Get ready for the world's most hardboiled high school. Before Knives Out and Poker Face, Rian Johnson’s knockout debut, BRICK (2005), rewrote the rules by dropping a Dashiell Hammett-style detective into the locker-lined hallways of a California high school. When Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) gets a frantic call from his ex, he plunges into a labyrinth of teen tyrants, laconic stoners, and a shadowy drug kingpin known only as “The Pin.” The dialogue crackles with invented slang (“Bull’s-eye, you dope!”), the intrigue is thicker than a textbook, and the case is colder than a cafeteria lunch.
A genre-bending masterpiece that plays The Maltese Falcon with a trapper keeper, BRICK is witty, stylish, and endlessly rewatchable. Don’t miss a special pre-show conversation with CBC’s film critic Eli Glasner, who’ll help us crack this cult classic’s code before the lights go down.
