Things have been crazy busy. Still are. I haven’t seen very many movies since I last posted, but I have seen some and so here’s a quick couple-sentence-per rundown. I’ve really not been in a DVD-watching mood, and most of these were from actual theatre visits, believe it or not.
So, yes. Although I’ve never been to boarding school and so I couldn’t quite say “Oh, yeah, I’ve been through exactly this” with Evil, it was certainly a cinematic experience worth having. Were I a more demonstrative movie-goer, I think this scene probably would have made me stand up and cheer. 
Hi.
(Two more February movies to write about after this one. I guess it’s good I haven’t seen anything in March yet, huh?)
#38, 2/18 – Bubble (2005) (nqpdd)
Bubble is certainly an interesting experiment. It’s the first film to release nearly simultaneously on the big screen, cable, and home video, and that’s exactly what makes it noteworthy. Alas, in my mind, that’s nearly all that makes it noteworthy, because the film as a whole didn’t satisfy me on either of the levels it might have. As a mystery, it wasn’t very interesting, because the criminal is clear straight away. As an exploration of people and relationships and motivations, I found it all the more disappointing. Not that I was looking for, or needed, a bunch of big scenes with yelling and hair being torn out. No, I just wanted more time with the people, more little peeks into who they were. It’s only an hour and fifteen minutes long, and heavens I think it could have made excellent use of those extra fifteen minutes. All the same, I applaud the effort and admit that I look forward to the next of these six all-DV, all-amateur movies Soderbergh intends to make.
And here’s why. I have no problems with the filmmaking technique itself. (In fact, were I really into labels I’d be torn between calling Bubble’s style neo-neorealist, post-Dogme, or Bresson-esque.) The scenes mostly felt very real to me. Sure, a couple of times I did roll my eyes at what I thought was perhaps that little bit too amateur, but most of the time it worked on me much as Bresson’s stuff does. And while I’ve never spent time in smalltown Ohio, this reminded me, quite a lot, of certain parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. It also reminded me of the all-DV pictures IFC would occasionally air, like First, Last and Deposit and The Poor and Hungry, though I vastly prefered those films to this one.
I’m not sure people can determine much about the viability of the day-and-date release technique based on Bubble for at least two reasons. Firstly, it opened on only 32 screens (and didn’t expand from there) and, frankly, that’s as good as saying the movie was straight-to-video. Secondly, marketing experiment or no, this simply didn’t have a very broad appeal to it. If someone is willing to try this with a buzz-making kind of film like Garden State or Sideways I think we’d learn more about how this new model might work.