SEASON 6
Robert Rodriguez is one of my favorite filmmakers. And for good reason. It's not just the fact that he historically does everything himself. And I mean it, from directing, shooting, editing, scoring, and visual effects, he's run the gamut in both 35mm and digital. He started out shooting on low-grade film, and quickly moved forward with the times technologically. It's all mapped out in his autobiography Rebel Without a Crew. Highly recommended.
The Faculty was released the same year (1998) as the film I reviewed just a bit back, Urban Legend. Despite being well-produced affairs with name casts, you can feel the difference from the opening frames. The Faculty is the far better film. It has, as Frani puts it, an edge that Legend just didn't have. Whether it's the interesting use of music, badass camera angles, or Rodriguez' incredible editing, take your pick.
The casting is pretty slick. Rather than the college setting in Legend, you have high school. The script is better here, written by Scream's Kevin Williamson, so it's not fair to hold that against Urban Legend. But that's the only category I'll give a mulligan on. Marco Beltrami's score is pretty good, and KNB are on board with the practical effects. All around great filmmaking.
But the cast. Wow. All of those on board here, either as the teenagers quickly becoming aware that an alien takeover is occurring, or the school's staff, menacing and hilarious, who are the "pod people" looking for global domination are really good.
Most of them have gone on to become busy and respected performers. The students (largely still rising at the time) include Sean Hatosy, Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Jordana Brewster and Clea Duvall. The staff (familiar, but not the legends they are now) include Robert Patrick, Bebe Neuwirth, Famke Jannsen, Salma Hayek, and Jon Stewart.
Piper Laurie, however, was already a legend at the time, rest her soul.
Hartnett as the aloof drug-dealing genius and Duvall as the sci-fi geek solo girl stand out. These could have been squeaky clean hero kids, but this film didn't take that route. Robert Patrick, who saved the John Cena vehicle The Marine by being the best possible hilarious tongue-in-cheek baddie does it here first. Jon Stewart as the nerdy science teacher is fun to convincing. But when these staffers have to become evil humanity-draining automatons, the switch is flipped successfully.
Where the real difference between Urban Legend and The Faculty lies is the editing. Rodriguez is having a blast here, injecting tone into the sci-fi plotline. The scene where the teens try to calmly trek it out of the school surrounded by potential alien outlanders is slick, tight, sharp as a tack and eerie. It also has twists, legitimately solid ones, that aren't found in Urban Legend. The high action scenes are raw, edgy, and convincing. The film has a 70's physicality to it that you just didn't see, even in 1998.
It's pretty amazing when you consider that this was a pretty well-budgeted and marketed Dimension Studios film with a big cast all the way around, and yet not one of the first films that comes to mind when you think of Rodriguez. That can be said despite the reduction of volume and quality of the work he's done in the last 15 years or so. You can't blame the guy, he tried to get a cable channel off the ground and spawned a pretty decent television series based on his From Dusk Til Dawn on its airwaves. Unfortunately, El Rey wasn't meant to last forever.
Rodriguez' filmography will, however.
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