Old Reviews: Bottle Rocket and Brick

Crazy spins on crim/noir films/first films from Wes Anderson and Rian Johnson.

First up is Wes Anderson's 1996 "Bottle Rocket." The film starts off in true Anderson-style: Dignan (Owen Wilson) "rescues" Anthony (Luke Wilson) from a voluntary mental hospital. Dignan proceeds to show Anthony his autistically 75 year plan, which involves many heists. To begin, they start small with a practice heist on Anthony's house. They continue to engage in larger and larger-scale heists as the movies unfolds. It's pretty hilarious and actually fun to see the relationship between Dignan and Anthony bounce up and down. Though it's not my favorite Wes Anderson movie, it's fun to see where Anderson and the Wilson bros go their starts. This movie is much more loose in its style than, say, Anderson's sophomore effort, "Royal Tenenbaums." However, the Anderson feel is still there, only less extreme. Check it out on Netflix Instant. Martin Scorsese thought it was one of the top 10 movies of the 1990s!

Second up is Rian Johnson's 2005 "Brick." Rian Johnson has only three films under his belt to date: "Brick," "Brother's Bloom," and, most recently, "Looper." Of the three, "Brick" is my favorite. It is really, really cool to see a 1940s film noir take place in the setting of high school or, alternatively, a high-school movie that replaces Humphrey Bogart in "Maltese Falcon" with Joseph Gordon Levitt (in fact, they both use the line "Now you are dangerous" on the femme fatale of each film). It might be best to watch with subtitles if you are not accustomed to hearing high-schoolers speak this way (they don't; that's the point). If you enjoy old film noirs and love the way they speak in those films, you'll love this movie. It's not just the dialogue though (though its importance is not to be understated: keep in mind the phrases "tug," "the Pin," "poor Frisco," and, of course, "brick"). Femme fatales galore, intricate and insanely confusing plots, and a tough but realistic protagonist. There's more "neo" than just the high-school setting that should be noted as well. The way the film looks and how it was shot is original for this kind of film. Johnson was more inspired by Sergio Leone's Westerns and Roman Polanski's "Chinatown" (also a neo-noir) when it comes to how the film looks rather than "Maltese Falcon" or "The Big Sleep." The outcome is fairly brilliant and, especially, refreshingly fun. Check it out on Netflix Instant.