\'Skyfall\' Lands, Finally, in the U.S.

Beyond the festival circuit, moviegoers in Europe are often playing catchup with Americans, waiting weeks and sometimes months for films to arrive at the local cinema. Not so with the latest James Bond film “Skyfall,” which began its sweep - a victorious one - with a premiere in London on Oct. 23 and opened in dozens of countries around the world over the course of the next several days.

It being the 50th anniversary year for 007, the drum roll has been long and loud, as the franchise's fans everywhere debate the best cinematic Bond. (Daniel Craig, who stars in this one, comes out pretty well, although Sean Connery seems to have the edge.)

Reviews for “Skyfall” have been largely glowing. On the movie Web site Rotten Tomatoes it rates an astronomical 92 percent on the Tomatometer. Paris Match gave it a rare four stars; the Economist had high compliments, albeit some of them backhanded:

In contrast to the relentlessly bleak “Quantum of Solace,” Sam Mendes, the director, has taken the bold step of reintroducing humour, with the occasional joke worthy of Roger Moore. Luckily, Mr. Craig seems just as comfortable delivering puns as he is digging shrapnel from his chest.

In The Guardian Peter Bradshaw was bowled over by Judi Dench as M, calling her the “Bond girl to end all Bond girls.”

M is an imperious, subtly oedipal intelligence-matriarch with the double-O boys under her thumb. She's treating them mean. She's keeping them keen. And she is rewarded with passionate loyalty, varying with smouldering resentment. It's a combination with its own unspoken eroticism, and it has also created the conditions for one of the most memorable Bond villains in recent times.

The film opens Thursday in the United States, where critics have been adding their voices to the choir, and where the aggregating site Metacritic, has a countdown clock ticking off the s econds until the film's release. (There are some dissenters: David Denby writes in The New Yorker that “It would be lovely to announce that the new Bond movie is scintillating, or at least rambunctiously exciting, but ‘Skyfall,' in the recent mode of Christopher Nolan's ‘Batman' films, is a gloomy, dark action thriller, and almost completely without the cynical playfulness that drew us to the series in the first place.”

The New York Times critic Manohla Dargis relished the film:

Directed by a surprisingly well-equipped Sam Mendes, “Skyfall” is, in every way, a superior follow-up to “Casino Royale,” the 2006 reboot that introduced Mr. Craig as Bond. “Skyfall” even plays like something of a franchise rethink, partly because it brings in new faces and implies that Bond, like Jason Bourne, needed to be reborn. The tone is again playful and the stakes feel serious if not punishingly so. This is a Bond who, after vaulting into a moving train car, pauses to adjust a shirt cuff, a gesture that eases the scene's momentum without putting the brakes on it.

Read her complete review, headlined: “What a Man! What a Suit!” here.

And watch a video chat with the director here:

Have you seen the movie? Where did you see it, and what did you think?