Brick (2005)

Director: Rian Johnson
Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lukas Haas, Emilie de Ravin, Nora Zehetner, Noah Fleiss

Get our your genre guidebook, because Brick is a neo-noir with classic noir dialogue set among a high school student body in the sun-dappled west. Chinatown meets The Breakfast Club with the sensibilities of Wes Anderson and Raymond Chandler. Or something.

Turning in his most overlooked performance, Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Brendan Frye, a self-styled detective investigating the murder of his sweetheart. What he uncovers pulls him into a world of drugs and deceit—all going down in the basement while the parents murmur upstairs.