What Did I Think About Frank?

Frank is a weird movie.

It's absolutely a comedy. But it exists in a bizarre plain, straddling some very dark ideals, and ultimately forces its audience to consider their own honesty in a way I'm not really used to. I really like this movie. It surprised me. Mostly because I was hearing such negative things about it. But now I'm left wondering what it was those people I spoke to so completely disliked. Because there's an obscure morality to this thing that just left me blown away.

Domhnall Gleeson's been doing great work for a while now. And he really is the driving force to this film. Which is amazing when you consider that Michael Fassbender is the titular character. But then, Fassbender's got that head on the whole time and his character is more a force of nature... an inspiration that the other characters must pull their madness from. So Gleeson does an admirable job playing the guy that unknowingly opens our eyes to the haphazard realities of Frank's band... and quite accidentally reveals his own rather obese failures. Maggie Gyllenhaal is totally insane here and it's incredibly fun to watch. And Scoot McNairy inhabits this subtle madness that just kept me on the edge of my seat.

Leonard Abrahamson should be proud of making such a strange, but fulfilling, feature. He's definitely put himself on my "directors to watch" list. Likewise, Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan created an incredibly interesting and surprisingly dense screenplay that allowed the rest of these artists an exceptional amount of room to play.

Franks surprised me. It could just make it into my top ten this year.

Man, Was I Surprised By Non-Stop!

It's not like the filmmakers broke new ground with this movie... rather, they put together a fun, action-filled experience in much the same style as old genre flicks like Air Force One. If you've ever seen that movie, you know being compared positively to it can only mean one thing... Non-Stop is pretty awesome!

Liam Neeson had already found his new niche with the advent of Taken back in 2008, but to be honest, I never really got a whole lot of enjoyment from the attempts that came after. Unknown was extraordinarily awful, and while I did enjoy The Grey to some degree it would seem Taken 2 left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. So I went in to see Non-Stop pretty much holding my breath. My expectations couldn't've been lower. And somehow I came out the other side with a big old smile on my face.

Essentially what you need to know is:

1) They got the action just right... there was a certain fight in a bathroom that was both surprisingly cool and weirdly funny at the same time... and a certain moment with a gun toward the end of the film that I'm gonna remember for a long long time (it could've been bad cheese, but instead it was good).

2) The film was very well cast... obviously Liam Neeson's been doing this for a while and he's really beginning to develop a nack for his own brand of fun/funny but good action... Julianne Moore was just a very welcome surprise and once I saw her doing her thing before the flight I knew there was going to be at least a small amount of quality to this film... add in Scoot McNairy, Michelle Dockery, Corey Stall, and the Oscar winning Lupita Nyong'o and you've got yourself a pretty well rounded group of performers.

3) The cheese was not too cheesy... this film lived on action and awkward cheesy wit... but sometimes that can work against a movie... this is a good example of the cheese factor giving the movie a boost and welcome applause rather than boos.

4) The mystery really stays a mystery until you absolutely need to know... and then, when the reveal does take place, I promise everything that has happened that seemed unlikely for one reason or another really does make sense... it may seem outrageous at times, and the reveal is not of the earth shattering variety, but it absolutely works for what kind of movie this wants to be... and is.

I'm not afraid to say it, I really like Non-Stop!