This may be the documentary they wanted to make, but it doesn’t  actually seem to be the one they did make.

Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is touched on in the film, but as one person (Randy Oliver) puts it, sometimes things like this are cyclical and happen for no particular reason other than it just does. Maybe it is systemic pesticides, maybe it is disease, maybe it is the stress that bees face due to the migratory nature of commercial pollination, maybe it is some combination of these and other factors, or maybe it’s something else altogether, but the film itself takes no particular stance on it, nor does it offer any steps that any individual could take to help. Dave Mendes is featured, talking to groups about pesticides, trying to get people together to do something (in the film, what this may be isn’t entirely clear). Outside of the film, anyone interested in bees at all knows that Mendes is all over the place talking about the need for research and so forth, but this isn’t really touched on in the film. There are some shots of a congressional hearing talking about money for research, but nothing more than one might get in a summary story from CNN or the like.

The rest of the film focuses on the Seppis, a religious family running a commercial operation in California. Most of that focus is not on the effects on CCD on their operation – although there are some points where they do talk about dead hives – but on their negotiating attempts with almond farmers to get a certain price point per hive for almond season. While this holds some interest for people really interested in beekeeping, I imagine this would be fairly boring overall. Quick summary: almond farmers pay migratory beekeepers a price per hive to have bees to pollinate the short flowering season in the fields. With hundreds of thousands of acres of almonds in California, as you might guess this involves a lot of money in the end: with an estimated 1.4 million hives required to pollinate, do the math at even a hundred dollars per hive.

And this business side, I think, is where people like me begin to really think about what’s going on in this film. Before I get into that, though, I have to point out one of the most irritating moments about this film, which involves one of the Seppi sisters talking about the hive. While holding a frame covered with bees, she points out the queen, and says, “They’re somewhat of a matriarchal system.” No, they are a matriarchal system. That’s what it means when the female of the species is in charge, making the decisions, and doing the work. She mentions the queen lays all the eggs and the workers do the nursing, cleaning, and foraging, and says, “But they wouldn’t be there without the male.” After pausing, she gives a little smirk to the camera, and spouts this gem: “You have to remind feminists that.”

OK, which feminists would that be? The ones who never got out of sixth grade biology and know nothing about reproduction? Or the ones uninterested in the submissive woman line touted by certain religious sects – the women (and men!) who happen to be the ones who fight for equal rights for women, and in the past managed to get women not to be counted as chattel, to be able to go to school and receive an education, to be able to work in the same fields as men, and got the right to vote? Those feminists? None of those I know think men are unnecessary or think that complete separatist living is the way to go – those types, like the people who seem to think feminism is a dirty word or that women should just give up their own dreams to accede to what someone else thinks they should do are, fortunately, fringe and rare.

On to the business side. The son who appears to be the primary force of the beekeeping business, says they had 1200 hives (and they want to “bless” farmers with their bees). During the film, the discussions with farmers talk about pricing between $140 and $170 per hive for pollination. For convenience, let’s just say a thousand hives. That’s a lot of money either way. At one point, though, the mother says that the parents are pumping in $20,000 above what the business makes to keep it afloat. Ignoring all the other income (the dad works as a teacher, apparently, and the family may have almonds of their own), as a businessperson myself I have a hard time understanding why it isn’t possible for them to run this business and live on $150,000 a year, even after expenses knock out part of that gross income, especially when they’ve had a few years of managing the business under their belts. Now, I don’t know anything about their accounting or their books or their expenses, but if you’re in the hole that much each year, perhaps you need to take some business classes or exit the field, because something is not right.

In the end, this was a rather unsatisfying documentary, and likely to be not something terribly interesting except to those of us who keep bees (or will be keeping bees).

I’m a big fan of B-grade movies, and horror movies are generally pretty good for this sort of thing, since many are low budget and not populated by actors who would rival Laurence Olivier or Katharine Hepburn for any major awards. This is why I dearly love Monster Fest, brought to us by the fine folks at AMC each year around Halloween.

Case – or cases – in point: Puppet Master and Hellraiser.

The former is just plain old schlock where a bunch of psychics apparently can’t see the killer puppets coming. One by one, they’re offed by malevolent stop-motion puppets in a variety of gory ways (although the gore is not explicitly shown, as I expect having to purchase/make that much fake blood would have cut into the budget significantly). When the lead actor is Paul LeMat and the most innovative part of the movie is a camera angle at the height of the puppet, eight or nine inches off the ground, when they slice open someone’s throat or drill a human in the skull because that human forgot the cardinal rule of these movies – do NOT kneel on the floor and look under the bed, because you know damn well there are, in fact, monsters there – well, that’s all bonus for a bad movie junkie.

The latter movie is a delight for anyone who laughed at that scene in Nightmare on Elm Street where the chick is rolling around on the ceiling because she fell asleep and Freddie got her. That would be me. Julia and Larry are an unhappily married couple who move into a new house where the kitchen is filled with rotting flesh, trash, and assorted maggots. In real life, this would probably be a tip that something was wrong, but in the movies, people blithely move themselves in, not caring or knowing about the fact that Larry’s missing brother Frank – with whom Julia had an affair and with whom Julia slept on the day of their wedding – is actually rotting under the floorboards in the attic because he bought a puzzle box off some old dude in a generic desert city, tried to play with it, and got sucked into some other universe where cenobites tortured him in some weird S&M thing that isn’t ever fully explained.

Whew.

Things get interesting when Larry scratches himself on an exposed nail and, being the sissy he is, runs to Julia to have her fix it. Julia happens to be in the attic where she’s having some out of body experience with old Frank. Larry bleeds all over the floor, and Frank magically starts putting himself back together. This is a way for Frank to put some skin back on his bones and escape the cenobites, get him back with Julia, and have the two of them live happily ever after – except old Frank isn’t looking too hot, and needs Julia to bring more victims to the house so they can be killed and Frank can use their blood and skin and whatnot.

Or something. It’s a standard, really, of bad/evil thing eating/using the flesh and blood of the living.

Larry and his daughter, who don’t seem all that bright about the things going on in their very own house, finally catch on. Larry gets killed by Frank, who then pulls a Hannibal Lecter and skins himself as Larry so when Larry’s daughter runs to him to tell him there’s something really, really wrong with Uncle Frank, he can tell her he’s taken care of it. Got that? Naturally, Larry’s a pile of skinned out flesh on the floor somewhere. The daughter steals the box, opens it while she’s in the crazy person hospital, and makes a deal with the cenobites that will spare her if she gives Frank back to them. Which she does, of course, since someone has to come out of this alive. It’s in the horror film rulebook.

And yes, it’s all as silly and weird and as full of crappy special effects as it sounds, up to and including both the part at the end where the box is on a fiery trash pile, some bum sticks him arm in, picks it up, turns into a dragon-looking thing, then flies off with it and the credits that run by like a squirrel on speed. Sequel City, here we come!

The head-scratching, laughter, and general amusement can all be yours, too – if you’re willing to sit through massively bad films on a regular basis.

As with all reviews, this contains spoilers. If you have already seen the movie, or just don’t care, read on.

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is retired from field work and trains IMF agents. To his fiancee (Michelle Monaghan), he is simply a longtime civil servant, toiling away at the VA Dept. or Transportation. When one of his trainees (Keri Russell) is snatched by bad guy Owen Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) in Germany and hauled off to Mexico, Hunt’s boss Musgrave (Billy Crudup) asks him to go extract her. To support Hunt, he’s offering a team: Luther Strickell (Ving Rhames), Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), and Zhen (Maggie Q, who seems to be in the movie as the token tough-guy female who can also look stunning in an evening dress). Hunt is, of course, reluctant to go, not wishing to endanger his relationship with his soon-to-be wife, but if he doesn’t, there’s no movie, so off he goes.

Got all that?

The rescue goes well until a device planted in the trainee’s head kills her, the top dog at IMF, Brassel (Laurence Fishburne) is furious at the operation gone awry, and Musgrave and Hunt get their asses handed to them – a scene that includes one of the wittiest and most literary throwaway lines I’ve ever heard in a movie. Brassel asks about being an invisible man, and says, “Wells, not Ellison”. No doubt most people either missed this completely or wondered what the hell he was talking about.

In any case, Hunt devises a scheme to snatch Davian from some black tie event at The Vatican, and we get the usual hi-tech toys, split-second timing, and a blown up Lamborghini for our troubles. Then Davian gets rescued courtesy of German paramilitary ops, who also blown the Chesapeake Bridge to smiterhreens, Hunt is thought to have information he’s not sharing and is accused of being a rogue agent, brought in, escapes, his fiancee is kidnapped by Davian who wants Hunt to bring him the “rabbit’s foot” – this film’s MacGuffin – we travel to Shanghai, get to see more things blown up and more impossible tech, the movie devolves into yet another “mole in the IMF” film, and…

Well, you get the idea.

Afred Hitchcock was a master of using the MacGuffinin in his movies. When done well – North by Northwest, or Psycho – the use of the MacGuffin can bring a depth to the story and elicit more intrigue than a straight telling of that story ever could, because we wonder about the MacGuffin, and the consequences that surround it. Consider the briefcase in Pulp Fiction: we have no idea what’s in that briefcase, and it doesn’t really matter all that much. It only matters that is is. In M:I III, the MacGuffin is neither terribly mysterious, nor do we care all that much about it. It’s simply an excuse to use the revenge model of the action movie and blow things to bits.

The movie is directed by JJ Abrams, he of Lost and Alias fame. Abrams seems to have gone to the “closer is better” school, as there are loads of too-close closeups throughout the film, and he also employs the jerky camera technique that seems to be popular for who knows what reason these days. Neither of these devices serve him well, and neither do much of anything to distract us from what is not a very good movie. Neither does Cruise’s inability to submerge himself in his character, rather than almost constantly reminding us he is, after all, Tom Cruise, or the constant outshining of Cruise by his fellow actors, even in small scenes. Although the movie contains quite a lot of action scenes, none of them match the suspense of the entry into the NOC from M:I the first.

The first installment of M:I, from Brian dePalma, had a not so plausible storyline, but was so comfortable within itself that it didn’t matter at all. The movie was fun, because it was designed to be fun, with a hint of tongue in cheek just as the original series offered up. While this third incarnation is better than the sequel it follows – since John Woo’s film was dull and lifeless despite the action going on – it pales in comparison to the first, and I don’t consider it to be anything more than mind fluff, ripe for picking during the summer movie kickoff. Like cotton candy for the brain, the details of this film will dissolve quickly, and only the most anal of moviegoers will likely remember anything of substance from it.

My rating: 2 out of 4 stars

M:I III is rated PG-13 for violence, more violence, dismal plotlines, poor character development, and extreme closeups that may induce seasickness in some viewers.

So the movie and I didn’t exactly start off with the greatest of introductions. Still, I managed to get through the movie over the span of two days, watching it in pieces.

As usual with my movie reviews, this one won’t be short. Also as usual, if you haven’t seen the movie, there are spoilers within.

I’m a big fan of Ang Lee. From The Wedding Banquet to Eat Drink Man Woman to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Lee consistently – and artfully – presents situations that show the repressed, restrained, or hidden emotions that people have and the consequences that ensue.

It’s no different with Brokeback Mountain, although the execution of this vision isn’t as fully realized as in some of his other work.

Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal, October Sky, Donnie Darko, Jarhead), a sometimes rodeo rider, and Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger, 10 Things I Hate About You, Casanova), an itinerant ranch hand, are assigned to herd sheep up Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming by Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid) in 1963. Ennis is a man of few words while Jack is more outgoing but still has only a handful more to say than Ennis. The two of them develop a friendship on the mountain that turns physical one cold night – a scene that is almost violent and has zero words but sound enough to carry the scene. The rest of their stay is spent minding the sheep and each other. When Aguirre decides to bring the herd down early, Ennis is upset, and it is clear it is not because they will be missing a month’s pay.

Once down from the mountain, and after agreeing that this was a one time experience, both move on with their lives. Ennis marries his high school sweetheart, Alma (Michelle Williams), while Jack meets and marries Lurleen (Anne Hathaway, who breaks away from her Disney pictures by letting loose with the top half of her birthday suit). Their lives are not particularly happy lives, and four years after their stay on Brokeback Mountain, Jack sends Ennis a postcard, suggesting that they meet again. Ennis agrees, and thus begins a series of intermittent meetings over the years between the two, where they tell their wives they are going fishing and yet never bring back any fish. Although the timing of their meetings was not consistent, this did remind me a bit of Same Time, Next Year.

Alma has known from the time Jack first appeared on their doorstep that more was going on than fishing, having seen the two men kissing on that first meeting after four years apart. She suffers along through the years until she finally divorces Ennis. The Lurleen Jack married – a rodeo queen in her own right – changes into a dour business woman, and both work for her father, who obviously hates Jack.

The women (and the children each have with their husbands) do not have big storylines, nor do we know much about them other than what happens in vignettes while the mens’ storylines is developed. I’ve seen complaints about this from people, who feel that these womens’ stories should have been told as well; however, this story clearly belongs to Ennis and Jack and what their lives are like because they cannot, as Jack suggests, set up a ranch together. Ennis tells Jack a story about two “tough old birds” who did just that and were beaten to death later; he also tells Jack that his father made sure the boys saw at least one of the dead bodies, and that for all Ennis knew, his father could have done it. The film, once away from Brokeback Mountain, is about the compromises that the two make in their lives to be able to see each other from time to time, and the longing that people apart can have for one another. It is also about loss: of ideals, of time, of opportunity, of love.

There’s no happy ending here, and the ending could have dissolved into the typical melodrama that movies of this type tend to have, but Lee resists that. Instead, while it is emotional, it is not something for which we cannot suspend our disbelief.

Both the leads give strong performances, although Ledger’s almost-mumbling at times makes it very difficult to understand what he is saying. Gyllenhall is wide-eyed and idealistic, Ledger withdrawn and afraid of both his feelings and what society might think. Of the women, Williams’ is the more powerful performance, but only because Hathaway’s role is both limited. None of the other characters who make an appearance are fleshed out beyond the meeting stage for us, the audience, but it hardly matters because it is not their story, either.

Calgary and other places in Alberta sub for Wyoming, and the vistas are breathtaking. The soaring mountains, wide open spaces, and clear waters are a sharp contrast to the drab towns where the men live their day to day lives, and I suppose someone writing an academic paper could posit that this is to show the purity of the mens’ love for one another, or that real love is beautiful and not being true to onesself is dull and dingy. But it could just as well simply mean that these are the places the two go because they are the places that remind them of that first summer, which put everything in motion.

Would I watch it again? Maybe. It’s a hard movie to get through, since I, like many other people, know that sense of longing. It also falls into what I call the “chick flick” ending syndrome – where one or more of the main characters must die, and the ending is not happy (see Fried Green Tomatoes, Thelma and Louise, or Steel Magnolias). In fact, much of this movie is not happy due to circumstance and timing. Overall, I would rate this three of four stars.

Brokeback Mountain is rated R for nudity, sexuality, violence, language, and the sight of a sheep guts. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.