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.