Brick (DVD)

Brick is the first film I have seen in a long time that is near impossible to put into a descriptive box. It is set around a high school, but isn’t a teen love story or comedy. It is set in modern times, but acts like it isn’t, it is a detective story of sorts but without any sign of a law enforcement officer or private detective. It harkens back, in tone and dialogue, to a 30’s Marlowe or Sam Spade story, but has only two adults in it and is set, as I said in our own time period. Brick is an enigma, indefinable but undoubtedly a work of genius. For a first time film maker it shows vision and style that puts it on par with Richard Kellys’ Donnie Darko, ...

For some reason drug movies have to be cool and hip to get on the big screen. The grim reality, of course, is emaciated homeless Big Issue seller’s littering the town centers, bony fingered hands clawing at gullible women handing over the naive fiver, the rodents scurrying of with a purposeful gate to score the next hit. It will be along time when someone makes a movie about those guys and girls. When we persist on glamorizing drugs like we do through films like this and our celebrity culture its no wonder the drug trade is as big as it is. The reason Little Jessie James gets blasted in Moss Side is because the judiciary still refuses to lock up people like ...

I fear watching a ‘worthy’ film. This is one of those films that you read about that have had great critical buzz and award hype. Maybe it was nominated for an Oscar or won plaudits at the Sundance festival? I find that many of these films leave me cold as they are either a bit boring or seem to be experiments that only film making spods would enjoy. Films like ’21 Grams’, ‘The Hours’ and ‘Crash’ have all left me thinking what the fuss was about. The problem is probably even worse with Indie films as they do not even have the budget, or stars, to make the film interesting. It was with this nervous mindset that I decided to watch ‘Brick’, a film that has been given ...