Ask Mick LaSalle: Is Daniel Craig too thuggish for Bond?
Dear Mick LaSalle: I find Daniel Craig too thuggish a Bond for my tastes. He lacks suaveness and the epicurean’s delight in sensual pleasure that Sean Connery created with a twinkle in his eye. Craig’s eyes are steely, and when he wears a tux, he looks like a bulldog with a chain around its neck. There’s no whimsical mischief — he’s a gloomy Bond.
Neil Silverman, San Jose
Dear Neil Silverman: Interesting. Your description of Craig is largely accurate (except for the part about his lacking mischief ), but a lot of what you see as flaws, I like. Craig’s blue-eyed stare is one of the coldest in the world, second only to Vladimir Putin’s, and he does look like a bulldog in a tuxedo, but to me that harks back to Sean Connery. I grew up in the era of Roger Moore, and so when I first saw the Connery Bonds, Connery looked like a gorilla to me — like a hairy ape in evening clothes. He had a veneer of polish, but underneath that was brutality. Eventually, I came to appreciate that, and Craig is the only Bond since then to share that quality. As for gloominess, that’s something Craig has to avoid, because it’s his default tendency. But aside from his performance in “Skyfall,” he has managed his gloom fairly well.
Dear Mick: I’m curious what you think about the internal dialogue in “Strange Interlude” (1932). Are there other films that have used the same way of expressing how characters really feel?
Kathleen Elzey, Elk Grove
Dear Kathleen: That is one seriously demented movie. The movie is based on a Eugene O’Neill play, in which the characters, in between speaking to each other, say their thoughts out loud to the audience, so that all the subtext is spoken. Before the film version was made, someone realized that that kind of thing could never work onscreen. Clearly, the only smart alternative was to just adapt the script without those spoken thoughts, but no. Instead, they got the zany idea to have the actors speak their dialogue and then pause as a recording of their thoughts is played out loud. This meant that with each exchange, the actors had to stop and look pensive as their thoughts played back. The effect was utterly bizarre, and I don’t think anybody else has tried it since. Why would they? The effect was unintentionally comical and became an object for satire almost immediately. (In the 1932 film “Me and My Gal,” Spencer Tracy tells Joan Bennett that he just got back from a nutty picture called “Strange Innertube,” and for the next few exchanges we hear their thoughts.) Yet, strangely enough, “Strange Interlude” isn’t bad — especially the first hour. It’s amazing how fast we get used to the voice-over gimmick, and what’s left is a seriously adult movie dealing with some unexpected material.
Hi There Mick: I was blown away by “Room.” I read that Brie Larson is an Oscar front runner, but do they ever reward a performance as perfect as that little boy’s?
Daric Wolkenhauer, San Francisco
Hi There Daric: Brie Larson is wonderful in “Room,” but I agree that the key to the movie is Jacob Tremblay as her 5-year-old son. If you connect with the character of the little guy, and contemplate what it would be like to live your whole life in a space 10 feet square, with a completely distorted conception of the world, then you’ll probably love the movie. On the other hand, if your point of identification is the mother, and you can’t stop thinking about how horrible it would be to be trapped in a 10-foot-square room with a kid who’s screeching and carrying on, then you’ll not only want them to escape that room. You’ll want to run out of the theater. I was in the latter category, but I have to respect the emotional generosity and moral discipline of people in the former.