Change Your Image
jgrenham
Reviews
Brick (2005)
The Maltese Falcon, only more. The Malteser Falcon?
Seriously good film, plotted tight as a screw, with perfectly pitched performances, a newly invented (I hope) sub-dialect of English that out-Hammetts Hammett and a weirdly evocative sense of place.
The only quibble is the slight whiff of film school: it is an almost perfect genre cross-breed of high-school coming-of-age movie and 1940s noir. But what could have been an exercise in playing with the conventions turns out utterly engrossing, with credible and sympathetic characters all the way along the high school/noir spectrum from tough, smart outsider (with glasses, naturally) to queen-of-the-debs femme fatale. Anyone who understands the way film works well enough to do this, and to do it with such heart, is headed for great things.
I only hope Hollywood doesn't throw $50 m at Rian Johnson and tell him to remake Chinatown. Just write him a medium-sized blank cheque, fellows.
Détective (1985)
Designed to deconstruct
Half an hour in, I was thinking of leaving. An hour in, I was completely taken. Godard breaks all the rules the way a child breaks birthday toys, to see how they work. Sometimes utterly pointless, and sloppy, sometimes brilliant. The ending is laughable, not funny.