Here's a great clip to give you an idea of the film's stylized dialogue: http://media.filmforce.ign.com/media/81 ... ids_1.html

Galia, I'm anxious to hear what you think about it. I'm not too sure what you'll think because it has a big, big, big Lynchian vibe to it. The director was clearly heavily influenced not only by Dashiell Hammett but Lynch, too.

I tried to gt there straight from class today, and missed it by 20 minutes. Thought that was too much. Couldn't wait randomly downtown for an hour and twenty minutes just to watch it late night.

Now I'm stuck. This weekend is tight and I am going to catch a film after work tomorrow. Is Brick travlling or will it stay th upcoming weekend in theatres its alrady released in? I'm stuck between it and Th Beauty Academy of Kabul for tomorrow. Trying to figure out which might not be in theatres this weekend. That one I will see first, the other might have to wait until Sunday. When two movies I want to see get released the same weekend, I panic.

Who's Hammett?

Dashiell Hammett wrote Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, Red Harvest...

Brick SHOULD be safe to wait for. I wish you'd see it first, though.

Eh, I really want to see it, but I've never gone to an indie theater, and no reason to start now.

I'll wait until it hits Colorado Mills (usually happens where there's only a 200-300 theater count, since CM has 28 screens).

Well, I managed to see it. *spoilers*

I will say its strength was in the fluidity of is style, its tonal setting, and its contrived language. Had the teens spoken "naturally" it would have lost ambience and intensity, and I do like how the story unfolded. But having said that, the story is damn predictable, and I knew Laura was playing everyone off eachother 15 minutes into the film. She was a weak backbone for potentially stonger themes and plot, and she didn't hold her end up well at all. *end spoilrs*

Mixed bag, but enjoyable enough. More to come.

Hmm..

*SPOILERS*

I must say, you must be far more astute than me. I knew that Laura wasn't all that she seemed and clearly had something to do with Emily's death, but I didn't think she was the conduit for the whole situation. That surprised me. I suppose I was more surpised by the events leading up to the big reveal of Laura. For example, Tugg being the supposed father of Emily's child and then killing Emily was a shock. As was the reveal that Brendan was infact the actual father.

I guess I wasn't too upset by the general predictability of Laura's arc because I knew she was supposed to be the femme fatale of the story.

Were you bothered at all by the visual lifts from Lynch's work? I know you're not a fan...

Also, what did you think of the score? And the performances?

Yes, th preganancy was random. And I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure it was "The Brain's" child she was going to abort.

Laura didn't surprise me for two reasons. She had way to much prsnce from early on to be a side figure, and her appearances, language, were very legible. I think one of the faux-pas of th director is his desire to directly source noir femma fatales rather than just abstracting wha he likes about the form onto something new (and school related). He did a much better job with Kara's ever changing appearance, including her "mime" make-up when Brendan tells her that her clowning around has gone too far. Laura is never really a high-schooler, unlike everyone else. She's also a she (no Bernal femming this time around) and her motives are just kind of unsurprising.

As far as Emily being offed not cause of drugs but because of preganany (on her end) was an interesting story. But I wish it had bn more than just a lure and a cover on Laura's part. And I have to give it to Kara for her snide "It was hard to tell near the end cause it got so busy). Haha.



Yeah, well that's what gets me. Whn directors and writers g lazy just because they're assuming we'll fill in the gaps due to our knowledg of film history. It didn't ruin it for me, but it wasn't very compelling. I ended up focussing more on th little scenes. Like when Brendan is being chased through the school and the creative way he gets out of it.



No, not really. I think the visual style and sound (like the running feet) were the highlights. I don't know what it is about Lynch hat irritates me, but it didn't bother me here.



Great score, great for setting th mood and not to glaring. Th prformances were all ok, but not aw-inspiring. It was a good group effort, but th fairly high amount of movment made m pretty much only focus on Brendan, and he was good. vryon lse was jus ok, but they go the job done. I dunno, this didn't seem to m to really b about the charactrs. It was very conrolled, and the language was very decorative, and the way the experince unfolds from the middle back, and then forward, just de-emphasized acting and focussing on film technique, editting. Lets just say this was a director heavy little film. That's no a bad thing, mind you, I just ended up paying much more attention to th technicque than I did any one performance.

I agree that Kara was the more interesting fatale in the film. She was given more interesting personality traits (like the whole Freshman lap dog thing and the ever changing appearance) and better dialogue (good call on "it got so busy" line - that was classic). Still, I enjoyed Laura's character for what it was meant to be - the fatale that propels the events. I agree that Johnson could have taken the character further, but I'm not sure that's what he wanted. I think he was more interested in creating the stereotypical film noir enviornment. He wasn't in it to shake things up.

Oh, and no way was it The Brain's child. It was Brendan's.



Heh. Interesting that you should mention the "little scenes" as the driving force for you behind the film. I sort of agree. They are what made the experience for me that much better. The foot chase through the school was one of the most memorable moments in a film I've seen in a long, long time. Brendan's solution was jaw droppingly brilliant. Also, the way everyone kept referring to school lunch like it was the end all be all ("You know where I eat lunch!" "Who has she been eatin' lunch wth?") Great stuff.



Glad to hear it. I'm honestly surprised. The Pin's character is pretty much one giant Lynchism, what with the unexplained leg deformity (dig that huge freakin' shoe), the stylized dialogue, and the bizarre environments he is associated with (the lighting in the basement is straight out of a Lynch film).



Heh, I knew you'd like the score. It's incredible. Seriously one of the best I think I've ever heard.

I agree that this is pretty much the definition of a director's film. That's probably one of the reasons I loved it so much. I'm such a style whore, whether it's visual or in language.

With that said, I still think the characters were an important aspect of the film. I think it managed to strike a nearly perfect balance of technique/style and character driven filmmaking.

I thought the performances were nearly flawless across the board, with the lone weak spot possibly being in Laura, but I thought even she was good. Brendan, The Brain, Tugg, The Pin, and Kara were all exceptional though, and I felt like the actors made the material spring to life.

*spoilers*


Yes it was.

Laura told Brendan that Emily had said she wanted to get rid of it cause she didn't love the father. That is true. That it was thre months earlier was also true. Remember right at the beginning when The Brain said he had been with Emily a short bit after the breakup too? And then when Laura whipsers into Brendan's ear about who th father is and walks away, we suddnly see The Brain in the football field in the background. Then whn Brendan tells Brain that Laura said a dirty word (which she didn't), Brain goes, "Fine, don't tell me what she said." And of course, Brendan doesn't. She was telling him it was The Brain's child, hence the suddenly odd appelation of the Brain in the football field as she's walking away.

*end spoilers*

Hmm...

That's a very interesting little theory you have cooked up there. Honestly, I must have missed the line of dialogue where Brain tells Brendan he was with Emily after the breakup.

As for the whisper at the end, I figured she said something like "Daddy" or "Father". That's why he said it was a dirty word, because it was implicating him (Brendan) as the father and therefore the actual conduit to the entire situation. He wanted to know who put Emily in front of the gun, and technically, it was him.

What grade would you give the film?

Didn't think of it that way. I se your point, but the really random appearance (at least it felt so to me) of The Brain was the hook, line, sinker. I had the distinct feling that the director wouldn't have let go of the idea that Emily didn't also love Brendan. And Laura already trashed him about her not loving the baby, and that the baby was three months old. So I figure anything she whispered into his ear would have been a "twist" on that, otherwise we would have all already known it from the actual convrsation.

I'm pretty sure the Brain had lunch with Emily for a short while after the breakup. Cause he said he didn't know anymore who she had lunch with, or some other such line like "We don't have lunch together anymore you know" that gave me the distinct feeling.

It would have been more poetic your way, however, if Brendan had actually been the one who put her before the gun.

You'll have to wait on a grade. I'm writing the full review tomorrow, and I always only think of the grade after writing out my thoughts in the review.

Didn't Brendan ask Brain to meet him at the field "when the sun is up" when he was placing his last call to him before he set up Tugg at Pin's house? That would explain Brain's apperance at the field.

Also, one of the big reasons Emily broke it off with Brendan was because she was tired of dating a loner. She wanted to be a part of the in crowd. Brain was just as much of, if not an even bigger loner than Brendan. It wouldn't make sense for her to go from Brendan to Brain. Highschool girls rarely make sense, though.

And yeah, that's why I thought the ending was so great. Brendan was kind of getting his. He walked tall throughout the entire film, apparently above all of the dirty dealings and goings on, but it turned out this whole thing was at least partly (if not entirely) his fault to begin with.

Damn, I love this film.

Don't make me get into this right now, or I'll start typing like that.

I'm in between both of you. I thought everything worked except the acting. Then again, I don't really think the style was such that the movie can be compared to Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill. It wasn't overwhelming, and didn't make up for a lack of substance (as Tarantino's movies do).

I need to see this again. I'm reading over your ocmments as well as I can and I don't remember half of it.

The "e" and the "t" on my keyboard don't work very well since I spilled water on them a few days ago!



Well, there's a difference between substance and content. I'd say Tarantino's films have alot of substance, even when they don't hav that much "plot." Brick is the other way around. It focussd on having a plot, and sinc it did that, there felt like there wasn't that much there.

I enjoyed it stylistically quite well. It had a way of being meticulous and highly contrived without being overwhelming.

Full review, like, now.

I can't believe you didn't like the acting.

I definitely feel ya on the needing to see it again thing. There's so much going on, and with the stylized dialogue, you feel like you must have missed things.

I added a theater list on the first post. It looks like Focus may be pulling the plug. It's only expanded to four more screens next weekend.

Focus is lame.

Here's a copy of my review from over in the "Everybody's a Critic" forum:

Naturally, I enjoyed the film noir style, and the acting was good, but my primary criticism of this movie is:

It's too complex to be elegant.

The writer/director who's clearly talented, went way overboard on the elaborateness of the story, and thereby came of as more than a bit of a show-off. Film noir suits an equally lurid style, but demands an inevitability to it's writing that accelerates you towards the ending. (My favorite in the genre is the 1945 low budget classic Detour.)

So, while I can imagine detail obsessed fans sitting in front of their DVD copy of this film with their finger on the rewind button taking notes on all the references and complications, as a movie I have to rate it an ambitious miss.

3 out of 5.

I think you just summed me up whenever the DVD comes out.

Also, I added a Brick Glossary to the fist post. It's pretty interesting. Something one should definitely read before seeing the film.

Here's an absolutely fantastic review from Screenit. Rian Johnson didn't direct May, though. He was the editor:

The beginning and end of "Brick" are telling. The first is about constriction and close-ups: a still shot of a tunnel that recedes into darkness; a young man's eyes, behind glasses, contemplating a young woman's body at the tunnel's mouth, and that body, face down and crumpled. As "Brick" closes, the focus is the opposite: a long, stationary shot observing another girl as she walks across an empty football field, her slight sultry form disappearing step by step, watched by that same boy.

Much happens to Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) between his initial moment on screen and his last. And yet his actual movement is slight. Part of this is owing to the fact that he's a kid in high school in Southern California, and Rian Johnson's film (his third feature, following 2002's smart, barely seen horror riff, "May") is on one level, a deconstruction of high school movies.

Where the typical high school movie hero triumphs over the bully, wins the big game, and/or finds true love, Brendan joins the bully (at least for a time), loses the game and the girl. You know this last part at the start, for that corpse is Emily (Emilie de Ravin), his much-missed ex. He spends a third of the film searching for her, the rest of it avenging her death. None of his efforts takes him beyond the high school football field where no team ever appears.

"Brick's" simultaneous embrace of and challenge to high school movie conventions takes the strange form of noir (as that sad-looking body hints right off). Or maybe not so strange. Proms and yearbook awards are never so meaningful in the moment as they are in their nostalgic movie iterations.

In fact, much of high school is comprised of high drama and angst, broken hearts and painful encounters, sharp shadows and fears: noir stuff. And so, reframing high school in noirish terms -- here, "The Maltese Falcon" by way of "Heathers" -- makes a sinister and compelling sense, especially when the kids in play take themselves utterly seriously, like they're Jake Gittes discovering the water runoff.

The action is set "Two days previous" to the scene where Brendan stares at the body. And in this previous moment, he gets a note from Em, left in his locker. He arrives at the appointed intersection, takes her phone call in a booth by the highway, and listens as she claims she actually doesn't need help, though she said she did, then screams as she's confronted by something terrible and unseen.

Throughout "Brick," what you don't see generates as much complication and tension as what you do. Sometimes this excess is just off screen (Emily's scare), and at others it's pushed to the back of a shot so it's difficult to interpret. Such as when femme fatale Laura (Nora Zehetner) blows off her jock boyfriend Brad (Brian J. White) under a streetlight -- the image is gorgeously gloomy but what she says or what his reaction has to do with what comes next is unclear.

Brendan, with the glasses, makes it his business to see what's going on, being the usual noir guy who walks mean streets. He has a moral compass, but ignores it when he needs to (as when he threatens a pack of local stoners, led by Dode [Noah Segan]: "I got all five senses and I slept last night. That puts me six up on the lot of you").

Brendan's aided in his quest by the Brain (Matt O'Leary), who does useful Internet research and Xeroxing, reports on his mom's cell phone (here's something new: high school students who are not gizmo-ed out the wazoo), and likes the potential payback for the evil-doing "upper crust" ("You think you can raise the strength, maybe break some deserving teeth?").

They learn Em was mixed up with the cool kids ("Who's she eating with?" is the question marking her move to another section of the cafeteria), crossed someone, and ended up "in trouble." Brendan's investigation starts with his desperate effort to win her back, her resistance to his fretful-teen-boy possessiveness ("I really loved you a lot," she says, "I couldn't stand it"), and his subsequent discovery that she's "been with" other boys.

While this plot is heartbreaking and high school movie generic, the execution is lively and deft. Edited on a Mac in Johnson's bedroom and winner of a 2005 Sundance award for "originality of vision," "Brick" loves the harsh angle (Steve Yedlin's camera is low, skewed, too close or long, and predominantly stationary set-ups) and blackout editing. The spaces are fragmented, making the puzzle of high school seem literal. The abuses are also literal, as Brendan steps into beatings, his pretty face smashed repeatedly, kicks and jabs fortified by big-fat throw-down sound effects (here he's looking like Dick Powell, pounded in "Murder, My Sweet").

Occasionally, the film showcases Brendan's faulty vision: the frame is blurred when he first meets local drug kingpin, the Pin (Lukas Haas), until he puts on his glasses and the Pin rises from his wall-facing desk and faces Brendan, dark cape and polished, duck-headed cane enhancing his calculated odiousness. Seeing the Pin clearly doesn't precisely help Brendan, but he is able to put in motion a series of events that show up the Pin's actual incapacity to deal with chaos.

Aside from the Brain, who first appears racing through a Rubik's cube that Brendan casually fixes in seconds, Brendan's allies are as ambiguous as his seeming adversary, the Pin. Brendan solicits occasional info from cheerleader/actress Kara (Meagan Good), whose ritual training of freshmen to do her bidding makes her seem equal parts Vampyra and Annie Savoy. But she's plainly untrustworthy and enticingly excessive, whether in Sally Bowles or Kabuki drag, preparing for serial performances in front of her dressing room mirror. Brendan sees through her and can't see her at the same time: she's the sexy scary girl, that's her job.

That said, Brendan works hard to keep on top of his many relationships. He may or may not be in cahoots with one of the only adults who appears in the film, Assistant Vice-Principal Gary Trueman (Richard Roundtree). He thinks he's got the kid working as a narc, but this so-called agreement seems always on the verge of collapse, owing to Brendan's own schemes and the fact that adults never get what's going on in high school even if you tell them.

The film's other visible adult, the Pin's mom, makes sure the kids have juice and oatmeal cookies for snacks, then leaves them to their nefarious business, conducted at the kitchen table with a ceramic chicken milk pourer included in most every shot. This chicken provides a particularly antic moment for the Pin's very dedicated muscle, Tugger (Noah Fleiss, in a perversely, frankly brilliant performance).

Believing that Brendan needs schooling at the table, Tugger lifts the chicken, glowers, and threatens to mash Brendan's face, then takes a breath and stalks off, chicken in hand. The camera remains at table top level, watching the chicken disappear then reappear, as Tugger remembers to place it back where he found it. You don't need to see Tugger's face here to know what he's thinking, his arm and torso are that expressive.

Cast as the fall-guy-gunsel, the not-so-bright but very earnest Tugger drives a dark, loud Mustang and brings a welcome warmth and comedy to the film's hardboiled tone and visceral-but-also-abstract violence. At first, he seems something of an anomaly in the film, his hulking form, in white knit cap, wife beater, and big ol' jeans, menacing and assured.

As his vulnerability emerges, and is exploited differently by Brendan and the Pin, his difference looks almost poignant, and then you see for a moment at his home, a family made up of figures just like his, all hulking in front of the TV set. It's an abrupt and very brief shift in perspective, and reminds you that this is exactly what high school (or noir) is about. You never know where someone's coming from.

I did like that Tugger...

I agree that familiarization with the gloassary is key to understanding the film's dialogue. They handed out a booklet called "Brick Talk" before the screening I went to. It ended up invaluable. I really hope Focus includes something like it with the DVD release.

Unique language in a film should be internally defined within the film - and I think it was in the case of Brick...

That site is like God to my parents. Seriously.