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leia131Next on our 2014 Movie list: The Maltese Falcon.
I like the way I did my OuaT review last week, so I'm going to try that for my next couple of movie reviews and see how it goes.
The Good:
-The mystery is solid, and you don't know until the very end exactly what's going on, or what game everyone is playing.
-Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade is, as Andrew said, everything you've ever wanted in a hard boiled private detective. He's also pretty damn awesome at his job, while not being so good that it's unrealistic. Plus, he disarms pretty much everyone else in the movie at least once, and it's badass.
-The acting is good, Peter Lorre and Humphrey Bogart especially.
-It was a lot funnier than I expected a film noir to be. For instance, Bogart at one point beats Lorre with his own hand. True story.
-Spade's secretary Effie is amazing. She's more like a third detective partner than just someone who answers the phone, and she's competent and trustworthy and the only women in the movie that I never wanted to punch.
The Bad:
-Everyone (Bogart especially) has a tendency to talk extremely fast, particularly when they're explaining backstory and motives, which makes the plot kind of hard to follow. We had to rewind a couple of times to watch stuff again, because I kept asking, "Wait, what? What's going on now?"
-The 'love story' aspect was totally unnecessary, kind of sexist (though that's not unexpected), and just stupid. (The thing about Spade sleeping with Miles' wife was similarly unneeded and dumb). Spade and Brigid kept going on about how the loved each other, and I was like, "Seriously? You've known each other for literally three days, she's never been honest with you EVER, you were sleeping with like two other women, I'm just not buying it." They could have left that nonsense out.
The End:
-The ending with the whole thing being for nothing, because the falcon was fake, is really the only way this plot could have ended. The falcon has to be there, because Brigid has to think she has the real thing in order for her actions to have a strong motivation, but it can't be real, because the bad guys can't end up with it, and Spade wouldn't really know what to do with it. Plus, it lends a certain delicious irony to the entire debacle. (And I guess it wasn't TOTALLY for nothing, since it did stop those guys' reign of terror.)
Answer to last Sunday's song: Jump, by Van Halen. No one guessed this, but I obviously had to quote a Van Halen song on a Bill and Ted post.
I like the way I did my OuaT review last week, so I'm going to try that for my next couple of movie reviews and see how it goes.
The Good:
-The mystery is solid, and you don't know until the very end exactly what's going on, or what game everyone is playing.
-Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade is, as Andrew said, everything you've ever wanted in a hard boiled private detective. He's also pretty damn awesome at his job, while not being so good that it's unrealistic. Plus, he disarms pretty much everyone else in the movie at least once, and it's badass.
-The acting is good, Peter Lorre and Humphrey Bogart especially.
-It was a lot funnier than I expected a film noir to be. For instance, Bogart at one point beats Lorre with his own hand. True story.
-Spade's secretary Effie is amazing. She's more like a third detective partner than just someone who answers the phone, and she's competent and trustworthy and the only women in the movie that I never wanted to punch.
The Bad:
-Everyone (Bogart especially) has a tendency to talk extremely fast, particularly when they're explaining backstory and motives, which makes the plot kind of hard to follow. We had to rewind a couple of times to watch stuff again, because I kept asking, "Wait, what? What's going on now?"
-The 'love story' aspect was totally unnecessary, kind of sexist (though that's not unexpected), and just stupid. (The thing about Spade sleeping with Miles' wife was similarly unneeded and dumb). Spade and Brigid kept going on about how the loved each other, and I was like, "Seriously? You've known each other for literally three days, she's never been honest with you EVER, you were sleeping with like two other women, I'm just not buying it." They could have left that nonsense out.
The End:
-The ending with the whole thing being for nothing, because the falcon was fake, is really the only way this plot could have ended. The falcon has to be there, because Brigid has to think she has the real thing in order for her actions to have a strong motivation, but it can't be real, because the bad guys can't end up with it, and Spade wouldn't really know what to do with it. Plus, it lends a certain delicious irony to the entire debacle. (And I guess it wasn't TOTALLY for nothing, since it did stop those guys' reign of terror.)
Answer to last Sunday's song: Jump, by Van Halen. No one guessed this, but I obviously had to quote a Van Halen song on a Bill and Ted post.
