looking forward to it. Thanks for the interesting review Stephanie.

It is a pleasure to read a positive review written as well as a negative review, which, as we all know, are so much more fun to write.

Excellent review. I'm beginning to think there's something wrong with me as I seem to be the only person on the planet not to have liked Casino Royale. I went to a preview in London and although I was really looking forward to the film, I found it pretty mediocre. Daniel Craig was fine - and looks amazingly buff - but the plot was incomprehensible (can anyone explain the Algerian boyfriend to me?) and, worse, dull. I felt the film lurched from one action sequence to the next without anything in between, and as for the so-called gritty realism that's been so highly praised ... how many scenes were there of Bond outrunning the bad guys' bullets? Mind you, I hated the Keira Knightley Pride & Prejudice, too, so perhaps I'm just out of step with what everyone else enjoys!

Looks a lot like Vladimir Putin...crossed with Thom Yorke, maybe? Either way, people are gonna love him not because he's capable, but because he's ugly. We've been dying for an ugly Bond ever since Roger Moore. Guys feel threatened by pretty Bonds like Pierce Brosnan. And girls? We can learn to love anything that even barely impresses us. Even Justin Timberlake.

Oh, and enough with the references to Ursula Andress's glorious, yet over-impersonated emergence-from-the-sea scene. I didn't need to see Halle Berry do it, and I don't need to see Daniel Craig do it. Sure, it's clever and ironic in a sort of MC Escher sort of way -- it's a shallow twist, and merely being a twist isn't enough to warrant awe.

Judi Dench rocks.

Stephanie, I always read your reviews and oddly enough agree with them. I barely made it past the first paragraph of your piece on the new Bond film. Could you use any more wonderful adjectives to describe the "new" Bond guy? Wow, I am 65 years old so have seen my share of "Bonds" over the years, Sean was and always will remain the Best of the Bond Boys and Pierce a close 2nd, style, class, rakish, boyish, handsome, devilish and on and on and on. Now I have to figure out how I sneak in a few hours this coming pre holiday weekend and get away with Bond....thanks again for another great review.

Maggie

When I first saw the preview (on TV) of this film, my initial impression was, "Who is this guy (Craig) and how the hell did he picked as the new 007?" He is so radically different from the pretty boys of past performances that my response was "Ick!" Now, having seen the preview countless times, it occurs to me that the new Bond has a Steve McQueen-ish appeal -- definitely not a girly man but instead sexy in a ruggedly average way. I haven't paid to see a Bond movie since Connery departed the role, but having read this review by Stephanie Zacharek, I think I may give this new portrayal a shot.

Did you really like "The Legend of Zorro?" Although "Mask" was quite good, I thought "Legend" was a cliche-ridden piece of junk. I couldn't believe they actually used that bit about the cross stopping a bullet, but then there was hardly a cliche, visual or verbal, that they missed. And what was a Confederate general doing in a story set in 1850?

I think the reason that Craig is getting such critical praise as the new Bond is that he brings back the raw physicality to the role that Sean Connery introduced. Look at some of the brutal fight scenes in the early Bond films - the bedroom beatdown in "Dr. No" and the bruising train-compartment fight in "From Russia With Love." Connery's Bond got up close and took the punches that made the audience wince. But as the franchise wore on, it became more about gadgets and gunplay and big chase sequences than it did about physical combat - and that made the films alot more cartoonish and alot less visceral in my opinion. I haven't seen this one yet, but from everything I've read, it sounds like Craig's Bond brings this raw physicality back to the role (as well as Connery & Fleming's darker hints of Bond's borderline sociopathic tendencies), and that can only be a good thing for the franchise.

Sometimes it's about timing. Craig is a wonderful actor and I think we are only now ready to see the man behind the violence. Connery played the cynical finished product, many leagues away from the unpolished man who learns to meld ingenuity and street smarts with jet set sophistication. Dalton played the man who was still wild, still capable of being hurt emotionally and of acting with unprofessional disobedience, but with a developing elegance and cruel humor. Craig inherits the benefit of our maturing curiosity, no longer amused simply by explosions, gadgets, girls and exotic locales, but in need of understanding how Bond became the suave but ruthless and hardened 007. I'm glad they finally decided to unwrap this man of mystery even if it took them and us 45 years to get there.

WTF? James Bond playing Texas Hold 'Em instead of baccarat? What's next? Substituting a Ford F-series pickup for his Aston Martin and a Pabst Blue Ribbon for his Martini? Half the fun of the Casino Royale book was trying to figure out the bizarrely arcane rules of baccarat and having Bond call out "banco" at the appropriate moment. Texass hold 'em? Leave that to the poorly dressed lumpen slobs on ESPN.

No, no, a thousand times no! As you suggest in your review, nudity is not the same as eroticism. I'll look forward to seeing Eva Green in this one, but "Dreamers" was not good, and Green, for all the nudity in that film, was not very erotic. Bertolucci has some really hot scenes in his films (the dance hall sequence with Dominique Sanda and Stefania Sandrelli in 'The Conformist" comes vividly to mind) -- but not in "Dreamers."