Friday. I had been dreading this day
of screenings, mainly because of the fact that, in years
passed, the programming offered on it seemed to always
turn out to be the worst of the festival. This year proved
to be no exception. While I didn’t see a movie today that
was quite as disastrous as last festival’s Friday
disaster, G.I. Jesus, I came pretty close. I will
be surprised if The Northern Kingdom, Finding Kraftland,
and Little Fugitive all don’t soon end up playing
on the Lifetime Network. The three films ring as
melodramatically false as one could possibly imagine, each
in their own way. In my previous column, I made the
comment that the San Diego Film Festival keeps getting
better with each passing year. After watching today’s
horrendous line-up, I’m not so sure about that anymore. It
is going to take a whole lot of good movies in the next
two days to recoup from the cinematic horrors that I have
witnessed thus far.
The Northern Kingdom is
long-time actress Dorothy Lyman’s directorial debut, and
it offers indisputable proof that Lyman should stick to
working in-front of the camera rather than behind it. Had
she made the film as a Lifetime Original Feature, then
perhaps I wouldn’t speak with such hostility toward it.
But this isn’t the case; The Northern Kingdom is
inappropriately making rounds on the festival-circuit and
its producers are actively (and foolishly) seeking a
studio to theatrically distribute it. The festival
atmosphere, which is supposed to promote the discovery of
inspired works, makes it very easy to recognize just how
ridiculous The Northern Kingdom is. From its
contrived characters to its laughable supporting
performances to its hokey symbolism, the movie isn’t even
of film-school quality.
The film is an ensemble effort,
following the lives of several residents of a small
Northeast American town. Heidi Armbruster passably plays
Inid, a twenty-three-year-old girl who has a self-realized
spiritual awakening when she sees a light flash in front
of her car during a meteor shower. Eager to discover the
meaning of this, Inid decides to visit her mother Sandra
(Frankie Shaw) and explain the epiphany that the
experience provided her. Sandra thinks that Inid has gone
slightly crazy. When Inid requests to stay with her for a
few days, Sandra accepts, mostly so that she will be able
to keep an eye on her somewhat-loopy daughter. In addition
to these two characters, the viewer also meets Nan
(Lyman), Sandra’s life-partner; David (Richard Benkins),
Sandra’s ex-husband and Inid’s ex-step-father; Glen (Cosmo
Pfeil), a local young-man trying to make a bomb detailed
in the Anarchist’s Cookbook; St. Claire (Ed Onipide
Blunt), a resident veteran of Iraq dealing with
depression; and others.
The Northern Kingdom never
really adds up to anything; it exists merely in order to
introspectively observe the lives of its characters. This
approach would be fine and dandy if said characters were
at all interesting, well-developed, or realistic. Because
they are stereotypical and poorly-invented by the majority
of the cast, the whole film fails. The audience’s
sympathies never become involved in The Northern
Kingdom; viewers will uniformly recognize it as an
emotionless, boring venture due to its plain and
unconvincing presentation. Even when the film inevitably
plays on Lifetime down the road, its only purpose will be
to fill a frame for the viewer to skip over when they are
flipping through channels.
Finding Kraftland is an even
worse movie than The Northern Kingdom, but is at
least redeemed by the fact that its makers aren’t actively
seeking any type of distribution. The documentary is
basically one long, self-indulgent home-movie that was
made to entertain its subjects and their families. I wish
I would have known this going into the screening so that I
could’ve seen something more substantial instead. For
reasons unknown, the festival coordinators have marketed
this as some sort of universally-charming little picture.
In actuality, the film is about as different from that
description as one could possibly imagine.
Finding Kraftland documents the
life of obsessive collector Richard Kraft, who owns a Los
Angeles home stuffed full of film-scores, Disney
memorabilia, board games, and other similar items. Richard
is a bit of a whack-job and recognizes that he has the
emotional maturity of an eight-year old; he is exactly the
type of loud-mouthed extrovert you’d try to stray far away
from if you saw him walking down the street. Regardless of
his obnoxiousness, Richard’s style of living seems to have
left a positive impression on his teenage son, Nicky, who
is also featured in the film. While Finding Kraftland
focuses mainly on Richard’s collectables, it also observes
his bond with Nicky. Of course, such segments really have
no emotional depth whatsoever; the touchy-feely material
comes across as exactly that, and the rest chronicles
Richard and Nicky’s hollow quest to scour the world for
the best rollercoaster they can find. Would the two be
such great friends if Richard wasn’t so rich (he is the
agent of many famous film-composers) that he could afford
to throw them all types of elaborate parties and send them
on wacky vacations? Probably not, rendering the
emotional-core of Finding Kraftland rather useless.
In the Q&A session following the
screening of the film, Richard openly admitted that it
began as a video that was only intended to be shown when
MTV’s “My Super Sweet 16” covered Nicky’s birthday party.
This is no small wonder; Finding Kraftland is even
tackily equipped with a “host” (Stacey J. Aswad), who
bridges the film together by amateurishly counting down
Richard’s top ten types of collectibles. Richard’s
newfound need to subject festival-goers to the obnoxious
antics seen in his little movie is only a sign of his
sheer arrogance. He is not seeking to distribute the movie
due to rights issues (and probably the fact that most
viewers will think that it worthless), but I wouldn’t be
surprised if these are ironed out and Finding Kraftland
ends up on cable sometime soon. If you ever find the film
on TV in the future when channel-surfing, be sure to flip
far, far away from it.
Little Fugitive, the final
movie of the day that I attended, was slightly better than
the two that had come before it, but not by much. A
remake of the 1953 film of the same name, the movie offers
a thoroughly uninspired take on the bond forged by two
brothers. Said brothers are Brooklyn-based youngsters
Lenny (Nicolas Salgado) and Joey (David Castro). The two
lead tough lives for kids of their age; their father (an
entertaining but thoroughly out-of-place Peter Dinklage)
is in prison and their mother (Justina Machado) is an
alcoholic. Older Lenny resents younger Joey for
maintaining contact with their father, who he views as a
soulless man. This creates tension between them which, in
the film, becomes incredibly problematic, to say the
least.
Little Fugitive’s plot takes
off when Lenny and Joey’s mom decides to go to Atlantic
City for the weekend with a friend, leaving the boys at
home to fend for themselves. Lenny is supposed to take
care of Joey while she is gone, but instead abandons him
and steals his mother’s handgun to shoot at targets with
friends. Joey discreetly follows Lenny and company, and
discovers them doing this. He confronts them and begs to
use the gun, which provides Lenny a golden opportunity to
get him to go away. Joey is given the handgun and, when he
shoots a bullet at a can near Lenny, Lenny pretends to be
shot dead. Joey runs away in fear after Lenny’s friends
tease him that he will be sentenced to the electric chair
for his crime. He seeks solace as a runaway on Coney
Island, which leads to numerous troubles. When Joey
doesn’t return home, Lenny begins to realize the severity
of what he has done, worrying both about its consequences
for him and about the fate of his younger brother.
If there is one thing that Little
Fugitive proves, it is that good old films are not
always sure-fire bets to remake. Updated to fit a modern
world, the central story of the picture feels contrived
and forcibly contemporized. When Joey runs into a creepy
child-predator on Coney Island, a story-addition made by
writer/director Joanna Lipper, the result is a sequence
that is as laughable as it is unnecessary. Lipper runs
into a lot of trouble in making the story believable when
trying to freshen it up. Thankfully, she is able to do
right in preserving one of the great joys of the original:
a command of the mood and atmosphere of the story’s
Brooklyn setting. The scenes on Coney Island, especially,
have a wonderfully authentic feel to them.
Filling the shoes of Lenny and Joey,
child-actors Salgado and Castro are a bright-spot in the
very standard-issue movie. Despite some flubbed lines, the
two are excellent on the whole. Also, as their mother,
Machado delivers a devastatingly real performance. Still,
these performers’ strong efforts exist merely as redeeming
pieces of a conventionally planned and executed movie.
Ultimately, Little Fugitive is no better than the
average made-for-TV feature.
How strikingly disappointing that I am
only two for seven thus far at the festival! Let’s hope
that the coming days offer higher quality motion pictures.
Right now, I’m downright depressed in the film-selections
that I have made.
-Danny Baldwin, Bucket Reviews
(post date: 9.29.2007)
