We watched Casino Royale this evening with a young thing who had only seen Skyfall. The first difference that strikes the eye is how much Daniel Craig has bulked out and, well, aged in the intervening six years (Skyfall’s plot makes the most of that, portraying Bond as a clapped-out psychopath). The second is how much tighter the direction of Casino seems, compared to Mendes’s Skyfall. That is not necessarily a criticism. Mendes deliberately gave his characters (above all, Bardem’s villain) time to develop. The difference, to use a fairground metaphor, is like that between those modern roller coasters that just will not leave their passengers alone, from beginning to end of the ride, and those that give the passenger the time to wonder about – and fear – what is going to come next. Put another way, Skyfall is more old-fashioned in its approach than Casino. Both are great entertainment, though comic imitations of Craig’s Bond’s running technique (flat hands held parallel to the body and pumped up and down alongside the ears, suit still buttoned, flaps flapping) are now endemic in the household…