Brick Archives - The Playlist

The 6 Best Movies To Buy Or Stream This Week: ‘The Lighthouse,’ ‘Brick’

The Playlist — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 22:49:32 +0000

Every Tuesday, discriminating viewers are confronted with a flurry of choices: new releases on disc and on-demand, vintage, and original movies on any number of streaming platforms, catalog titles making a splash on Blu-ray or 4K. This weekly column (migrating to The Playlist from Flavorwire, it’s home for the past five years) will sift through all of those choices to pluck out the movies most worth your time, no matter how you’re watching. This week: an exhilaratingly bizarre sophomore effort, two ‘90s “Irishman”-adjacent gems, two timely catalog releases from KL Studio Classics, and a new Cukor in the Criterion Collection.

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Taking A Deeper Look At The ‘Black Panther’ Hype [Adjust Your Tracking Podcast]

Erik McClanahan — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 19:28:40 +0000

All movies should be put in context, and reviewed as such…

On this episode of Adjust Your Tracking, Joe and I leap in to hyperbolic fray of admiration for the latest, record-breaking Marvel movie “Black Panther” (see our fair, even handed B+ review here). We both find lots to admire and enjoy about the movie, but it’s still a Marvel product and suffers accordingly.

Continue reading Taking A Deeper Look At The ‘Black Panther’ Hype [Adjust Your Tracking Podcast] at The Playlist.

The 50 Best Crime Movies Of The 21st Century So Far

Oliver Lyttelton — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 18:45:23 +0000

If you go and see “Baby Driver” this weekend expecting another gag-heavy comedy in the vein of Edgar Wright’s earlier films, you’ll likely be in a shock. The absolutely tremendous car-chase-musical (read our review) is funny, sure, but that’s not its primary aim: in a big departure from Wright, it has more in common with classic 70s crime cinema than with, “Hot Fuzz” (for example) using the director’s formal gifts in service of a surprisingly hard-boiled heist movie.

Continue reading The 50 Best Crime Movies Of The 21st Century So Far at The Playlist.

The 50 Best Teen Movies Of All Time

Oliver Lyttelton — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 18:59:43 +0000

It seems that every year another fresh crop of filmmakers make their debut movies, and a high proportion are coming-of-age stories. A sadly low percentage, however, are any good, which is why this week brings us significant reason to rejoice: First-time filmmaker Kelly Fremon Craig brings us the adorable, sprightly “The Edge Of Seventeen.” In many ways this year’s “The Diary Of A Teenage Girl” in being both the debut of an exciting new female filmmaker and a funny, fresh, newly insightful take on the teen-movie genre, ‘Seventeen’ perhaps does not reinvent the wheel in the way that Marielle Heller‘s film did, but it’s such a bouncy picture, centered around such a tremendously relatable turn from Hailee Steinfeld, that to disparage it as a result would be a little like critiquing a puppy.

Continue reading The 50 Best Teen Movies Of All Time at The Playlist.

Rian Johnson Provides More Details On ‘Looper’

Oliver Lyttelton — Thu, 06 May 2010 13:04:00 +0000

Rian Johnson has turned out to be a rather divisive filmmaking figure; this writer, and many others, found “Brick” to be one of the most original and promising debuts by a filmmaker in recent years (it made our Best of 2006 list, as it happens), and found “The Brothers Bloom” to be a deeply pleasurable experience. Plenty of others don’t share these views, however, and there are some here who would rather undergo “Marathon Man”-style dentistry than sit through the latter, in particular.

Continue reading Rian Johnson Provides More Details On ‘Looper’ at The Playlist.

Best Of The Decade: The Playlist’s Best Films Of 2006

Rodrigo Perez — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:47:00 +0000

Here are our 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 picks.

The mid-aughts were incredibly strong for movies — we dealt with 2005 yesterday, and had to expand the list it was such a good year, while 2007 (coming tomorrow) had several of the very best movies of the whole decade. In between the two, 2006 is less immediately stacked with goodness, but over time has been revealed as a truly great year for genre filmmaking.

Continue reading Best Of The Decade: The Playlist’s Best Films Of 2006 at The Playlist.

Best Of The Decade: The Playlist’s Best Films Of 2005

Rodrigo Perez — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:55:00 +0000

Aka the year where we celebrate *every* movie released.

Here’s our 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 picks.

In creating and arguing over all our lists, 2005 was easily the most difficult year (yes, we’re going to say that about every year) and it’s perhaps fitting that the mid-way point of the decade yielded the best crop of pictures. We could have easily listed 20 films here, but once again, stuck to 10, uh sort of… (and since we’ve saved documentaries for another feature, it helps give us breathing room).

Continue reading Best Of The Decade: The Playlist’s Best Films Of 2005 at The Playlist.

Rian Johnson Never Met A Genre He Didn’t Love; Eclectic Filmmaker To Direct Futuristic Action Film, ‘Looper’

Spencer Martin — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:14:00 +0000

The ever-evolving, eclectic and up-and-coming auteur Rian Johnson is set to expand his portfolio once again by bringing his unique point of view to the action genre. Johnson is set to direct the time-travel thriller “Looper,” from his own original script. He is teaming up with producer Ram Bergman, who produced his previous two films, “Brick” and the recent “The Brothers Bloom,” which screened at this years Toronto Films Festival and received strong word of mouth as well a December release date (but a film we didn’t particularly like as it was whimsically overwrought).

Continue reading Rian Johnson Never Met A Genre He Didn’t Love; Eclectic Filmmaker To Direct Futuristic Action Film, ‘Looper’ at The Playlist.

‘Able Danger’: Not The Mind Blowing Neo-Noir It Thinks It Is

Spencer Martin — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:05:00 +0000

Dave Herman’s directorial debut, “Able Danger,” a neo-noir surrounding a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and the dragnet he finds himself in after running into a mysterious woman, is a rookie effort to the core while lacking the essential elements that make successful neo-noirs work.

Thomas Flynn, played by Adam Nee, is a 9/11 conspiracy theorist who spends his days as the owner of a liberal coffee shop in Brooklyn (based off the real-life Vox Pop in Brooklyn) and nights as a maverick blogger/barely-published author.

Continue reading ‘Able Danger’: Not The Mind Blowing Neo-Noir It Thinks It Is at The Playlist.