San Diego Film Festival 2014
Sept. 24-28th
Reading Cinemas Gas Lamp 15
Arclight Cinemas La Jolla
Special Awards (Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego La Jolla)
The festival had a vast handful of superb independent films, documentaries, shorts and included premieres of Wild (Reese Witherspoon), You’re Not You (Hillary Swank) and St.Vincent (Naomi Watts and Bill Murray). One of three special screenings was Bad Country starring Oscar-Nominees, Tom Berenger (Platoon), Willem Dafoe (Platoon) and Matt Dillon (Crash). For fans of these actors, all three men received Best Actor in a Supporting Role nominations for the film that won Best Picture the year of their Oscar nomination.
The screening was presented by The San Diego Film Festival, SONY Pictures, CB Productions and Chris Brinker Film Foundation. Brinker a San Diego local, sadly passed away in 2013. The S.D.F.F. screening was poignant and included special guest Tom Berenger for the red-carpet and a post-film Q & A.
Bad Country along with the stellar cast of Dillon, Dafoe and Berenger stars Amy Smart (Justified). The film is an action-thriller set in Louisiana during the 1980’s. The fact-inspired story is about a gritty cop (Dafoe) and a desperate crook, turned-informant (Dillon) who form an alliance to bring down the organized crime syndicate and its kingpin (Berenger). This film was Brinker’s directorial debut and final film project.
Review of Bad Country
If you like Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man), Matt Dillon (Drugstore Cowboy) or Tom Berenger (Platoon), this is a nice addition to the box office, art-house or Oscar-winning high points in the careers of all three. The only trouble is, what can you expect and what do you get from great actors? Well, greatness.
Classic, good-guy meets bad-guy drama, infused with wit and brilliantly nuanced performances from the trio. Bad Country had the grit of a great ’70s film, a characteristic greatly missing in cinema today.
The director was making his debut, but had Produced enough good films to seem at ease with this material, no cliches outside the (absolutely) necessary one’s audiences require in a movie. This material could have easily been messed up if the choice’s of director Chris Brinker were not so sure-handed.
The anchoring quality of this film was it called back to a time slowly creeping away from us, when movies were only acting and a script. This is a nice return from relying on anything but the artistry and marriage of the elements. It is pure fire-ball acting from old schoolers Dafoe and Berenger, with Dillon whom is often over-looked as one of our best talents. Here Dillon manages to give us some humanity to a trashy criminal.
Now on Blu-ray.
Bad Country Grade A
*****
The San Diego Film Festival’s Chris Brinker Award was presented on Thursday September 25th as part of Variety’s Night of Stars at the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla. The award was presented by Tom Berenger to John Beaton Hill for First-time-Filmmaker. The Film he directed is The Wolves of Savin Hill. There is also a Chris Brinker Film Foundation, for more information visit www.cbfilmfoundation.org
Influx Magazine review of The Wolves of Savin Hill click here.
Other festival awards included Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine) taking home the Gregory Peck Life-time Achievement Award and Beau Bridges (The Descendants) was honored with the Cinema Vanguard Award. As always the San Diego Film Festival was a wonderful event filled with good fun and great people. Special thanks to Sandy Young and Brear Cannarsa of The Chris Brinker Foundation.
By Paul Booth
