Brick (2005)

Premise: Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) receives a mysterious phone call from his ex, Emily (Emilie de Ravin), and he follows the trail to her body. With the help of The Brain (Matt O'Leary), he sets out to find her killer, getting mixed up with two femme fatales (Nora Zehetner and Meagan Good) and a handful of dealers on varying levels of the ladder.

Did I mention that it's set in a SoCal high school?

Truth be told, when it comes to topsy-turvy intrigue, melodrama, meta-referencing, off-the-wall pop culture references, indecipherable slang, and the strange interconnectedness of all things, high school is the perfect setting. As for a sleek noir thriller, well, that's where Rian Johnson (writer/director) gets bonus points for originality in his feature length debut.

I'd make some sort of Dashiell Hammett/Sam Spade comparison for our protagonist, but I've already read it in enough reviews to suspect it's in the press packet. Nonetheless, JGL makes good on his sensational turn in Mysterious Skin, providing another rich and deeply etched performance of the loneliest teenage boy, this time with more motivation and a more sinister streak.

Nathan Johnson's score threw me off my game at first (are those cowbells?), but it's quirky charms quickly grew on me.

That's another thing I'll say for Rian Johnson - unlike so many lesser films that populate cineplexs today, he didn't rely quirk to fill in the back story but did it through careful and subtle characterization and excellent shot choices. Score one for cinematographer Steve Yedlin as well.

And as for that final scene, watching his world silently implode, nothing short of brilliant. A-