Just so...so bad

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Bubble (2005)I think any movie by Steven Soderbergh was at least worth looking at if only because he takes what you might call safe chances. But they are chances. Some are brilliant or at least very successful, such as "Erin Brockovich" or "Traffic," and others are well done and worthy side trips like "Che" or even the recent "Contagion." But then there are clunkers like the well-intentioned "The Good German" shot using vintage equipment and trying hard to be the real deal 50 years late.So "Bubble" looks like something straight from the Indie world--a small unknown cast, a simple kind of location shooting, modest production values, and full of decent sincere acting. And a decent idea, at least enough to draw you in: a group of people work in a struggling doll factory in an Ohio town and a new employee gets murdered. In a very believable almost documentary way the local detective looks for answers. And the murderer is found.Well folks, that's it. There's a very long build up to the crime, setting up in fifty minutes what a good noir would do in five. We get to know the small cast of very ordinary folk. They are mostly likable, but all a bit quirky. (They live in West Virginia, actually, across the river from the factor.) There is no real suspense or curiosity required during this time, just patience. Then there is the murder (not shown, just told). And the detective makes his rounds interviewing each of these people we now know as viewers. And we know kind of who might have done it or why. And then the crime is solved (and the perp is no surprise, and is intentionally not meant to be). And then the movie ends.I don't know if there's some kind of surreal intention here, or if it really is about how mundane life is in Middle America even when a killing is involved. But it's not enough. The movie is short (75 minutes) so it's not the end of the world (as "Tree of Life" was for a lot of people, or "Barry Lyndon" depending on your taste). So try it out. The doll factory scenes are briefly interesting. The side characters are subdued and fine. The cop is wonderful and a bit drab. You might decide this is a film about relationships since that ends up being the core of the movie, or about personality types (since these get dissected by the cop interviews) but if so, there are a million ways to make this more moving or interesting or odd or anything.Focused mediocrity?

Steven Soderbergh decided to make Bubble, I suppose, as an experiment in technique and in its release: "let's do a real low-budget movie, maybe even for less than a million, all non-professional actors, people from the town we film in, shoot on a low-rent digital camera (or the one used for Sin City), and then release the movie on DVD, theater and on-demand the same day!" It's an ambitious plan, but here's the rub: Bubble, ultimately, isn't a very interesting or compelling enough movie in its own dimensions. Perhaps the way that Soderbergh could pull off a risk like this is with a film with such low aims and without the kind of talent that would require lots of advertising or a strict theatrical-only release. But as another of his 'experiments' as far as a film in and of itself, it doesn't really inspire or anger or ask for love. It's a 73 minute artistic lump with some interesting ideas and a couple of well-played scenes.Did I mention no one in the movie is an 'actor'. Perhaps, as Andre Bazin once said, once you put anyone in front of a camera the person becomes an actor in his/her own way, even if there isn't a real script (such as the case here). This is fine if, say, you're a neo-realist director or someone like Ramin Bahrani who corrals real people on screen very naturally. But Soderbergh's players at best play "real" with some degree of competency and at worst it's just a lot of mumbling - what I guess is called 'mumblecore' where a movie is written but not written at the same time, like improv without the comedy - and the story of the film, of a small doll factory in a low-rent town in Ohio where a newcomer, Rose, is welcomed but befells to a tragedy, is never given enough dramatic 'umph' to get us to care. It's naturalism without anything natural about it.It's a polarizing movie though, which I suppose makes its camps of like-it-a lot (i.e. Ebert) or hate it (a lot of other critics and viewers). I suppose its meant as a slice of life, but whose and what for? Is it for the character of Martha, who gets her own couple of scenes where Soderbergh tries an weird abstract lighting scheme like in the church? Martha is an older, more worn-by-the-daily-grind woman who perhaps has the most sympathy and pathos of any character in the story but is still as ineffectual as everyone else in the cast. Perhaps if you identify with her or find some kind of emotional connection with the way Soderbergh presents this story, then it works better. For me, it fell flat, with its stiff compositions and the repetitive/annoying guitar twang, and the (again) non-dialog punctuating a drama that isn't dramatic.If it was a student film, a real one from someone who was working out issues or had some kind of process to which this was intended, then it may have been more understandable. Coming from a major filmmaker, it's just... not very significant - or, if that was the intention, to put a light on 'not very significant' people like in this small Ohio town, it wasn't executed to a satisfactory degree.

One of the worst movies I have seen in some time. I have liked Sodebergh, which is why I rented Bubble, but I feel like he has robbed 73 minutes of my life tonight. I can see what he was trying to do - setting a pretty depressing mood in nowheres-ville, no hope state - but the dialogue didn't have to be that bad and the acting didn't have to be so excruciating. Even the music was unbearable. The worst part is: it was all intentional. Don't get me wrong: I am all for a good downer of a movie. I enjoy directors trying to expose the reality of the lives of people just trying to scrape by but this is an insult to those people.

How incredibly brave of Steve Soderbergh to continue his experimentation and innovation to bring us a quite extraordinary film filled with ordinary non-actors who are given the A-B premise to fill in with their own dialogue.Filmed in HD digital, and filmed in sequence, it takes about ten minutes to take hold but when it does there is no let-up until the final credits.You get the feeling there is going to be a major fissure in one of the characters and sure enough, this happens.The life and life-styles of the mid-America Walmarting (and presumably Bush-voting) lower class is incredibly caught. The distance from others, the responsibility to elderly parents, the dream of saving enough money to get a car, the lack of education and opportunity, the unrecognised hopelessness. I felt tremendously sad watching and for the life of me I don't know why. Possibly because one gets to reflect on Columbine and Waco and the many other snapping points of outwardly docile citizens. Maybe because there is no observation or connection with others. One hungers for the minuscule almost ephemeral exchanges between the co-workers that take on such a huge importance in an empty life. Who knows.All I know is that this movie affected me. It is not to everyone's taste and the small screen made many of the shots murky and the sound quality was poor at times. 7 out of 10 for these annoying defects. But congratulations to all who took part in this.