Frank (4/5 Stars)

This bizarre story starts in a quiet beachside community in the United Kingdom. A young twenty-something lad named Jon, played by Domhnall Gleeson, walks the the shoreline, pad and pen in hand, jotting down the various things he sees in a desperate attempt to force inspiration for song lyrics. A woman jogs past him in a red coat. “Woman in a red coat jogging!” He hums to himself. A woman jogs past him in a blue coat. “Woman in a blue coat! Does she know the woman in a red coat!” Terrible just terrible. Upon chance occurrence he comes upon a man attempting to drown himself in the ocean. The paramedics are dragging him away to the ambulance when Jon strikes up a conversation with a few other people on the beach watching. They know the man. He was their keyboardist. They no longer have a keyboardist for their gig tonight. I play keyboard, says Jon. Okay, be at the stage door at 9pm. The group gets in their van and leaves.

Jon shows up at 9pm. He is instructed to play three chords and that’s it. The crowd is non-existent. One bandmate, a surly looking woman named Clara, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, is playing a theremin of all things. And then there is Frank, played by Michael Fassbender. He walks onto the stage in a wetsuit and a big fake paper mache head. They start in on the first song. It sounds absolutely strange. Frank sings in a deep voice and makes muscular robotic stage moves. Clara’s theremin has an electric short and sparks fly. She becomes angry, pushes over her instrument and storms out cursing. The drummer and guitar player follow leaving only Frank standing perfectly still and staring intently at Jon. Well, maybe, you can’t tell because Frank has a big fake head on. Then Frank leaves the stage too. The entire thing lasts less than a minute. What an act!

There is a concept in stand-up comedy called the ‘Comedian’s comedian.’ This was generally not the most successful or even the funniest comedian on the scene, but it was the type of comedian that other comedians would come out to see because they were doing something really edgy, exciting, and new. And Frank’s band is that. They are on a completely different wavelength and could not care less about connecting with any sort of audience. Jon is invited the next day for something big. He is excited and is picked up by the band. First thing he notices: Frank still has his big fake head on. Apparently he never takes it off, ever. Second: they are not going to a big gig. They are going to a remote cabin in the Ireland wilderness to take as long as it takes to record an album. Jon tries to explain that he told his boring office job that he would be back by Monday. ‘okay,’ is the reaction. Jon stays.

The character of Frank is a fascinating masterwork of acting by Michael Fassbender. The journey of understanding him oscillates from thinking the man is insane to thinking he is a well meaning musically inclined wise and nice person to realizing he is both of those things. Fassbender plays 95% of the movie without any facial expressions but this hardly matters. His physicality and voicework is very expressive not only in his movements, which are of an excited robot variety, but also in his stillness. You do not need to see Frank’s face to understand when he happy, or inspired, or nervous, or really really scared. And sometimes he goes ahead and describes his facial expressions in order to be more helpful. Frank is not the main character of this story (that would be Jon) but it feels like he is the main character. It is an Oscar nomination worthy performance, though maybe it is too far out there to be seriously considered as such.

The main theme of the movie is the education of Jon’s view of musical expression. He is an ambitious young man who realizes the talent of Frank and his band and sets out to raise awareness of this band on his blog and Twitter feed. Jon sees the endpoint of all their work as a vehicle for rockstardom. Through viral videos of the band doing really weird shit in the woods he gets a cult following for Frank and a gig at the South by Southwest music festival. Everybody in the band hates the idea, but Frank is inclined to do it out of a trust he has placed in Jon. All these people want to like and love us, he innocently asks. Yes, explains Jon, they have already seen and liked and will love you. They go to South by Southwest and all goes to shit. What Jon does not realize is that everything Frank does is especially personal and he wears the head not as a self-promoting gimmick but because he is enormously shy to the point of real psychosis. His bandmates understand this and quit the band before the gig but Jon has to figure it out for himself and almost destroys Frank in the process.

Where does musical talent come from? Jon bemoans the fact that he did not have an abusive childhood or a mental illness that would have expanded his mind in artistic creative directions. No, he realizes in a great scene at the end of the movie. Frank grew up in a nice home with nice parents and was always musically inclined. If anything, his illness hinders his artistic expression. But Jon grew up in a nice house with nice parents too. Why doesn’t he have any musical talent?

Jon makes it up to Frank though, he gets him back together with his band and at the end of the movie they make a song together with Jon on the outside looking in again. Some of the lyrics of the song include the phrases, “It’s nice to see you. It's really nice to be here. I love you all.” It is not a rare thing to hear a musician say these words to a crowd, but when Frank does it has a real profundity to it. Frank really means it. And yes it matters that there is no audience and Frank sings it to his band. You can’t say ‘I love you’ to an audience of people you’ve never met before and mean it. There is something to that surely and it may just be the difference between mediocre and sublime expression. 

Boyhood (3/5 Stars)

Another curiousity from Richard Linklater

The story within the movie ‘Boyhood’ is inextricably linked to the story of its making. The project was started in 2002 when director Richard Linklater cast the six-year-old Ellar Coltrane. He shot a few scenes of him opposite a fictional movie family: sister Lorelei Linklater (Richard’s daughter) and divocrced parents Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke. And then Richard waited two years old til Ellar was eight and he shot a few more scenes. He came back two years later and did it again. The movie was finally finished last year when Ellar turned eighteen.

So this movie is a curiosity that comes appropriately from Richard Linklater, Cinematic Laureate of Austin, Texas, and auteur of such quirky movies such as Slacker, Before Sunrise, Waking Life, and A Scanner Darkly. Boyhood takes it's rightful place besides though films. It is intensely interested in the people, the places they inhabit, and the ideas that they share. The most interesting thing about 'Boyood' is that it does not merely reflect the journey of Ellar Coltrane. Sure we see him literally grow before our eyes from a shy introspective boy to a curious almost philosophical teenager, but we also see the journey of his sister who grows up right alongside of him. And we see the journey of his mother who goes through several marriages, gets her master’s degree, gains at least thirty pounds and becomes less or more comfortable with how things have turned out. Perhaps most strikingly is the journey of the father, played by Ethan Hawke, who starts off as a friendly but impossibly irresponsible, chain-smoking, and fast-car-driving presence in Ellar's life. By the time the twelve years pass, however, he has a new wife and kid who make him go to church and drive a mini-van. The irony does not escape him and he treats the changes with good humor. He did not see them coming and neither did we but these things happen.

This movie is hailed as completely unique but that is not entirely the case. Something that closely resembles this type of story has already been done and is actually still happening. That would be the 7up Series of documentaries that started in 1964 when a BBC TV crew interviewed several seven-year-old kids and then came back every seven years since to reinterview them. The last one came out last year. It was titled 56 up. So far all the kids are still live. The documentary series is extraordinary in that it captures the march of time in a way transient movies can't quite capture no how much makeup they apply. More than any other movie or documentary I have ever watched, I became invested in the characters in the 7up series. In fact, at some point I no longer cared whether any of the new installments had any conflict or dramatic events in them. I sort of just wanted everyone to live carefree unstressful lives for as long a time as possible. 

This kind of feeling is almost captured in ‘Boyhood.’ The main difference is the fact that ‘Boyhood’ is a fictional conglomeration of what a normal childhood might be. The one thing the 7up Series routinely ignored and for good reasons is the complete absence of cultural/time related references. The interviewers asked the subjects about their lives. They didn’t ask them about what new music they were listening to or what they felt about the Prime Minister or the war the world was currently engaged in. In contrast, ‘Boyhood’ sometimes feels like an early version of a soon to be coming out VH1 TV Show called “I love the 2000s.” It starts off with Coldplay’s ‘Yellow’ a big hit in 2002 and every couple of scenes you have some other song from the recent past like Lady Gaga or Gotye. Ethan Hawke is into the politics and talks in various scenes about Bush v. Kerry and Obama v. McCain. This is not all that interesting stuff and at some points ‘Boyhood’ feels less like a story about a person and more of a nostalgia tour of the last decade. Not all the time though. There is an especially good scene where Ethan Hawke brings up Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old pregnant daughter, Bristol. He does this to segway into a talk about sex and contraception with his kids. That happens to be a far more interesting topic for him to explore than what he thinks of the Republican Party.

This is the odd movie, which is not so great because the movie is too brief. It is an epic story within the confines of a feature length film. Weirdly, the story may be hurt because it wasn’t exactly planned before they started shooting any of it. It is epic in scope but limited in reach and tone. The boy only has a few scenes at each age. Sometimes drama happens but the character does not make any dramatic choices about them. I remember being weird, angry, and utterly bored at times as a kid. Ellar Coltrane does not have these qualities. He comes off as almost ridiculously mature, chill, and cool for his age, especially given the series of alcoholic step-fathers he experiences. I don’t know, maybe that actually was the experience of most people and I’m the outlier. It would not surprise me. ‘Boyhood’ ends on a very slacker and chill Linklater note. The 18 year old talks about the oddness of the saying ‘Carpe Diem’ which is ‘Seize the Moment’ loosely translated. He reflects on it and muses that it seems that life is more like the opposite way around. That the Moment more often than not Seizes You because aren’t we always in the Moment? I mean think about it man. I think that may be true for this kid and perhaps for most people but I don't know, I couldn’t relate. 

The Guardians of the Galaxy (4/5 Stars)

Our Hero, the Awesome Chris Pratt, lands his intergalactic spaceship on a desperate and dangerous alien landscape. He steps into a derelict and cavernous ancient cathedral overgrown with dangerous fauna. Chris Pratt puts on his Walkman and plays his “Awesome Mix Tape #1.” The song, played loud and funky is “Come and Get Your Love,” by Redbone. And to this tune, the opening credits of our movie come on the screen as Chris Pratt dances and shuffles through the many dangers of his archeological mission. That’s when I knew I was watching something new, something interesting, and most importantly something undeniably fun. And you know what, it was.  

Until now, I have not heard of the Marvel comic “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Apparently it is rather recent comic without much of a fan base. There are no recognizable characters. The team consists of a Firefly-esque band of misfits that have come together to do fun outlaw stuff, mostly salvage jobs. The leader is Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), a human who was abducted by aliens when he was a just a little kid in 1988. This particular back-story is a boon to people like me who are somewhat turned off by the complete arbitrariness of most way into the future science fiction. The most obvious perk of the story happening basically in current day even if we never see Earth is the soundtrack. It comes from the Walkman containing his Awesome Mix tape that young Peter was carrying when he was abducted. It has got Marvin Gaye, David Bowie, and even Blue Swede. These songs reflect good taste on the part of Peter’s mother who made the tape for him before she died of cancer. I was surprised and delighted that “Cherry Bomb” by The Runaways got an extended play over one of those getting-for-battle montages. It’s a killer song. Then there is the marvelous pair of digital creations Rocket Raccoon and Groot. They are originally a pair of bounty hunters. Rocket Raccoon is the product of a mad scientist who turned a raccoon into a living, breathing, sarcastic as all hell, and complete with a snarly Napoleaonic complex. Bradley Cooper voices Rocket Raccoon. Admittedly, I could not recognize him in the voice. Groot is, I guess, an Ent, a walking tree. Vin Diesel voices him in what can be safely be said is an underwritten role. All Groot can say is “I am Groot.” Although, he is a bit like Chewbacca in that apparently the Raccoon can interpret his connotations perfectly. These two characters are not muppet sideshows. They are so well conceived and artistically put together that after awhile I realized that I had forgotten that I wasn’t simply watching actual actors. We are at a point in movie technology where these characters are alive. It is an extraordinary to watch and given the progress I would think this might be the last time I comment on how well it is done. From now on, perhaps I’m going to judge these performances just how I would judge a human performance. On a very basic level what has been have achieved is a blurring of the distinction between the two. Joining the party late is the Pro Wrestler Dave Bautista as Drax. He does a very convincing job of being big and dumb and completely incapable of grasping metaphors. Finally there is Zoe Saldana painted dark green this time as a fierce warrior of some sort. She is the serious one of the bunch because you know she’s a woman.

The plot of this story is arbitrary and absurd and quite frankly really comparable to some truly awful movies like John Carter of Mars and the like. There are bunches of people with weird names in weirdly named places you’ve never heard of and they are trying to get this weapon that is going to kill everybody unless Peter Quill and the gang get it first. Motivations come and go easily for the people and not much makes sense in that annoying Science Fiction way you know where because it takes place in a far off place you don’t have to worry about making any of the technology realistic or plausible. But guess what? I did not care. I just did not care. Because what this movie does good it does awesomely great and I could forgive all the absurdity because the movie never really asked me to take it all that seriously. What it asked me to do was have fun and then it provided great music, good jokes, quirky characters, but above all abosolutely stunning things to look at.

The design of this movie is truly Oscar worthy effort. It is hard to assess who is exactly responsible for what. When you look up the crew on IMDB you are faced with the fact that hundreds of people have worked on the movie. But here are couple of names of the people in charge: Charles Wood of Production Design, Ray Chan of Art Direction, Alexandra Byrne of Costume Design, and whoever was in charge of makeup. There has not been a movie so vibrant and fun to look at since “The Fifth Element.” This movie makes use of a comic color palette. The prison jumpsuits are bright yellow. Several characters are of light blue and hot pink and orange hue.  My favorite design has to be the makeup of a character named Nebula (Karen Gillan). Now that is a sexy blue robot (I think she is a robot, maybe). If the makeup and hairstyling of this movie doesn’t win an Oscar I have no idea what I’m talking about. At one point I was looking forward to seeing new characters being introduced just to see what they looked like. What was better about Benecio Del Toro’s part in this movie? His performance or his white suit and hair?

This movie was directed by James Gunn and partially written by him too. I have not seen anything else he has done but given the size of these blockbusters, it is hard to say (and probably shouldn’t be said) that this is his movie. This is a corporate movie and as a corporate movie it has certain plusses and minuses. It does not, cannot have the personal touch that small movies have. But it does have the ability to apply lots of money for the employment of hundreds of artisans and designers. “Guardians of the Galaxy,” is a persuasive argument that summer tent-pole blockbusters can be worth the money spent to make it not just profit-wise but also in artistic merit. Yes, corporate movies can be quirky, original, and fun too. Attidude is all, i.e. the courage to play “Hooked on a Feeling” by Blue Swede in a science fiction movie and have faith that the audience is going to like it enough to ignore how the whole setup is completely absurd. Such courage in very expensive projects is rare but take a look, it exists.