Brick

[abcdefz]

...has anyone else heard about this? It supposed to be a detective story in a stylized-seamy high school underworld. The guy from Mysterious Skin is the lead. Some girl he knows gets herself killed, and the rest of the movie is him tracking down answers and getting the snot kicked out of him. Like Miller's Crossing, sort of. :D

Rotten Tomaters (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/brick/)

Short review at Entertainment Weekly says B+. (http://www.ew.com/ew/article/review/movie/0,6115,1180353_1_0_,00.html)

It opens here next week, so I'm kinda stoked.

[Qdrop]

yeah, i've been waiting for this for months.'

the trailer has been on EVERY DVD i rent...

[abcdefz]

Nice writeup in The New Yorker:

“Brick,” a low-budget movie shot in twenty days and edited on a home computer, has a rapturous sheen to it. Part of the movie’s aura will come from the people likely to watch it—an audience happily stoned on the sweetish, camphorated redolence of old movie gestures, loyalties, and modes of behavior. The first-time director, Rian Johnson, spent six years raising money from family and friends to pull off his dream project, a Dashiell Hammett-style whodunnit. But in Johnson’s version of film noir the inexorable Sam Spade-type detective is a mop-headed high-school student wearing a sweatshirt and wire-framed glasses, and the setting is not the nighttime big city of Hollywood imagination—the usual claustrophobic noir precinct—but the preposterously sunny skies and wide-open spaces of San Clemente, California. The hero, Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), receives a desperate phone call from an old girlfriend, Emily (Emilie de Ravin), who then disappears. Brendan finds her dead body at the mouth of a sewage tunnel, and, realizing that she had fallen into the hands of a student drug gang (led by an off-campus crime boss named the Pin), insinuates himself into the gang and turns the members of it against one another. At the same time, he tells off the school’s assistant vice-principal, just the way Bogart used to sass the cops who cramped his style. The convolutions of the story are hard to follow in the manner of “The Maltese Falcon” and “The Big Sleep,” and the characters, lounging against the blank outside wall of the school, speak in cryptic jive patter (“Bulls would only gum it”; i.e., “Cops are dumb”). They say their words quickly, casually, and, if you don’t get half the burble, it doesn’t matter. The situations and the talk may be a joke, but the emotions are real—we’re in high school, where friendships and loyalty, and who’s tough and who’s cool, count for everything.

“Brick” is often quite funny, and not in a campy or condescending way—that is, not because the distance from the original models is laughable. If anything, you are likely to think, This kind of story still works because it has an unshakable internal logic. Yes, the knight in shining armor must walk down those mean streets; he must act like a criminal, enter the underworld (in this case, a suburban basement with prefab panelling), get himself beaten up, outsmart everyone, and, in the end, give us the pleasures of sin and of justice at the same time. Part of the enjoyment is our knowledge that “Brick” was concocted by Hollywood kids on a serious lark, making use of a glorious strand of their inheritance. All in all, this twerpy little movie is one of the most entertaining pictures to be released so far this year.

[na§tee]

i have heard of it, but only cos i heart muchly mysterious skin and was looking at what joseph gordon-levitt was up to atm. i had a big crush on him back in the 3rd rock days. he looks a lot like my flatmate scott's boyfriend, tho. this is not a good thing.

the director of photography of the film i worked on disliked mysterious skin a lot. very violent, he says. what's the point of making a film if you can't symphathise with the main character? if i wanted to see some graphic fisting i would... blahblah etc. at the end of his reasons i just said "hmm. but it still looks pretty!" lol. i have a wee crush on him so i didn't want to argue, heh :o. he was saying that if you compare that and a history of violence [the other film we were talking about] that you can really tell cronenburg's film is the work of an experienced director. mysterious skin not so much.

[abcdefz]

the director of photography of the film i worked on disliked mysterious skin a lot. very violent, he says. what's the point of making a film if you can't symphathise with the main character? if i wanted to see some graphic fisting i would... blahblah etc. at the end of his reasons i just said "hmm. but it still looks pretty!" lol. i have a wee crush on him so i didn't want to argue, heh :o. he was saying that if you compare that and a history of violence [the other film we were talking about] that you can really tell cronenburg's film is the work of an experienced director. mysterious skin not so much.



...I must've blacked out. Where was the fisting scene? Was that the last trick who beat him up in the bathtub?

Some of that stuff is just too hard to watch.

[abcdefz]

...anyway: Brick opens here this weekend, so I'm stoked. The local paper gave it a pretty poor review, though.

Oh, well.

It's playing at a theater I haven't been to before, so that's cool.(y)

Anyone else going to see this? Anyone? Anyone?

[marsdaddy]

Whew! Glad we're not talking about a new career for you.

We danced around to Brick House the other day.

Never heard of the movie, but I might rent it.

[abcdefz]

Whew! Glad we're not talking about a new career for you.




Masonry?

Might be good exercise. (y)

[marsdaddy]

Masonry?Free masonics?

[abcdefz]

Well, I finally saw Brick. Pretty good stuff! Gordon-Levitt really gets the crap beat out of him throughout, but he's a convincing tough and he gets his licks in, too. I think there were a couple of Miller's Crossing quotes dropped in. Also: a nice moment when he breaks down at one point.

There were a few things that I'd never seen in a movie before, and almost everything was effective. One thing in particular would spoil a moment, so I won't go there.

Pretty violent. It's not as violent as, say, Fight Club, but it's not for the squeamish. And the movie feels too long in the last forty minutes or so.

Lukas Haas is very good as The Pin.

B.(y)

[abcdefz]

Hey, kids,

In case you care: Brick (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/brick/) comes out on DVD (in America) tomorrow.

[kll]

I saw it back in San Francisco last April.

[beastiegirrl101]

rented Brick last night and was left with my mouth open...wow. Very well done. What else is on the horizion for Joseph Gordon-Levitt?

[abcdefz]

From IMDB: (http://imdb.com/name/nm0330687/)



Shadowboxer sounds vaguely familiar, but anything with Cuba Gooding is kinda cursed, methinks. :D

[Yeti]

I want to rent a film tonight. Will I like it? I read the reviews but I only trust A to the Z and Gene Shalet.

[beastiegirrl101]

It is really good....the language you're kinda like "whaaa?" but it really doesn't matter because it all makes sense somehow.

[Yeti]

It is really good....the language you're kinda like "whaaa?" but it really doesn't matter because it all makes sense somehow.

Are you really Gene Shalet?

[abcdefz]

I want to rent a film tonight. Will I like it? I read the reviews but I only trust A to the Z and Gene Shalet.


It's good enough that it hurts a little that it's not great. But it's got great stuff in it.

It's close. It's pretty close.

[Yeti]

Thanks, I'm on it.

[abcdefz]

If nothing else, you get to see Son of Miller's Crossing. (y)

[beastiegirrl101]

If nothing else, you get to see Son of Miller's Crossing. (y)

?

[abcdefz]

The director freely admits his jumping-off point was Miller's Crossing. That got him into Dashiel Hammett, which led to Brick.

[Yeti]

OK, it is on the way. I called my wife and she got a copy from work. It is on VHS but it is free.