Brick

[la_belle_laide]

Finally, last night I watched Brick - and I'm linking to the TVTropes site instead of to IMDB because I think the tropes are more important. In fact maybe the most important, because the movie played with them a lot. Brick is truly a noir film, only with high school kids* in it. And the high school is Any American High. It looked like my school, your school, that school in the midwest, the one in NY... But still a noir film.

I thought of The Maltese Falcon a few times (I think they even mentioned it?) Though stylistically it reminded me of Blue Velvet. I kept trying to think of what the movie looked like, and it only came to me today. Blue Velvet.

Also a bit of River's Edge, a movie which horrified me as a young teen.

Anyway it was FRIGGING BRILLIANT.

This movie horrified me and delighted me, by turns. And even the "horrifying" parts were understated. There wasn't a lot of gore, blood and guts and things like that. I loved the dialog (which some people hated,) and I loved the soundtrack. Loved the quiet way it was filmed. And I guess it goes without saying that the acting was superb.

There were some honestly funny moments scattered throughout too. But they were the kind of funny where you're wondering, "Oh my god, is it okay if I laugh at that?" Like when the hero trips his pursuer, who then goes flying head-first into a metal pole with a reverberating "BONGGGG". And any scene in which The Big Bad's MOM was hanging around, serving various criminals apple juice and cereal. And then when one character threatens another with a ceramic rooster from said Mom's dining room table, I did LOL IRL.

This movie also has one of the best scrapping fight scenes ever, just because it's entirely unexpected. The hero (Gordon-Levitt**, or OH WOW, that kid* is Arthur the Point Man from Inception!), a scrawny little runt, picks a fight with the massive jock, and and then kicks his ass, roundly.

Of course, more fight scenes follow, which don't go as well. And as Tvtropes points out, this movie lacks any Hollywood healing, so of course it keeps getting worse and worse. And after all these movies I've seen lately, by about an hour into the film I was feeling like, "Okay, ENOUGH, I'm sick of watching all these people smack this kid* around!" I am all for fictional violence (depending on the context) and it usually doesn't bother me, (I write enough of it,) and fighting, blood, icky stuff, teeth flying out of heads, and that sort of thing don't really make me squeamish. But I dunno, maybe it still has to do with watching Mysterious Skin. After a while I was a little sick of it. Stop beating up on that kid* already.

And then there were a few really sad parts too. Obviously the movie is about murder and such, so the premise itself (high school* sleuths and criminals, students getting killed here and there totally without irony or humor,) was really harsh. But those were really the understated parts. Then there'd come a scene or two that would be really heartbreaking.

And in the next second The Funny would resurface.

I actually might need to own this film.







*When I say THAT KID I mean, HE IS 29 NOW, or 30 or something. And in the movie, 25 or 26, so yeah.


And Lukas Haas (who was also in Inception) was like, what 28 in this film? So yeah.



















**JGL is so gonna play Leander when they make movies out of my book, YEAH for sure! This will happen of course after I win the lottery and train with Jackie Chan and have some Ewan McGregor Magical Babies and, and...

Comments

[chameleonsilk.livejournal.com]

I thought of The Maltese Falcon when I first watched Brick too. Especially the ending. JGL doing his best Humphrey Bogart to Nora Zehetner's Mary Astor. ^_^ And he pulled it off so well.

I've never seen Blue Velvet. Guess I'll have to go put it in my Netflix queue. Oh, but I have seen River's Edge and it affected me pretty much the same way it did you. I love Crispin Glover, but I don't think I ever felt quite the same way about him after that.

Anyway, I'll keep this first comment short. I'm still debating the lameness of my lj username and I may decide to change it. And I don't even have any icons yet. :/

Speak to you again soon.

[la-belle-laide.livejournal.com]

Oooh Blue Velvet is so damn creepy. You have to get in a mindset to see it. Not the same way you needed to for Mysterious Skin, but still.

I thought Crispin Glover was great, too. He was such a speed freak in that movie, god!

BTW I like your user name!