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.

drumerdrul This is a movie that shows what cinema is all about. Simple scenes with simple dialogs, but sharp analyzing images and thought-provoking touches that shows Soderberghs genius. I think this movie is near perfect. The story seems superficial but it isn't. There is so much to say about the deeper focus, the underlying tension, the catharsis that I need to work on my English for a few months. Sorry about that. I just wanted to express my deepest appreciation. The way Soderbergh sets out the drama is of pure craftsmanship. He only lets his character say a few lines which say it all. The 2 main characters are one of the best performances I saw in my life.Watch this movie, especially on blu-ray.

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.

donniedko67 I hate to be the one that breaks it to you...but your film sucks ***. But you are a smart guy, you already know that. It might find a home on you tube, maybe, but you will be competing with a thousand middle school and high school students who went out and bought a DV cam to shoot some self serving verite footage of their uber banal youth. But then again, you better not post it, you don't want to find that 'my day working at the vending machine factory' gets 5X more views than your piece. That might explode the bubble masquerading as your head. (I know, you already beat us to the 'exploding the bubble' pun in your special features, but I though you might be able to use my extended metaphor somewhere else. Feel free to use it; think of it as a sort of public domain thing.)