framptonhollis I'm not sure if I've ever seen a film exactly like "Bubble". It kind of evokes other movies, but, overall, it's really it's own thing, totally separate from anything else I've really seen. It's an offbeat spin on the "love triangle" and "detective" subgenres while disguising itself so well with a realist, yet somehow still mildly surrealist (in parts) atmosphere so well that you don't really notice it's either one of these things in any sense. Instead, you are sucked into this quirky story that twists and turns in all sorts of unexpected directions. IMDb lists it as a crime-drama-mystery film and, for what seems like a majority of the movie, it does not feel like any of those genres. As a matter of fact, the first part of this movie feels like if the "meh" emoji (sorry for having to reference those f*cking things, but this was the best analogy I could come up with off the top of my head) was a film subgenre and this was the pioneering film of said subgenre. But, I still enjoyed it immensely...so it can't just be the cinematic equivalent of a "meh" emoji I guess, although there is plenty of mumbling and a really slow pace that softly grows on you as you watch it. There's the occasional moment of pure weirdness which is followed by a completely mundane exchange, often littered with a unique insight into the minds of your average everyday person and how they may not be so "average" after all. Daily life is more fascinating than anyone gives it credit for being, so sometimes it seems that something awful has to happen before we notice that this life we live isn't JUST some repetitive, boring streak of pointless years polluted with simplicity and labor. Life can also be mysterious, adventurous, and humorous, which is what this film really is. From one minute to the next, it evoked some kind of emotional response from me, and these responses ranged from being mild to moderate to major. There's laughter, there's tears, there's suspense, this movie's got it all but you don't even notice until you reflect on it. The movie also has long pauses, wooden acting, and awkward dialogue, but you don't notice that very much either, and when you do notice it it's because you're impressed with how realistic and successful these elements are, while in almost any other movie they'd be sort of cringe worthy, and not in a good, intentional way. It takes a true professional like Steven Soderbergh to create such a bizarre, contemplative, gloomy, depressing, hilarious, and engaging film packed with tonal shifts and a total lack of real good or bad guys feel more natural and realistic than most of the movies to be released during this century so far.

albrechtcm It's interesting to go inside a doll factory and see how some dolls are made, but we get that all the time on TV shows. We also get far too many "reality" shows in which people sit around talking about nothing. This film starts off with both. People sitting around (being non-actors they're mostly unintelligible like real people are)talking and eating. Lots of eating. Once Rose enters the picture we begin to hope something will happen and eventually it does, but there's little mystery involved, and without revealing too much of a spoiler, I can't believe any of the suspects (as we saw them)could have been callous enough to walk off and leave a 2-year old child in the house with her dead mother. The musical score was extremely annoying and did nothing to enliven this depressing picture of a dying town. Worse, from a story telling point of view, nobody gets more than a glimpse of Rose. We barely begin to see the real Rose when she abruptly leaves us. For all that,considering these actors are for the most part first-timers, I thought they did remarkably well with what they had to work with. I was personally taken in by the (false) advertising that this dealt with an entire town that joined forces to play detective and solve a murder. Obviously a lot of viewers like this sort of thing, but if it had been done as a Christopher Guest mockumentary, it might have been worth watching.

Terrell Howell (KnightsofNi11) To call Bubble odd would be an understatement. To call Bubble a bad film would be a false statement. To call Bubble an offbeat yet enthralling experience would be a perfectly accurate statement. Bubble is set in a poor run-down town in Ohio. The town's economy thrives only off of a doll factory where we meet three people who work there. Martha and Kyle have been friends for a long time, both barely making ends meat, yet still getting along. Their relationship is shaken when Rose, a young pretty woman, gets a job at the factory. Questions get seriously raised when Rose is murdered in her apartment. An investigation then begins to find Rose's killer and strange and disturbing things are revealed about the people within this secluded ramshackle town.Bubble is directed by the always interesting Steven Soderbergh. By 2005, when this film was released, Soderbergh had already been an Oscar winner for five years after being nominated twice in the same year for Traffic and Erin Brokovich. The reason I bring this up is because it makes Bubble all the more peculiar. Bubble is the ultimate indie film. The entire cast was composed of unprofessional actors, a lot of the dialouge was improvised, and many of the sets were the actual homes of the actors in the film. I would love to know why Soderbergh decided to go backwards in filmmaking like he did, but the result of this choice was a fascinating film.It is the feel of calm mundaneness that makes Bubble so different and yet so head scratchingly good. The dialouge is all very natural speech and the conversations in the first half of the film are all just about normal things and it feels more like real people than movies that try so hard to pull this effect off. It is almost frightening how real some of the conversations and interactions are in this film. There are those simple moments where you realize the speech sounds just like you if you were in that scenario. At times I found myself questioning whether this was fiction or if Soderbergh had set up a tri-pod in these peoples houses and let them go about their business. I can't imagine how boring this film sounds when I describe it like this, but I swear it is not a boring film. The first half of the film has a sort of offbeat tension that carries throughout all of the little conversations and what is so exciting is how you can feel, deep down, that something is going to go wrong soon, and your curiosity takes over and you just can't wait to see where this film will go.When it does start to pick up, it doesn't let up. It keeps with the same type of monotone quietness, but suspense and tension unfolds beautifully after Rose is murdered. I don't know that the second half of this film would have been nearly as enthralling if not for the mundane first half that introduced us into a world that feels so real that the events that fuel the meat of this story are all the more gripping. Bubble boasts an incredible uniqueness in its storytelling and it is in a style that has been lost to the flash and grandeur of Hollywood. We have seen this basic type of story before, there is no denying that. But the incredible thing about it is that you believe this story more than any over suspenseful and over dramatic form of this plot. You buy into these characters in such a bizarre way. You aren't entirely sure why you are so gripped by this film, but you can't help but deny just how much you care about what is going on.Bubble is such a strange and perplexing film. It can only really be taken at face value, but its face value has a lot to offer. It tells an enthralling story in an incredibly unique and believable way. The way the pieces of this film come together in their quiet, dull, yet not anticlimactic, way is indescribable. This film could not have been made differently or it would have just been another unbelievable and boring plot line, but with Soderbergh's talent for capturing a story in such a unique light, he makes Bubble an incredible film.

tedg Soderbergh is a fine man. I can live without him. Nothing he is likely to do will change my life. But he thinks about film and spends time on noteworthy projects.This is one such.It is not important nor particularly effective. It is interesting in the conceptual art sense when you think about what matters in the medium when watching it.In terms of the production process, it is somewhat interesting, and most consider that it "statement." Shot on a prosumer camera operated by the director, edited on a stock Mac and delivered to simultaneous distribution as a digital file. It uses found actors and sets, shot in sequence so the ending was a surprise to them. Much has been made of how this was made.More interesting to me is how that affects the narrative. For most folks, the "point" will be the aimless trivial lives shown here a sort of trailer park rubbernecking.The story itself fights its own medium. Nothing happens in the lives of these people, even when a murder occurs. Here's what I think Soderbergh has in mind: its the opposite of what is generally written about this movie. The prevailing notion is that this is a sort of "Straight Story," where a presumably dense filmmaker relaxes, and we have a sort of Zen openness. But its not. This is the guy who remade "Solaris," a long quite journey that leads to about 90 seconds of puzzle at the end.Its a mystery. A woman is killed. We have only a few suspects: her date for that evening from whom she stole unknown things; her estranged husband who violently encountered her about similar thefts; a competitor for the date's affections; the date's mother who seems strangely in the background. There is an even more absent homeowner whose house the victim his violated.One of these is proved the killer by fingerprints on the strangled neck. (Does such a thing happen?) But this same suspect honestly denies guilt.Meanwhile, we have been introduced to the doll factory. We know it more intimately than the characters, actually. We see the making of molded plastic faces and hands. We see sophisticated painting and related apparatus. All the main suspects work at this factory. Could one of them have faked the fingerprints? Soderbergh presents us with a solution, but is he fooling us too? After all, the supposed impression is that this is a real as you can get. But it is still a script, still a manufactured narrative. Still fakery imposed on life.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.