abcdefz
02-08-2006, 11:18 AM
We're talking about the Soderbergh movie, here.
I would've seen it in a theater, I swear, but it didn't play in San José nor the environs. Closest place was Berkeley, and I didn't want to take bus/BART/bus and back, investing about an extra eight bucks and three hours into the evening. So I rented it.
BUBBLE is a movie Soderbergh made with some locally-cast "non-actors: on the Ohio/Pennsylvania border. (Well, I'd say they're actors now, since they acted, but you know what I mean.) It's the story of a middle aged woman who is kind of attached to the young man she works with and drives around from here to there, and the young woman who is hired for another job at their doll factory. And some stuff happens.
The movie is okay, but a little flattened out as a sort of condescending artistic decision. You know -- midwesterners are a dull lot, going through monotonous lives in dead end jobs, etc. (Listen to the actors' commentary or watch the documentary materials and you'll see just how much energy has been tamped down; only the young man is pretty accurately rendered, as far as this goes.)
But anyway.
The story is fine, slice-of-life stuff; the digital photography looks just fine, and most of the performances are a little awkward, but there are some great moments captured. A detective shows up and he does a fantastic job. The young woman's ex-boyfriend shows up and is pretty bad.
Worth seeing once, I think, maybe, for those who are inclined toward this sort of experiment. What Soderbergh really needs to do is to thoroughly commit to one of these things; he keeps using Coleman Hough to write scenarios and then they just wing it. Screw that. Write the damned scriptr, get it tight, and do more than a couple of takes when it's required.
Overall grade: C+.
I would've seen it in a theater, I swear, but it didn't play in San José nor the environs. Closest place was Berkeley, and I didn't want to take bus/BART/bus and back, investing about an extra eight bucks and three hours into the evening. So I rented it.
BUBBLE is a movie Soderbergh made with some locally-cast "non-actors: on the Ohio/Pennsylvania border. (Well, I'd say they're actors now, since they acted, but you know what I mean.) It's the story of a middle aged woman who is kind of attached to the young man she works with and drives around from here to there, and the young woman who is hired for another job at their doll factory. And some stuff happens.
The movie is okay, but a little flattened out as a sort of condescending artistic decision. You know -- midwesterners are a dull lot, going through monotonous lives in dead end jobs, etc. (Listen to the actors' commentary or watch the documentary materials and you'll see just how much energy has been tamped down; only the young man is pretty accurately rendered, as far as this goes.)
But anyway.
The story is fine, slice-of-life stuff; the digital photography looks just fine, and most of the performances are a little awkward, but there are some great moments captured. A detective shows up and he does a fantastic job. The young woman's ex-boyfriend shows up and is pretty bad.
Worth seeing once, I think, maybe, for those who are inclined toward this sort of experiment. What Soderbergh really needs to do is to thoroughly commit to one of these things; he keeps using Coleman Hough to write scenarios and then they just wing it. Screw that. Write the damned scriptr, get it tight, and do more than a couple of takes when it's required.
Overall grade: C+.