Brick

Brick (2006) — watch online on iFILM: Rian Johnson's debut feature, transplanting the hard-boiled detective fiction of the 1940s into the hallways and parking lots of a California high school. Crime, mystery, 109 minutes.

Brendan is a quiet loner. His ex-girlfriend Emily calls him out of nowhere, scared and asking for help — then goes silent. He starts digging. The search pulls him into a drug operation run entirely by other teenagers, with a hierarchy that mirrors every classic noir: the boss, the muscle, the femme fatale. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Brendan with the stone-cold focus of a Dashiell Hammett protagonist; the dialogue is written in that register too, and it holds.

Shot for $475,000, the film won the Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at Sundance 2005 and launched Johnson toward Looper and eventually the Star Wars franchise. Stream Brick in full online on iFILM.