Bondsploitation

He's no patch on Sean Connery, but Roger Moore's rigid, dutifully hedonist James Bond may be closer to the original Fleming conception. You'll have plenty of chances to compare, as Beer and Movie closes its spring run with three Moore appearances: Live and Let Die, The Man With the Golden Gun and Octopussy. He gets more comfortable as he settles into the suits and sheets, but Moore's initial image (an alarmed Ken doll, basically) is a perfect contrast for Live and Let Die, which plops Bond into Harlem and the Caribbean; he gets called "honky" a lot. Bond gets to perform some neat tricks—turning aftershave and a cigar into a blowtorch, having interracial sex—but much of the appeal can be found in a line from one of his Harlem tails: "You can't miss him—it's like following a cue ball." The ethnic relations are, in short, almost as enlightened as Flashman and the Redskins. Laurelhurst.

  1. Best paired with: BridgePort coffee porter.
  2. Also showing: Barney’s Version (Laurelhurst), The King’s Speech (Academy, Kennedy School, Laurelhurst, Mission, St. Johns, Valley).

WWeek 2015

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