I've got all five senses and I slept last night, and that puts me six up on the lot of you.

Q: What do you call a film with no target audience?

A: A film for film buffs!

Brick (2005) is a classic-style film noir set in a contemporary high school starring rich kids, average kids, and their drug habit. Starring Joshua Gordon-Levitt (The Lookout) in yet another role that makes you wish we saw more of him, Brick soars on the strength of its excellent editing, beautiful and sharp camera work, and a script that makes excellent use of anachronism by having high school seniors talk like characters out of a Dashiell Hammet novel. It sounds like a gimmick, but in these hands it's anything but.

(Dashiell who? Look him up; I guarantee you've heard of his work.)

And for those of you who still think that because film noir is an old style it must be pretty tame, be assured that the only reason you'll see things in Brick that you wouldn't see in a classic noir is only because it couldn't get past the censors fifty years ago.


I, film geek, proclaim that Brick is brilliant, and hope that all involved with it know just how good they are at their jobs.