So I love watching B-movies: the ham-fisted acting, the amateur camerawork, the cheaper than cheap special effects.   But until recently, I never thought about reading B-…books.  Some things I am powerless to resist, though, and when I came upon Runespear in a used bookstore, I had no choice.  I had to buy it.  The cover was what piqued my interest, at first.  A giant man with an eye patch and a spear, whose torso inexplicably melds into a mountain range?  Tell me that wouldn’t wouldn’t grab your attention.  Considering it indirectly led to me buying the book, it may well be a pretty clever cover — but in my mind it conjured up a long history of cheesy paperback science fiction and fantasy, pumped out in such mass quantities that better representatives of the genres are lost in the noise.  Still, there’s something kind of fascinating about sci-fi and fantasy covers from the 50s and 60s, some winning mixture of camp and cliche and weirdness that makes them fun to look at, even if the books themselves are pretty terrible.

With a general interest in sci-fi covers suddenly triggered by Runespear, I flipped the book over to read the back, but man was I not even slightly prepared for the sheer ridiculous joy wrapped up in its brief plot description.  It’s like the perfect mixture of genre cliches and powerful goofiness — Nazis, Indiana Jones ripoff Rafe Springer, Norse mythology, and…British Professor Melbourne Shrewsbury.  The greatest name of all time?  Quite possibly.  Naturally, I had to buy it.

Reading it, on the other hand, was a different matter.  Could a book that looked so hilariously awful actually be fun to read, or would it simply be dull and painful?  I waited a few weeks before taking the plunge, but the results pleasantly surprised me.  The characters clung to adventure cliches and the writing occasionally dipped into bizarrely overwrought analogies, but for the most part it was descriptive and entertaining.  And every time I found myself criticizing the writing, I realized I probably couldn’t write an entire novel with the same degree of creativity.  Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.  My brain could also be permanently damaged from watching too many B-movies, but next time I see a mass market paperback with a hideously awful cover, I might have to give it a try.  And if you ever come across Runespear, buy it.  You probably won’t regret it.

The paths we take to movies can be strange, sometimes.  Case in point: after I first listened to an audio book of John Grisham’s The Pelican Brief more than half a decade ago, Three Days of the Condor set up shop in a tiny corner of my brain.  Grisham’s shadowy assassin loves Three Days of the Condor because it’s familiar territory for him: a smart espionage thriller set in a world of hired killer, government operatives, and code names.  All I gleaned from the brief reference was that it was a spy movie with Robert Redford, and that was enough to keep it bouncing around in my mind until the time was right to finally see it.

And when I did, imagine my surprise when Redford turned out to be a computer geek (to the extent that was even possible in 1975) dealing with arcane bits of data in a cleverly disguised CIA office.  The technology of spy movies has certainly moved on since Three Days of the Condor was released — and it seems like the world has, too.  It’s a movie I’ve never heard mentioned or seen on TV, though perhaps I’m not talking to the right people or watching the right channels.  But you’d think one of the smartest thrillers ever made — with a talented pair like Sydney Pollack directing and Robert Redford starring — would show up a little more often.

Three Days of the Condor begins innocently, introducing you to a small group of CIA researchers, which makes their murder all the more abrupt when it happens.  From that point on, it’s intensity overdrive, with Redford gradually shedding his bookworm persona to become more confident, more daring, more in control.  Unlike most thrillers, in which the gun is the weapon of choice, Redford fights primarily with information.  For most of the film he’s fighting to figure out who wants him dead, and why, he knows it’s something he knows.  So he’s constantly thinking and planning, desperate to untangle the knot of secrets surrounding him before he’s caught.

The weakest link of the movie is Faye Dunaway’s presence as a requisite love interest.  Her acting is by no means bad, but after Redford hijacks her and her car and holes up in her apartment to lie low, their ensuing romance is slightly unbelievable.  Then again, it’s pretty standard fare for these types of movies — I don’t know if we can write it of as Stockholm syndrome or simply accept that people in emotionally charged situations tend to develop feelings for each other, but the romantic subplot is the only element of Three Days of the Condors that plays it by the book.  And really, it’s pretty hard to imagine anyone could resist Robert Redford in his prime.

We’re obviously geared to love Redford from the start, but Max von Sydow utterly steals the show during the finale, driving home a magnificently taut twist ending that’s far too good to spoil.  From the first time Sydow appears on screen, we know quite clearly that he is the enemy, that he is cold, merciless, and evil.  But by the end…he is, perhaps, the most respectable character in the film.

Watch Three Days of the Condors for the fun of keeping up with the plot.  Watch it for Redford or Max von Sydow.  Watch it for the 70s charm of ancient computers and phone booths.  But definitely watch it, because thrillers that brew intensity and brains into this fine a cocktail are few and far between.

As part of an ongoing summer campaign to catch up on the all-too numerous pop culture landmarks I’ve somehow missed over the years, I recently found myself watching two of Scorsese’s most famous movies, Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, within the span of a couple days.   While both fantastic films, neither would top my list of Scorsese’s best.  But with all the acclaim Raging Bull gets, it would have to be damn incredible to outmatch my expectations.

As a boxing film, I think I prefer the story of Rocky more.  Stallone’s original manages to capture something special about boxing as a way of life.  It draws in the 70s culture, and admirably balances the sad state of urban decay with Rocky’s heart and clumsy romance.  But Raging Bull is an altogether different movie — after all, it’s based on a real man, a real story, and has a narrower focus.  And for the first time in a long time, it made me appreciate what an amazing actor De Niro is.  So when I was going into Taxi Driver, an idea was already crystallizing in my mind.  I wondered: would Travis Bickle disturb me more than Jake La Motta?

Few biographical films can match the intensity of Raging Bull.  Of course, few biographical films are directed by Martin Scorsese — but the cinematography, editing, and sound work during the boxing matches are absolutely incredible, creating this sharp, powerful edge that goes beyond the typical heavy-handed (no pun intended) sound effects of Hollywood brawls.

Still, as impressed as I was with the filming, De Niro’s acting undeniably deserves even more praise.  His portrayal of Jake La Motta had to be one of the most realistic — yet inhuman — performances I’ve ever seen.  He seemed all too believable at times, which was what made La Motta’s madness so difficult to watch.  In one moment, he clearly adores his wife and cares deeply for his brother.  In another, he stands in the ring, absorbing blow after blow as blood and sweat fly from his body, daring his opponent to continue, enjoying it.  I haven’t seen too many depictions of masochism in movies, but unlike Bill Murray’s hilarious bit part in Little Shop of Horrors, De Niro’s masochist is chillingly insane.

The way De Niro captures La Motta’s calm moments really highlights his shocking ones.  And as the film goes on, it’s not just the pleasure he pulls from violence that eats away at you — it’s his constant, neverending jealousy and insecurity, which builds and builds until it’s clear something is seriously wrong with him.

That’s about where Travis Bickle comes in.  Maybe it’s because Taxi Driver dips further into extremity than Raging Bull, or maybe it’s because I already knew more about the film’s main character, but I actually found Travis to be less disturbing than La Motta.  What’s interesting is how well De Niro plays crazy, but in completely different ways.  Travis is obviously unbalanced and deranged from the very start — he can barely relate to other people, suffers serious insomnia, and harbors a volatile anger that he gradually feels right in letting loose.  That he plans to die by story’s end indicates he simply can’t cope with the world — or how he sees the world, anyway — and has to simply mark it with destruction before leaving for good.

Given that Taxi Driver is fiction and Raging Bull is grounded in history, saying Travis is more of a character than LaMotta may seem pretty obvious.  But it’s true.  And what’s scarier to watch — a homicidal madman, only a step removed from serial killer territory, or a man subtly coming apart as his life progresses, who thrives on pain and slowly self-destructs, both in his personal life and his career?

Yeah, I guess both of them are pretty disturbing!  For my money, LaMotta is the true madman, and De Niro deserved his Oscar.  Maybe it’s time I watched Cape Fear.

For reasons I’m not sure I can fully explain — or even understand – Primer is one of the most unsettling movies I’ve ever seen.  Like the most important works of science fiction, it eschews drama for ideas, or an idea, in this case time travel.  Here is why this is great science fiction:

Compare Primer to Back to the Future.  Back to the Future is a fantastic movie; it’s a classic adventure, fun and heartwarming and flashy and entertaining, which dances around the concept of time travel with faux-concern about disrupting the space-time continuum.  Doc Brown’s eyes bug out whenever Marty tries to change the future, but ultimately this issue is dismissed and relegated to something that concerns only these characters.  Recreate the past or your whole family will slowly disappear from a photograph, culminating in the erasure of your birth!  Back to the Future is Marty’s story, and the “right” thing to do in any situation regarding time muckery is to make sure everything turns out well for Marty.  Everyone goes home happy.

In Part II, you’ve got the evil Biff who uses knowledge of the future to get rich, rule the world, blah blah.  He’s a comical villain, his ancestor was a villain, his kids will be villains.  There’s destiny at work, here, and the grand design allows for the underdog McFlys and the mean old Tannens to be at odds forever, which makes for fun call-backs in the world of cinema.  What it doesn’t do is provide any sort of genuine questions of how time travel would affect real people.  And that’s fine — it doesn’t have to.

Primer does.  We see two men — two good men, kind and hard-working and smart — run aground the rocky morality of time travel.  We first see them labor, as scientists, to understand what they have created, and the implications of it.  We see them take great pains to avoid anything dangerous beyond their understanding — to prevent any sort of possible paradox, in case such an event may irrevocably damage their lives and the lives of others.  And when, inevitably, they begin to make meticulous changes to the future, we see the damage done to their own friendship.

Primer is certainly no cheeky adventure in a badass flying car, and even the inevitable destruction of the DeLorean does little to make a real case for the moral implications of time travel.  In Primer, we see the implications of their actions eat at the characters from within, just as the effects of their device eat at them from without.  In the end, the narrative becomes almost impossibly complicated — and it starts out pretty damn hard to follow.  But following the exact series of events isn’t really necessary.  It’s not the point.  Knowing that these men are dealing with forces outside of their own understanding, and seeing how power weighs on them is what makes this great sci-fi.  And, as I mentioned at the beginning, seeing what actions such believable, rational people will inevitably take is seriously unsettling.  Primer weighs heavy on the conscience.

A rational movie about time travel?  Yup, turns out it is possible after all.

Perhaps he doesn’t deserve the credit, but ever since Judd Apatow re-branded the adult comedy scene with his balance of foul language and from-the-heart sincerity, genre movies have started to step up.  Of course, you’ve still got piles of shit like Meet the Spartans and plenty of chick flicks like Valentine’s Day that aim for the lowest common denominator.  Cheap, poorly written comedies and sappy, predictable romances will still be around to exploit the stupid and the emotionally susceptible.  But ever since Apatow came along with The 40 Year Old Virgin, and especially since he followed it up with Knocked Up, more than a few romantic comedies that looked bland and cookie-cutter have turned out to be — surprise! — quite sharp.

Enter She’s Out of My League — this is a funny-ass movie..  With the exception of Blood Diamond, no movie has surprised me as much from the trailer to the real deal.  Starring Jay Baruchel as the skinny loser guy with no self-confidence (but a heart of gold!) who somehow snags the hottest chick on the block, She’s Out of My League hardly steps outside the bounds of its genre expectations, but it sure plays well within them.  The biggest weapon in its arsenal is the supporting cast of lovable losers, who, again, couldn’t be much more predictable.  But it doesn’t matter — they’re funny anyway.

T.J. Miller, who you might have heard, but barely seen, as the likable camera-guy in Cloverfield, channels Seth Rogen in The 40 Year Old Virgin as the wildly inappropriate crazy friend with curly hair.  He threatens to steal the spotlight away from Jay, but Nate Torrence often gets to it first.  He simply radiates charming innocence, and any roly-poly grown man citing Disney movies as allegories for romantic situations is guaranteed to win a few laughs just on principle.  That he does it so well only makes his character more endearing.

With a couple great backers behind him and some laugh-out-loud dialogue guaranteed from their hang out scenes, Jay Baruchel carries the leading man position surprisingly well.  Perhaps it’s no coincidence that he’s from the Apatow school of young actors, having starred in the TV series Undeclared and popping up as a bit part in Knocked Up.  As he proved in Tropic Thunder, there’s something infectious about his nervous mannerisms and voice — which is exactly what She’s Out of My League needed, since it’s playing on our sympathy for Jay’s character Kirk throughout.  Kirk is a nice guy, though he doesn’t really know it, barraged with one horribly uncomfortable situation after another.  His job as an airport security agent actually seems pleasant next to his Nascar-loving, Branson-bound family, who have essentially adopted Kirk’s ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend into the family.

For the most part, Kirk simply absorbs the awkwardness, and only one or two moments in the film reach out of the screen and make you squirm in your seat.   It’s a nice change from comedies that revel hanging awkward terror in the air like an oppressive cloud, and it’s much more fun to gawk and how totally, dreadfully, shudder-inducingly awful Kirk’s family is.

The movie’s propelled along by an energetic soundtrack and solid cinematography.  The camera work isn’t anything revolutionary, but it puts a stamp of quality on the movie that’s yet another sign She’s Out of My League stands above the pack.  It may not quite pack the emotional power or humor of Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  But it ends in the best possible way: leaving me wanting more time with this particular group of misfits.

Something about the heist genre seriously confuses me.  No no, it’s not the intricate/incomprehensible plots or the way the audience is manipulated into rooting for a lovable bunch of criminals.  Basically, what I don’t understand is why modern remakes like Ocean’s 11 and The Italian Job, and original creations like The Bank Job, exist at all.  I’m not saying they’re bad movies!  Ocean’s 11 in particular is tons of fun, with a fantastic cast and a great finale.  It’s just that, well, they’re all entirely unnecessary, because The Sting perfected the genre in 1973 and there was simply nowhere to go but down.

Robert Redford and Paul Newman star as a pair of lovable con artists — one up-and-coming, one an old pro — out to pull the ultimate grift on uptight Irish mobster Robert Shaw.  Redford and Newman don’t quite recapture the insanely perfect chemistry of Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, but that’s the kind of magic that only happens once in a lifetime.  Nevertheless, they both play their characters with easy grins and are a joy to watch.  Newman plays one of the best poker games put to film against an increasingly furious Shaw, while Redford bounces around Chicago looking utterly dashing in 1930s clothing, and boy does he know it.

If the film was down to Redford and Newman as Johnny Hooker and Henry Gondorff carrying a heist all by themselves, it would probably still be pretty great.  But the supporting cast comes into play in a big way, and the scope of the con dwarfs anything I’ve seen in another heist film.  The secondary characters like Kid Twist and J.J. Singleton show up, make sure the job sounds good and impossible, then jump in feet first and make it happen.  The Sting portrays an entire culture of con-men, interconnected and operated like a genuine industry.  Kid Twist rounds up recruits to perpetuate a massive robbery, and they’re all, obviously, perfect gentlemen.

That’s really what separates The Sting so profoundly from the rest of its genre — everything works together to project an easy, charming atmosphere of pure confidence, which permeates everything from the costuming to the set design to the intertitles.  The setting feels utterly authentic, even if it’s clearly filmed on sets, and Scott Joplin’s ragtime piece “The Entertainer” add enormously to the 1930s flavor.

The plot carries its weight just like everything else, and strikes a typical balance between revelation and secrets hidden until the grand finale.  And if a twist is a necessary component of any heist movie, The Sting may, again, have the very best.  It’s also the only film I’ve ever seen that begins a con with the opening credits.  But that’s easy to do, when you know you can pull it off.

Total bummer, Nintendo.  Total bummer.

Previews for Parenthood had me interested in the show before its March debut, mainly due to the involvement of producer Ron Howard.  And once I saw the pilot, I was mighty hopeful: Peter Krause led the cast with energy and believability, Lauren Graham played a pretty good Gilmore Girl, and in general the whole Braverman clan seemed to fit snugly together as a new TV family.

By the end of the season, though, things had changed.  What was my least favorite plot thread in the pilot — Dax Shepard’s discovery that he had a son — had become the stand-out relationship in the show, while the rest of the family’s problems sank deeper and deeper into melodrama.

In the pilot, Crosby (Dax Shepard) played the typical goof-off irresponsible brother who suddenly found himself confronted with parental responsibility.  It was easily the most predictable element of the show, starting off, but Dax Shepard really put his heart into it, creating both the funniest and most appealing member of the Braverman family as a result.  The writers kept it interesting by focusing on both his relationship with his son Jabbar and mother Jasmine, and wisely writing Crosby’s girlfriend Katie out of the show early.

Parenthood managed to balance lighthearted moments with serious “raising kids is tough” drama throughout the first half of the season, but inter-family drama just made the show less fun to watch as it went on.  Of course, “fun” isn’t a requirement for television drama: The Wire certainly never held back from brutalizing its characters.  But Parenthood is hardly The Wire.  At its heart it’s a feel-good show, about people overcoming their problems and living happily ever after, or at least happily until next season.  And I’m completely okay with that.  I may have snickered when my high school government/economics teacher took two class periods to show us Remember the Titans because it was a feel-good movie, but it does make you feel good, dammit.

Problem was, Parenthood got bogged down in entirely too much family melodrama to be fun or especially believable.  A teenage love-triangle can go a long way towards killing a show, and the resulting family in-fighting buried some of the more interesting relationships, such as Adam’s (Peter Krause) attempts to bond with his nephew.  In the end, Parenthood resolved most everything with a pretty little bow on its head, so maybe it will come back stronger next season with more interesting plot threads and less teenagers crying and squabbling.  But if I tune in, it’ll mostly be to see where Crosby’s going, and I’ll have my fingers crossed that his character can continue to surprise and improve through season two.

I think there’s a piece of me missing.  I didn’t know I was missing it until about three months ago when I first saw An Education.  The film was up for three Academy Awards.  And not throwaway awards, like sound editing or hairstyling.  We’re talking real awards: Best Picture and Best Actress.

I spent a couple hours watching An Education, and afterward I started to think something wasn’t quite right with me.  And ever since, that same niggling uncertainty will pop back up and gnaw at my confidence.  But today I found out for sure.  I watched Fish Tank.

Apparently 2009 was the year for depressing British adolescent flicks.  Or maybe those are the only kinds of movies British people make outside of the Bond franchise, and the two I’ve been exposed to are but the tip of a horrifyingly vast iceberg of teenage angst.  I really don’t want to know, because An Education and Fish Tank were enough to prove something to me.  Despite critical acclaim, despite passionate writing and emotional acting, despite powerful cinematography, I just can’t seem to care about young British girls and their experiences with older men.

Whatever part of my brain dishes out sympathy, it’s missing the receptor for the plight of the British youth.  After watching both of those movies, devoting four hours of my life to them, trying to appreciate them as the movie buff I aspire to be…mostly, I was just bored.

Don’t get me wrong — there’s a lot in each film I can appreciate.  An Eduation captures its setting beautifully, applying this glossy sheen of wonder to the high society of 1960s Europe.  It’s like a perfectly-resored antique, and an absolute pleasure to look at.  I just couldn’t draw much of an emotional impact out of the story.  The problem sure wasn’t the acting; Carey Mulligan’s Oscar nomination was well-deserved, and Peter Sarsgaard exuded Child Fucker from the moment he showed up on screen (and seriously that Minnie/Bubbalub scene is one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen).

Maybe that was the problem, actually.  When your movie is about a young girl falling for a dashing older guy who woos her with his charm and offers her the world, is there ever any doubt how things will turn out?  Watching An Education amounts to spending two hours waiting for something awful to happen, and then it does happen, and then people get over it and life goes on.  The story is told well, but it was destined to end the way it did from the very beginning, and didn’t bother to take any detours along the way.  It was a straight line from start to finish, and my sympathy didn’t make it far past the starting line.

Then there’s Fish Tank, which took an altogether different approach to the same coming of age dilemma.  An Education seemed to show us that life is pretty amazing, as long as you don’t get tricked by charming child predators.  Fish Tank’s motif is more along the lines of Life Is A Bit Shit, and nobody is really ever happy about anything.  The protagonist, Mia, and her ghastly mother try to out-horrible each other because they’re both pretty miserable.  The mother is the party type, still trying to have a good time and acting like she doesn’t have kids to be responsible for.  And Mia has so much rage and angst built up she just hates everbody, and has to tell them at every available opportunity.

The whole thing is recorded with handheld cameras, and the style works perfectly to capture the low-class urban social system at work, high-rise tenements and cramped spaces.  Mia spends most of her time wandering aimlessly or dancing.  And her dancing is complimented several times throughout the film, though it mostly seemed awful to me.  But if there’s anything I’m less fit to analyze than the emotional state of a 16 year old lower-class British girl, it’s probably dancing.

The worst thing about Fish Tank is that the only character who is remotely appealing is mom’s boyfriend Connor, who, of course, turns out to be a double-life leading sleaze.  The depiction of Mia’s life is raw and just terrible enough to feel authentic, but is also borderline uncomfortable to watch.

When I think back on coming of age stories, there are plenty that resonate with me.  Quite a few of my all-time favorites are coming of age tales, in fact.  But all of them are a little more nuanced, complicated, or masked than either An Education or Fish Tank.  Take FLCL, for example, which buries a very sweet growing up story underneath layers of Japanese pop-culture references, robot fights, and a level of weirdness only Japan can cram into a couple hours of television.  Or Ferris Bueller, which begins as a story about a lovable slacker and ends as a much more poignant story about Cameron, and what happens to love and friendship after high school.

Fish Tank and An Education simply didn’t resonate with me that way.  Much as I tried, I couldn’t generate the sympathy to feel much for the girls, as horrible as their situations were.  Maybe it’s because the prospect of having my life ruined by a charming-but-ultimately-evil 30 year old man is utterly foreign to me.  But I found Joyce Carol Oates’ novel You Must Remember This to be far more gripping and emotionally powerful than either film, even though it told much the same story.  The power of prose over film, I guess.  Or it could’ve just been the accents.

When I watch film noir, I’m peering through a window to an earlier time, a window to a place I never lived in.  It’s a place where men dress in pinstripe suits and trenchcoats for breakfast, rarely go anywhere without a fedora and a cigarette, and drink their liquor straight.  And they drink it constantly.

Granted, it’s a world that never really existed — not the way Hollywood of the 1940s and 50s made it out to be, where every guy’s a tough guy with a square jaw and an oblique wisecrack waiting behind a grim smile.  But it’s always felt like an authentic world, real within the confines of its own imagining, reflecting a now-departed society where people really did talk tough and mysteries really did exist, if you bothered to follow the trail of breadcrumbs from shady alley to shady alley.

Maybe that’s why Rian Johnson’s 2005 neo-noir Brick is so wildly surreal.  Set in modern-day suburban California, Brick transposes the language of classic noir into rapidfire, jargon-saturated dialogue, as heavily stylized as Juno but with none of the whimsy.  There are no men in suits and coats, no cigarette holders, no fedoras.  In their place are boys, teenagers treating high school social circles with the same gravity as mobsters and racketeers.  And they deserve that world-weary treatment; Brick presents an unrelentingly dark disturbia, in which crime and danger hardly bother to lurk beneath the surface.

Noir has jarringly and unabashedly been stuffed into a high school, bringing with it the eerily empty streets and late-night meetings of the urban underworld.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt, easily one of the strongest young actors of his generation, plays the classic loner — street-smart and tough enough to take a beating — searching for the identity of his ex-girlfriend’s murderer.  Brendan knows she’s in trouble, tracks her down, finds her dead; from there he’ll do whatever it takes to flush her killer into the open, even if it means dealing with heroin dealers and the cliques of rich kids manipulating everyone beneath them.

Brendan and his acquaintances clash with words loaded with venom, delivered a youthful speed that matches or outpaces anything in classic noir.  It borders on campy, much like the film adaptation of Frank Miller’s Sin City, but Brick never crosses the line from heavy-handed to excessive.  Simply put, it just works.

The danger feels real, and Brick is emotionally tense throughout Brendan’s journey.  I was transfixed, trying to piece together the clues and figure out exactly how much danger he was in.  With everyone playing their cards close to their chests and Brendan stirring up the underworld with the grace of a sledgehammer, it’s easy to forget how young all these kids are…until Johnson points it out with a tongue-in-cheek scene featuring someone’s mom, or an ironic moment when a violent drug-dealer casually asks, “You read Tolkien?  You know, the Hobbit books?”

Coupled with Nathan Johnson’s score, with shifts from mournful horns and retro piano to jarring percussion to heighten the intensity of Brendan’s most dramatic moments, Brick does the unthinkable: it out-noirs classic noir, without a trenchcoat in sight.  Rian Johnson knew his material, and he knew it well — low angle shots create imposing characters, and wide shots highlight the solemnity of Brendan’s world, a series of empty rooms, empty halls, empty fields.  And in a modern touch, when there’s violence, the camerawork suddenly explodes into motion.

Brick is a film so lovingly crafted, smartly written and seriously acted that it deserves to be seen more than once…and maybe read again, on top of that.