Brick

At the 2005 Sundance Film Festival filmmaker Rian Johnson made an auspicious debut with his dynamite feature BRICK. A twisty mash-up of 40's noir and a Southern California high school set-up, BRICK is our next Rialto Recommends. The log line for the film seems simple: A teenage loner pushes his way into the underworld of a high school crime ring to investigate the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend. The Dallas Morning News said "BRICK drops down like a frenzied teen fever dream of criminal patter and hairpin plot turns. A word to the wise: Pay attention, or you'll feel a lot less wise." While the Los Angeles Times said "BRICK is as difficult to categorize as its hard-boiled, made-up lingo is hard to understand -- neither of which should deter anyone from seeing it. It's rare to see a debut as witty and assured as this." And the Village Voice raved "BRICK represents an impossible dream, though: the reuse -- with conviction -- of cinema's most calloused and beloved genre as applied to contemporary middle-class life." Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt BRICK is available to rent for a modest fee from Apple, Amazon, GooglePlay, YouTube, Vudu, DirectoTV and others HERE. Have your remote handy. BRICK has an internal slang language all its own. So much so that Focus Features sent us glossaries to give out to customers.