Rian Johnson’s Brick is a fascinating movie. Straight film noire, it’s a hard-boiled crime thriller shot in a California high school. This is a familiar setup, but here it’s played absolutely straight: it’s pure hard-boiled noire, acted by people who happen to be very young. Occasionally, the seams do show: could a high school kid really have this much experience of women?

At other times, it works beautifully, as when Laura, a kid from school throwing a Halloween party, performs a sultry chanteuse with a jazz-backed recitation of W. S. Gilbert:

Only a high school student could play this straight, without a hint of irony.

The movie is currently streaming on Netflix. My queue is filled with movies like this, movies about which I no longer have any idea why they're in my queue or who told me to see them. But this one’s the real thing.