The Craft (1996): written by Peter Filardi and Andrew Fleming; directed by Andrew Fleming; starring Robin Tunney (Sarah Bailey), Fairuza Balk (Nancy), Neve Campbell (Bonnie), Rachel True (Rochelle), Christine Taylor (Laura), and Skeet Ulrich (Chris):
One of those movies about teenagers in which the youngest actor is 21 at the time of filming and the oldest 29. Screenwriter Peter Filardi previously served up the hoohah that was Flatliners (1990). The Craft is better than that, though it's still mostly hoohah when it come to representing this sort of magic.
Well, we don't want the kids at home trying to practice REAL magic, do we? The god 'Manon' who keeps getting name-checked is an invention of Filardi's, possibly just after he saw Manon of the Spring at the local art-house theatre.
The Craft is hilariously afflicted with a terrible slate of cover songs of classic New Wave and 1980's material. This is the most horrifying thing about the movie.
The movie takes full advantage of Fairuza Balk's unusually broad and flexible face, sometimes to cruel extents that suggest she's auditioning to be the next Joker. Robin Tunney is too bland to make an engaging protagonist, but here she is. It's certainly interesting to see any Hollywood movie in which the few male characters are relegated to supporting parts, though. Lightly recommended.
From Dusk Till Dawn (1996): written by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino; directed by Robert Rodriguez; starring George Clooney (Seth Gecko), Quentin Tarantino (Richard Gecko), Harvey Keitel (Jacob Fuller), Juliette Lewis (Kate Fuller), Ernest Liu (Scott Fuller), and Cheech Marin (Three characters): From Dusk Till Dawn still seems like two movies bolted together in the middle. The first movie is a gritty, amoral Tarantino crime drama about the bank-robbing Gecko brothers (George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino as Superego and Id, respectively). The second movie is a gore-soaked horror-comedy in the vein of Evil Dead 2.
They're both good movies, but I'll be damned if I know how they got stuck together like this. Robert Rodriguez directs with a lot of gusto, and Tarantino's script is solid, pulpy fun in the second half. There's some poorly modulated sexual violence towards women in the first half, a problem magnified by the jokey, one-note performance by Tarantino as the sexually predatious Gecko brother whom Clooney's more upright criminal is stuck with. Jesus, Tarantino was (and is) a terrible actor.
The second half goes on about ten minutes too long and bafflingly loses its antagonist about five minutes in. I enjoyed the movie, but I also felt a bit dirty afterwards. Harvey Keitel, George Clooney, and Juliette Lewis seem to be acting in (and reacting to) a completely different movie than anyone else. Their naturalistic performances accentuate the artificial grue and spew of the second half. Recommended.
Superman Vs. Aliens (1996): written and pencilled by Dan Jurgens; inked by Kevin Nowlan: 20 years ago, DC and Dark Horse put out this fairly nifty battle between Superman (still in his mullet phase) and the Alien film franchise. It was a time when the Kryptonian Supergirl was still gone from DC continuity. That fact explains much of the storyline, in which Superman responds to a distress signal from a domed city in space that appears to have once been part of Krypton. It comes complete with a spunky blonde girl named Kara who's pretty much the image, in appearance and name, of the pre-1987 Supergirl.
The story is a bit heavy on the then-continuity of the Superman comics, from the mullet to the absence of Lex Luthor from the storyline. Superman can't travel unaided through space for long at this point in his career, necessitating some technology help from LexCorp. Or LuthorCorp. Whatever.
It's solid, unspectacular, and relatively unbloody fun. There's a bit too much harping on Superman's decision not to kill anything, including hordes of acid-blooded aliens. Is this a workable moral stance for the Man of Steel under the circumstances? Well, yes, but as written it relies an awful lot on other people killing aliens, which makes the moral stance seem awfully dubious, if not completely daft. A sin of omission rather than commission is still a sin.
Inker Kevin Nowlan makes the normally straightforward pencils of writer-penciller Dan Jurgens broody, moody, and intermittently menacing. It's a great job of inking in terms of establishing a tone a penciller isn't known for -- Nowlan did something similar with his inks on the sunny Jose Luis Garcia Lopez during the Marvel/DC crossover around the same time. Lightly recommended.
