Recommended Viewing:

I had the pleasure last night after I think my 25th hour of Football from the weekend to watch one of the best films of not only the past year, but the past several years. I’ll be the first to admit that I probably watch 10% of the amount of films that our resident fanboy watches, but I try and make good decisions and make every shot count. This obviously was the same strategy that Rian Johnson used when writing and directing his first feature film simply entitled “Brick”.

I know several Lodge members have seen the film so I’m going to give a brief review. Guy gets call from ex-girlfriend, someone dies, he looks for answers, gets in over his head, and someone else dies, character development evolves. Please don’t mistake my one sentence plot review as a telling sign of a weak story. Nothing could be further from the truth; however the brilliance of this film is in the dedication of Johnson to classic Film Noir from everything from the overly loud footsteps of someone running down a hall to the telephone rings that modeled mid-20th century rotary phones. In my opinion the most enjoyable genre of cinema and most difficult to create.

Johnson mirrored his script after the writings by legendary Detective Novelist Dashiell Hammett, who penned the legendary book The Maltese Falcon and the often clichéd character of Sam Spade. The pace and intellect of Johnson’s words mirror a forgotten age in cinema where metaphors were intertwined with script writing to compact 100 ideas into one paragraph. A feat barely approached in the modern era of screenwriting (excluding Cohen Brothers).

The characters that Johnson has created reflect a 40’s era detective story set in a modern-day Southern California High School that has all the ancient old-school charm of say, Redmond. The 21st century decor mixed with golden-era dialect is what really gives this film the brilliance rarely seen from first time directors. His ability to find the aesthetic beauty in a 2A High School football field along with a man-sized drain tunnel proves my point that big-budget directors often lose sight of their natural abilities, hopefully Johnson won’t we he gets a huge payday for his next film.

The film is starred by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, yes, the kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun, who amazed the hell out of me with one of the best young acting performances since Elijah Wood in “North”. The rest of the cast, although no-named, was hired correctly and quality performances from Lukas Haas and specifically Nora Zehetner, who sold the 40’s era female protagonist character perfectly. Without her performance and classic look this movie simply doesn’t work, also a shout out to Claire from Lost for stopping by the set and playing a big character without a lot of screen time.

Just wanted to give some words to a film that I think demonstrates all the elements of quality writing and directing that was shot for $500,000 and edited on Johnson’s home computer, maybe the next step for our own resident fanboy?