Early on in Rian Johnson's time-travel thriller Looper, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) sits at a diner and chats with his self from 30 years in the future (Bruce Willis). When the younger Joe asks the older one about the specifics of temporal displacement, the latter dismisses the question, telling his interlocutor what a waste of time […]
Rian Johnson
It's Soooo High School
ROBERT WILONSKY'S TOP 10 FILMS OF '06 1. Brick (Rian Johnson, USA) 2. The Queen (Stephen Frears, U.K.) 3. United 93 (Paul Greengrass, U.K.-USA) 4. Cavite (Neill Dela Llana and Ian Gamazon, USA) 5. Dreamgirls (Bill Condon, USA) 6. The Devil Wears Prada (David Frankel, USA) 7. The Heart of the Game (Ward Serrill, USA) […]
Orange Pulp
Rian Johnson's feature debut as writer-director will wind up as one of the year's best films. A film noir partially shot in Johnson's San Clemente home town and set in a modern-day high school, it's Sam Spade roaming Ridgemont High; kids get doped up and knocked up and even rubbed out while speaking pulp-novel slang, […]
Thick As a Brick
Brickis a film so desperate to dazzle you with its ingenuity that you sit through the first half-hour or so feeling like you're watching a juggler as he strains to keep one chainsaw too many flying through the air. It's impressive but exhausting, and it takes a while for you to spot the intelligent and surprisingly […]
Not Another Teen Movie
Rian Johnson's debut feature Brick is an old-fashioned, film-noir mystery about kids in a contemporary Orange County high school. It's a peculiar mix of Chinatown and The O.C. that works much better than it should, and recently Johnson spoke to us about the film's decade-long journey to theaters. OC Weekly: When I describe this movie to […]
