Judi Dench the updated Walt Disney World Epcot attraction Spaceship Earth in February 2008. The same month, she was named as the first official patron of the York Youth Mysteries 2008, a project to allow young people to explore the York Mystery Plays through dance, film-making and circus. Her only film of 2008 was Marc Forster's "Quantum of Solace", the twenty-second Eon-produced James Bond film, in which she reprised her role as M along with Daniel Craig. A direct sequel to the 2006 film "Casino Royale", Forster felt Dench was underused in the previous films, and wanted to make her part bigger,
Judi Dench In his review of the film, James Berardinelli from "ReelViews" remarked that he felt that Dench's character served no more "useful purpose than to give [her] an opportunity to appear in a science-fiction movie". She followed "Riddick" with a more traditional role in Charles Dance's English drama "Ladies in Lavender", also starring friend Maggie Smith. In the film, Dench plays one half of a sister duo and takes it upon herself to nurse a washed up stranger to health, eventually finding herself falling for a man many decades younger than she. The specialty release garnered positive reviews from critics, with