Nice take on a unique character.

Rating: 9/10 (22 November 2016)

I'll give this a 9/10 for the excellent acting, the nice special effects, and the usual Marvel production quality. This character (Dr. Strange) could have gone horribly wrong in translation to the screen but they pretty much got it right. And I went into the theater with some trepidation because Dr.Strange is probably my favorite Marvel character of the whole works, so I really didn't want to sit through a travesty. I actually started reading the comics in the honest-to-god Steve Ditko era (declaring my age here), loved his (literally) un-Earthly other-dimensional settings, and was totally grabbed by the ongoing plot that went on issue after issue unfolding bigger, deeper layers of reality from Nightmare to Mordo to Dormammu to Eternity.
Once I saw that Benedict Cumberbatch signed on for the lead role I was pretty confident that he'd capture it. (and I don't think there are that many top actors who could nail the combination of strength, self-confidence, intelligence, with just a bit of willingness to step over the edge into unreality. Robert Downey Jr may be great for Iron Man but he'd have ruined Dr.Strange.) But the other roles really filled out this movie. Rachel McAdams was great (and underused) in her role -- rightly upgraded from Night Nurse to a full-fledged doctor -- and she commanded the screen quite equally with B.C. in their scenes together. Would love to see her again. Benedict Wong was the surprise hit as the stone-faced librarian, and Chiwetel Ejiofor turned in his usual solid work as Mordo, someone who starts out on the right side but turns out to be just too rigid for his own good.
Now some minor cavils (nothing huge, but these prevent me from going to 10/10).

Tilda Swinton really commanded her role as Ancient One. The 'whitewashing' didn't bother me all that much, but what did bring an 'arrgghh' reaction was tying her power to the Dark Force, revealed at the end. That would *never* be the real (= comics) Ancient One's style.

Dormammu -- hmmm. Yes, he's the powerful villain Behind It All, but why just a huge black stony face?? The comics version (a complete humanoid figure, but with a head that's just a ball of flame) worked perfectly well and was plenty scary enough.

Where's Clea??? Can't they bring in Dr. Strange's REAL love interest, and from another dimension no less? oh well, maybe next time.

and I was really hoping Scott Derickson would go ALL the way to the real, Ditko-esque scenery -- alternate dimensional worlds built of nothing but overlapping geometric shapes extending off into the distance. They did get pretty close, especially in the rapid-fire 'grand tour' that the Ancient One put Stephen Strange through near the beginning. I just wanted more.

Overall, pretty satisfying and a great addition to the Marvel movie universe.