A scene from Kentucker Audley’s and Albert Birney’s film STRAWBERRY MANSION. Courtesy of SFFILM
To celebrate the 2022 SFFILM, underway, now, here’s a gem from last year’s SFFILM. The very trippy and ultimately sweet fable Strawberry Mansion is set in a future where people’s dreams are taxed. Preble (Kentucker Audley), a workaday tax auditor, is assigned to audit the dreams of an elderly artist, Bella (Penny Fuller). Preble is soon plunged into an Alice in Wonderland experience with her dreams, and his dreams, and a romance to boot.
Preble puts on a gizmo to watch the dreams pf others (and comes across an even cooler gizmo that filters dreams). He even encounters Bella’s younger self (Grace Glowicki).
Strawberry Mansion is also a sharp and funny critique of insidious commercialism. A fictional brand of fried chicken keeps showing up in the story. Hilariously, Preble becomes entangled in an endless loop of upselling at a fast food drive-thru. And Preble is constantly prodded to consume by his own diabolical dream buddy (Linas Phillips). A sinister marketing plot is revealed.
A scene from Kentucker Audley’s and Albert Birney’s film STRAWBERRY MANSION. Courtesy of SFFILM
Kentucker Audley is very good as Preble, who starts out the movie mildly annoyed and evolves into various degrees of bewilderment. Audley is one of those actors who keeps showing up in something interesting (and offbeat) like Amy Seimetz’s She Dies Tomorrow and Sun Don’t Shine, or in smaller parts in especially fine films like Her Smell and Ain’t Them Bodies Saints.
As Bella, Penny Fuller radiates a contentment that ranges from ditzy to sage. Reed Birney is especially good as Bella’s sinister son.
Audley co-wrote and co-directed Strawberry Mansion with Albert Birney. They make the most of the surreal settings within dreams, and use different color palettes for each dream; the palette for Preble’s real-life bachelor apartment is pretty surreal, too.
I screened Strawberry Mansion for the 2021 SFFILM. It’s now available to stream from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube and can be purchased on Blu-ray after May 17.
Photo caption: Dev Patel in THE GREEN KNIGHT. Photo courtesy of A24.
In the swords-and-sorcerers fantasy The Green Knight, Dev Patel plays Sir Gawain of Arthurian legend. Gawain is privileged to be the son of a sorceress (Sarita Choudhury) and the nephew of the king (Sean Harris), and both have high hopes for him. But Gawain is short in the maturity department; he is so much of a wastrel that he can’t find his own boots after a debauch.
The callow Gawain asks, Is it wrong to want greatness? His girlfriend (Alicia Vickander) replies, Isn’t it enough to be good? This movie is about goodness (responsibility, duty, loyalty, faithfulness) as a prerequisite to greatness. Gawain would prefer to skip a necessary step.
The otherworldly Green Knight crashes Christmas dinner at the king’s court and offers a chilling “game”. He challenges anyone to strike him a blow, on the condition that the Green Knight return the blow in one year’s time. Gawain doesn’t have the emotional intelligence to pick up that the actually heroic knights around him are all spooked by an offer that seems to good to be true. Impulsively, Gawain beheads the Green Knight. The Green Knight then picks up his head and exits, turning to utter the words, One year – hence. Oops.
One year later, it’s time for Gawain to keep his end of the bargain and travel to the Green Knight’s chapel in the woods. Not having used the year to develop any more maturity or responsibility, Gawain embarks on his quest, clearly not ready for prime time as a heroic knight. He is gifted with talismans that he keeps losing and which are nonetheless restored to him. He is embarrassingly outmatched by an untethered punk of a brigand (Barry Keogh).
After a series of adventures, Gawain arrives in the Green Knight’s forest lair, and it’s time for us to see what he’s made of. The Green Knight is less a movie about a quest than it is about a character test. The thing about a test is that it can be passed or it can be failed.
Writer-director David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, A Ghost Story) seems like a pretty high brow director for a Knights of the Round Table tale. It is Lowery’s focus on character that makes The Green Knight a movie fit for thinking adults (and decidedly not a popcorn movie for kids).
It may not be apparent from The Movie Gourmet’s unrelenting menu of indie, international and documentary films, but I like a good adventure movie. What The Green Knight demonstrates, as a counter example, is that the folks who make tent pole movies today aren’t even trying.
The special effects are great. In particular, the face of the Green Knight himself is literally wooden, yet his eyes range from mischievous to profoundly sad, and somehow he manages an expressive smirk. There’s a CGI fox as realistic as any I’ve seen and a spectacular platoon of ghostly giants.
Lowery creates a dark, damp, sinister medieval England. The Dark Knight was filmed around Cahir Castle in Ireland, a delightful place that I’ve visited in the summertime, but which is gloomy and forbidding in this movie.
The Green Knight is slow but not ponderous, the exception being when Vikander, as a second character, has to recite a pretentious and tiresome monologue.
Dev Patel ‘s performance is excellent. Patel is remarkably charismatic. His performances here and in The Personal History of David Copperfield indicate that he is currently underutilized – this guy can carry the biggest film. It’s hard to believe that he was only 18 when he broke through with Slumdog Millionaire. At 31, he should be on the verge of an epic body of work.
Joel Edgerton shows up late in The Green Knight, and steals scenes as a charming nobleman. Edgerton turns on a melodious voice and the delivery of a trained Shakespearean.
Edgerton continues to surprise me. He is a guy who could have settled into a career of hunky action roles; he played the Navy Seal leader in Zero Dark Thirty and the thuggish Baz Brown in Animal Kingdom. But he’s also played the husband in the civil rights drama Loving. And he’s written and directed the brilliant neo-noir thriller The Gift and the topical Boy Erased.
Does Gawain have the makings of a chivalric hero? Outwardly, he’s got the chain mail and the battle axe. The Green Knight takes the measure of what’s on the inside.
A scene from Kentucker Audley’s and Albert Birney’s film STRAWBERRY MANSION, playing at the 2021 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 9 -18, 2021. Courtesy of SFFILM
The very trippy and ultimately sweet fable Strawberry Mansion is set in a future where people’s dreams are taxed. Preble (Kentucker Audley), a workaday tax auditor, is assigned to audit the dreams of an elderly artist, Bella (Penny Fuller). Preble is soon plunged into an Alice in Wonderland experience with her dreams, and his dreams, and a romance to boot.
Preble puts on a gizmo to watch the dreams pf others (and comes across an even cooler gizmo that filters dreams). He even encounters Bella’s younger self (Grace Glowicki).
Strawberry Mansion is also a sharp and funny critique of insidious commercialism. A fictional brand of fried chicken keeps showing up in the story. Hilariously, Preble becomes entangled in an endless loop of upselling at a fast food drive-thru. And Preble is constantly prodded to consume by his own diabolical dream buddy (Linas Phillips). A sinister marketing plot is revealed.
A scene from Kentucker Audley’s and Albert Birney’s film STRAWBERRY MANSION, playing at the 2021 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 9 -18, 2021. Courtesy of SFFILM
Kentucker Audley is very good as Preble, who starts out the movie mildly annoyed and evolves into various degrees of bewilderment. Audley is one of those actors who keeps showing up in something interesting (and offbeat) like Amy Seimetz’s She Dies Tomorrow and Sun Don’t Shine, or in smaller parts in especially fine films like Her Smell and Ain’t Them Bodies Saints.
As Bella, Penny Fuller radiates a contentment that ranges from ditzy to sage. Reed Birney is especially good as Bella’s sinister son.
Audley co-wrote and co-directed Strawberry Mansion with Albert Birney. They make the most of the surreal settings within dreams, and use different color palettes for each dream; the palette for Preble’s real-life bachelor apartment is pretty surreal, too.
Strawberry Mansion played at the Sundance Film Festival and can be streamed through April 18 at SFFILM.
Luke Shirock in TOMMY BATTLES THE SILVER SEA DRAGON
Tommy Battles the Silver Sea Dragon has to be the bravest and most artistically ambitious movie premiering at Cinequest. In his debut feature as director, writer, composer and star Luke Shirock has imagined a guy put on trial by his own subconscious. Tommy (Shirock) has feeling of unresolved guilt about his mother’s death that have troubled his life and impacted the relationship with his girlfriend Carolyn (Celine Held).
The trial is a nightmare, surreal and Kafkaesque. We see Tommy’s life in flashbacks, and learn just how accurate his own view of his life may or may not be.
And here’s what makes Tommy Battles the Silver Sea Dragon so singular. It’s a musical – all set to Shirock-composed music. This could have been titled Inner Torment: The Musical.
Held is very good as Carolyn, and David Andrew MacDonald is compelling as The Prosecutor.
Reportedly, Tommy Battles the Silver Sea Dragon was made on a $500,000 budget, which is difficult to imagine given the rich look of the film and some of the special effects and the shots on the water. Certainly, Luke Shirock is an artist swinging for the fences. Cinequest hosts the world premiere of Tommy Battles the Silver Sea Dragon. Here’s a link to the trailer.
