1

Cop Land. Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta head a high-powered cast in a story of heroism and corruption among the New York cops who live in a small New Jersey town. Written and directed by James Mangold (“Heavy”). (Miramax)

Event Horizon. That’s the name of a prototype spaceship that’s been missing for seven years. Laurence Fishburne heads the team that discovers its secrets at the fringes of the solar system. (Paramount)

In the Company of Men. Two frustrated corporation men entrap a woman in a perverse cat-and-mouse game that escalates into psychological warfare. (Sony Classics)

Leave It to Beaver. Cameron Finley takes over the title role from the TV series’ Jerry Mathers as the Cleaver clan confronts the ‘90s. (Universal)

Mortal Kombat II: Annihilation. Superheroes take on a warlord with aims on planet Earth. John Leonetti directs this installment of the action-adventure series. (New Line)

Paperback Romance. Erotic novelist Gia Carides and society jeweler Anthony LaPaglia set out on a bawdy and ill-fated adventure. (Goldwyn Entertainment Co.)

Picture Perfect. Romantic complications ensue when adwoman Jennifer Aniston uses a photo of Kevin Bacon to concoct a fictional boyfriend. Directed by Glenn Gordon Caron. (Fox)

AUG. 8

Air Bud. A dog named Buddy who can shoot baskets just like Mike helps a lonely 12-year-old recover from his father’s death in this heartwarmer. (Walt Disney)

Box of Moonlight. Tightly wound electrical engineer John Turturro is loosened up by a self-styled woodsman (Sam Rockwell) in a Davy Crockett outfit. (Trimark)

Career Girls. Director Mike Leigh follows “Secrets & Lies” with a lighter work focusing on the lives of young Londoners Katrin Cartlidge and Lynda Steadman. (October Films)

Desperate Measures. Murderer Michael Keaton is the perfect DNA match for the bone marrow transplant needed by the son of cop Andy Garcia. Don’t count on routine surgery in this Barbet Schroeder-directed drama. (TriStar)

Napoleon. Adam Wylie, Bronson Pinchot, David Ogden Stiers and Joan Rivers are among those supplying voices to the title character, a golden retriever puppy, and the critters he encounters in the Australian outback. (Goldwyn Entertainment Co.)

Steel. Shaquille O’Neal takes matters into his own hands when a street gang gets ahold of the top-secret Army weapons he designed. (Warner Bros.)

AUG. 15

Bandwagon. Membership in a rock band sends four young men on an exhilarating journey of self-discovery. (Cinepix)

Different for Girls. Rupert Graves and Steven Mackintosh star in a romantic comedy with a twist: When two old pals run into each other 20 years after their troublemaking school days, one of them has become a woman. (First Look)

Excess Baggage. Alicia Silverstone goes from “Clueless” to conniving, turning to an action adventure in which she fakes her own kidnapping to get back at her father. (Columbia)

Free Willy 3: The Rescue. The perpetually endangered orc gets help from a 10-year-old boy and Willy’s old friend Jesse, now a 17- year-old ocean researcher. (Warner Bros.)

The Full Monty. Six cash-strapped steelworkers take a cue from the touring Chippendale’s dancers and form their own male strip revue. (Fox Searchlight)

How to Be a Player. Bill Bellamy (“MTV Jams”) stars as a smooth operator whose romantic juggling act is disrupted by his sister’s anthropology project. (Gramercy)

She’s So Lovely. Robin Wright is torn between ex-husband Sean Penn, just out of the pen, and current mate John Travolta. Nick Cassavetes directs a script by his late father, John. (Miramax)

A Smile Like Yours. Construction contractor Greg Kinnear and aromatherapist Lauren Holly are a young couple balancing marriage, career and the prospect of children. (Paramount)

AUG. 22

The Delta. The modern South is explored via a journey down the Mississippi by a suburban teenager and a Vietnamese immigrant. (Strand)

Going All the Way. Rachel Weisz, Amy Locane, Jill Clayburgh and Lesley Anne Warren are some of the women in the lives of two buddies who return to Indianapolis after the Korean War and try to sort out their lives. (Gramercy)

Spawn. Michael Jai White plays the title character, a dark hero who can change shape at will and is torn between revenge and saving those he loves. John Leguizamo is his archrival, Violator. (New Line)

Sunday. An English actress exiled in Queens and a downsized-and-out IMB executive are the pivotal characters in this psychological whodunit. (Cinepix)

Wide Awake. Dana Delany, Denis Leary and Rosie O’Donnell partake in a 10-year-old boy’s search for meaning after the death of his grandfather. Newcomer Joseph Cross plays the boy. (Miramax)

AUG. 29

Hoodlum. Laurence Fishburne portrays mobster Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, the godfather of Harlem in the 1930s. Tim Roth, Vanessa L. Williams and Andy Garcia co-star for director Bill Duke. (United Artists)

Kull the Conqueror. Kevin Sorbo (of TV’s “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys”) stars in an adventure based on Robert E. Howard’s ‘30s pulp hero. (Universal)

AUGUST UNSCHEDULED

Lilies. An aging convict’s confession to a bishop becomes an occasion for revealing the betrayal that involved both men in their youth. (Turbulent Arts)

Trojan Eddie. Stephen Rea plays a small-town market hawker who comes into conflict with Richard Harris over a young woman, played by Aislin McCuckin. (Castle Hill)

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SUMMER SNEAKS ‘97: EXECUTIVE FILM EDITOR, Anne Hurley; CAPSULES BY Richard Cromelin; RESEARCH BY Kathleen Craughwell