Kurt Loder Reviews Frank and The Giver

Frank is a strange and wonderful new
movie drawn from an even stranger and not quite so wonderful
real-life story. It’s a way-offbeat indie exercise, and the fact
that Michael Fassbender, of all people, was drawn to star in it,
with his famous face hidden inside a big fake head, is strangely
wonderful in itself, writes Kurt Loder. The film’s inspiration is
the late Chris Sievey, a pop-punky English musician who became a
cult figure in the 1980s and early ’90s as Frank Sidebottom, the
leader of a provincial club band that specialized in ricky-tick
Queen and Beatles covers. To play this role, Sievey concealed his
identity within a beach-ball-size papier-mâché head, which he wore
both onstage and, frequently, offstage as well. The head’s
painted-on googly-eyed expression could be read as either
music-hall jollity or something a little more sinister, and
whatever might have compelled Sievey to hide behind it remains
unclear. Loder also reviews The Giver. 

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