It's quite difficult for an actor to convincingly play one movie character, with all their faults, tics and foibles. Even the greatest actors in the world don't always get the complexities of a performance right, even with all their attention focused on the part. Imagine the difficulty, then, of one actor facing down the challenge of playing not one character, but two, in the exact same goddamn movie.
It can be galling to recognize that some of the most famous thesps in the world got to be in their position without actually being able to act much at all. Look at Ryan Phillippe, Megan Fox, or Ashton Kutcher. All three are recent examples of famous 'actors' who never really proved they could act a damn.
Sam Mendes' Spectre, the 24th entry in the James Bond franchise, is not a bad film. Critical consensus indicates it's flawed, but still basically enjoyable and artfully made by a director who's proven surprisingly adept at blockbuster filmmaking. Nevertheless, Spectre has the misfortune of following one of the greatest Bond movies of all-time: Mendes' own Skyfall. A Bond film made to simultaneously bring 007 up-to-date and celebrate 50 years of the character, Skyfall is comfortably the best of the Daniel Craig Bonds. Spectre comes in at a respectable third.
Overlong and bloated, Spectre is a few rewrites away from greatness. Still, there's no denying that it's an eccentric epic and undeniably fun, despite a languorous final stretch.
Tom Hardy. Idris Elba. Hugh Jackman. Damian Lewis. These are the names that are currently being bandied around as producers line up prospective replacements for Daniel Craig when he jumps ship post-Spectre. At least, that's what we should probably assume at this point, considering Craig said in a recent interview that he'd rather slash his wrists than play Bond again.
In Lenny Abrahamson's Room, a mother and her son are kept captive inside 'Room' - actually a garden shed behind the house of 'Old Nick', the disturbed man who keeps them locked in and fed. It's a bold concept, and one that director Abrahamson must have been mad or overly-ambitious (or both) to take on. And yet the ambition paid off, as Room is drawing rave reviews from critics, some of whom see it as an Oscar contender.
