A Stranger in the Kingdom

Tinnily acted and spasmodically edited, this new Jay Craven (Where the Rivers Flow North) film still doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up. Set in 1952, the story about a young Canadian woman lured to Kingdom County, Vermont, by a fake personals ad only to meet her bloody demise is not quite a love story, not really a comedy, and not by any means a courtroom drama, though it tries to be all three. Newcomer Jordan Bayne is Claire, a Quebec native with "moxie" that endears her to almost every male in Kingdom and an accent that flits from French to Swedish to Eskimo. Claire ends up staying at the home of the film's other "stranger": a new preacher who shocks the town by being black. Ernie Hudson brings a jolt of life to the screen as the cigarette-smoking, gun-toting minister and the only character who doesn't appear to be reading from a TelePrompTer. Maybe that's why the town's two-dimensional folk -- and the smarmy big-time lawyer played by a bored Martin Sheen -- immediately suspect him when Claire is found shot dead. Adapted from Howard Frank Mosher's novel, the film's ill-paced storyline and cliché'd dialogue ensure that no viewer will ever know what the hell is going on. But the landscape sure is pretty. At the Museum of Fine Arts July 30 through August 1 and August 5 through 8.

-- Jumana Farouky