Sunday, April 02, 2006
Have you seen that new movie Brick?
posted by RICK : 7:14 AM
I guess you could call it, "This year's Sin City." You could call it that. I'm hesitant to do so. Sure, there's definitely a case to be made that it's all style and no substance (Brick is a classic 1950s hard-boiled detective movie set in a contemporary high school). My preferred way of putting it is "style as substance." But even that seems to slight a film that is both unlike anything I've seen before and yet exactly like something I've seen before (though I guess the same could have been said for Sin City). Or maybe what this really comes down to is I think I have a man-crush on JGL. His performance is exactly as detached and unflinching as the role requires-- the opposite of Neil, where we previously saw him. Granted, "detached" generally means "bad acting," and maybe I'm too transfixed by his baby-browns, but being able to say a line like, "I gave him to you to see him eaten, not to see you fed," and somehow managing to pull it off speaks volumes about why he works so well in this movie. Perhaps the best thing I can say about Brick is that it does work. Sure, at any given moment you can take yourself out of the movie only to look back up again and say, "Wait a minute! Teenagers don't talk like that!" but that kind of kills point. It's Veronica Mars with an edge-- or rather, a different edge. It's kind of like those Trailer Contests where film promos are re-cut to fit into a different genre. It isn't exactly something you can make a career of, but damn if it isn't fun to watch.
I guess you could call it, "This year's Sin City." You could call it that. I'm hesitant to do so. Sure, there's definitely a case to be made that it's all style and no substance (Brick is a classic 1950s hard-boiled detective movie set in a contemporary high school). My preferred way of putting it is "style as substance." But even that seems to slight a film that is both unlike anything I've seen before and yet exactly like something I've seen before (though I guess the same could have been said for Sin City). Or maybe what this really comes down to is I think I have a man-crush on JGL. His performance is exactly as detached and unflinching as the role requires-- the opposite of Neil, where we previously saw him. Granted, "detached" generally means "bad acting," and maybe I'm too transfixed by his baby-browns, but being able to say a line like, "I gave him to you to see him eaten, not to see you fed," and somehow managing to pull it off speaks volumes about why he works so well in this movie. Perhaps the best thing I can say about Brick is that it does work. Sure, at any given moment you can take yourself out of the movie only to look back up again and say, "Wait a minute! Teenagers don't talk like that!" but that kind of kills point. It's Veronica Mars with an edge-- or rather, a different edge. It's kind of like those Trailer Contests where film promos are re-cut to fit into a different genre. It isn't exactly something you can make a career of, but damn if it isn't fun to watch.
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-Rick
(co-creator)
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