Mark Northover Movies

Music video director Richard Stanley made his feature debut with this apocalyptic, post-industrial nightmare set in the distant future. Dylan McDermott stars as Moses "Hard Mo"' Baxter, a washed-up ex-soldier who spends most of his time in "The Zone" -- a scorched, ochre-colored desert littered with the radioactive debris of an unspecified war (or wars). Mo's recent Zone foray with war-buddy Shades (Jon Lynch) turns up an interesting find -- a pile of droid parts he purchases from a spooky "Zone Tripper" (Carl McCoy, frontman for goth-rock's Fields of the Nephilim), which he carts home to his reclusive artist girlfriend Jill (Stacy Travis) to serve as raw material for her latest work. Unbeknownst to them, the dismantled robot is the prototype of a controversial new battle-droid dubbed the Mark 13, which is designed to reassemble itself from available materials if damaged in combat. In short order, the Mark 13 proceeds to do just that, tapping into the power grid in Jill's fortress-like apartment and targeting her for death. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

Though Willow was one of director Ron Howard's few box-office disappointments, it definitely deserves a second look. At once an epic celebration and a gentle spoof of the sword-and-sorcery genre, the film concerns the efforts by little person Willow Ufgood (Warwick Davis) to protect a sacred infant from the machinations of a wicked queen (Jean Marsh). One source book has assessed the picture as a combination of The Ten Commandments and Snow White. This is true enough, except that neither one of those properties offered such offbeat casting choices as Billy Barty and Jean Marsh. Executive producer George Lucas has (through the conduit of screenwriter Bob Dolman) added elements of his own Star Wars saga to the stew. The results are generally satisfactory, though the film is sometimes weighed down by too much plot, and the action sequences may not be suitable for very young children. Incidentally, this is the film where co-star Val Kilmer met his future wife Joanne Whalley. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi