Quantum of Solace (2008) | Women

"Look how well your charm works, James. They'll do anything for you, won't they?"

I like Agent Fields quite a bit even though she's the traditional archetype of the woman whom Bond charms into helping him against her better judgment. The Brosnan films called back to it too, but never this well. Agent Fields has an inner life that makes sense and we get to see her conflict over helping Bond. She claims to be angry at herself, but not so much that she's not enjoying what's going on.

I'm not saying she's the strongest character in the world, but I do like her so much more than Caroline from GoldenEye and especially Dr. Warmflash.

Speaking of ridiculous names, by the way: Fields has one. It's never mentioned in the movie (and when Bond asks her first name, she replies that it's "just Fields"), but the credits list her as Strawberry Fields. I get a lot of pleasure out of knowing that she has an absurd Bond Girl name, but she's not going to let it define her.



Camille Montes is going to be one of my Top Five favorite women in a Bond movie. First, she's played by Olga Kurylenko who won me over in the underrated Hitman (2007) and whom I always enjoy, even when the films she's in aren't that good. But more than that, Camille is a unique Bond Girl. She and Bond share a kiss at the end, but it's not even a romantic one. There's zero sexual tension between them, because they're both too busy focusing on other things.

She's the hero of her own story. It just so happens to intersect with Bond's and he accidentally interrupts and ruins hers for a bit. His helping her out isn't because she can't do it on her own; it's restitution. It's like when you unintentionally knock someone over, the proper thing to do is to stop and help her up again. It's not that she can't get up on her own; it's just acknowledging and trying to make up for your mistake.

I love Melina Havelock's revenge story in For Your Eyes Only, too, but I like this one better. With Melina, Bond's a mentor as well as a lover, so there's a certain amount of her deferring to him. He doesn't stop her from taking revenge, but he does warn her about the consequences of it. Craig's Bond never does that with Camille. He offers her some advice on how to kill when it's personal, but that's it. She's totally doing her own thing and he's totally on board with it.

And of course he is. Their stories are separate, but they're also the same. Both are after revenge. I don't believe Bond lets his desire for revenge compromise his sense of duty, but there's no doubt that he would love to murder all the people who had a hand in Vesper's death. He's just more conflicted about it than Camille is.

But I think her clarity helps him out. I think he gets some resolution vicariously through her and that it helps him through the healing process.



It's people like Canadian agent Corrine Veneau that make me especially glad I haven't titled this section "Bond Girls." Corrine isn't a Bond Girl in any sense of the term. She and he barely interact and when they do, it's not the least bit romantic. But since she's a woman, I get to talk about her in this post and I'm glad, because she's great.

First of all, she's played by Stana Katic from Castle, which is awesome. But also, Katic just does a great job with her. She barely gets to talk, but as soon as she figures out what Bond is revealing about her boyfriend, it's obvious that she's deeply embarrassed and ashamed, but also relieved that she's found out before something tragic happened. Her almost inaudible "thank you" to Bond as she slinks out of the hotel room is heart-breaking. Makes me extremely glad that Katic went on to do bigger things.

My Favorite Bond Women

1. Tracy Bond (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
2. Vesper Lynd (Casino Royale)
3. Melina Havelock (For Your Eyes Only)
4. Camille Montes (Quantum of Solace)
5. Kara Milovy (The Living Daylights)
6. Wai Lin (Tomorrow Never Dies)
7. Paula Caplan (Thunderball)
8. Tatiana Romanova (From Russia With Love)
9. Natalya Simonova (GoldenEye)
10. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)

5 Movies I Didn't Care For from 2014

35. I, Frankenstein



A lot of people give the Underworld movies a hard time, but I genuinely and unironically love them. So when I heard that the creators of that were taking on my favorite monster of all time, I didn't expect the bland, forgettable mess that it it was. My hope was that if it was bad it would at least fail spectacularly, but it doesn't take enough chances for that. It's not awful, it's just lukewarm, and that's the worse crime.

34. Transformers: Age of Extinction



I thought I'd given up on the Transformers movies after the second one and didn't see the third, but they pulled me back in with dinosaurs. And I admit that Pain and Gain softened some of my distaste for Michael Bay movies. Age of Extinction has all of Bay's usual flaws though and the dinosaurs don't even show up until the final act, so I think I can safely say that I'm out again. Unless Stanley Tucci comes back, because he's awesome and his character is awesome and I pretty much want a movie that's just about him. But please lets not have any Transformers or Michael Bay in it.

33. This Is Where I Leave You



I love these big family comedy-dramas with huge casts and my mouth was watering to watch one with Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, and Timothy Olyphant in it. It has its funny moments, but sadly the characters don't feel like real people. Instead, they're just problems in need of solutions and the only answers the movie has for them are trite and unconvincing.

32. The November Man



Though the Pierce Brosnan Bond films are my least-favorite run in that series, it's not because of Brosnan and I usually like him in other kinds of spy movies. But this isn't one of his better ones. It makes a brave choice in pitting Brosnan's older spy against his younger protege and not giving the audience an easy choice of whom to root for. Unfortunately, that approach backfires. Both men are seriously screwed up and both have moments of heroism, but they're balanced so well against each other that I gave up caring who would win. Instead, I focused on Olga Kurylenko. Which isn't a horrible option. She's not a main character and doesn't get enough screen time, but when she is there she's pretty great.

31. The Monuments Men



I wrote a pretty thorough post on my problems with The Monuments Men, but the short version is that while it has a great cast and characters I cared about, it asked me to take their mission more seriously than it did. I wanted either a fun heist movie or a film that would make me feel deeply about the importance of art, but by trying to be something in between, The Monuments Men is neither of those things.

Movie News: The Happiest Hive of Scum and Villainy on Earth

Well, the Twitter experiment is a bust. Partially because I got tired of struggling with Tinying links, but mostly because it just wasn't as much fun. Time consuming as they are, I actually like creating these posts. Thanks for your patience while I figured that out.

Some of the stuff below was on Twitter last week, but not all of it.

Empires of the Deep



Empires of the Deep is the undersea adventure being produced by both US and Chinese filmmakers. I've talked about it before because I love the concept, but I've also been skeptical that it'll be any better than Dragon Wars. There's some encouraging news though in that Olga Kurylenko (Hitman, Quantum of Solace) will be in it. Dragon Wars also had some folks I liked in it, so this is no guarantee of quality, but Kurylenko is much better looking than Jason Behr and Craig Robinson. If nothing else, the movie will still be breathtakingly gorgeous. [/Film]

How to Train Your Dragon 2



Repeating myself from Twitter: I'm tempted to take a cynical view of Dreamwork's greenlighting a How to Train Your Dragon sequel, but a) this should come as absolutely no surprise, and b) I loved the first one so much that I'd like more. I just hope it's more along the lines of Shrek 2 (which I liked better than the first one) than Madagascar 2. [/Film]

Robin Hood Stills



/Film has tons of them.

A teenaged assassin, Thor, and Star Wars Land after the break.