The Circle

After spending two hours on things that a proper thriller would use as a starting point or additional motifs, The Circle’s plot ends at the moment when a proper thriller would only start to escalate. I commend the fact that the film points out the loss of privacy and corporatism of today’s interconnected world, but the way it does this is transparent and naive. At least Emma Watson is nice to look at. Her sober acting give the film some character, thus saving it. (05/11/2017)

That feeling you get when you are offered a position of a hotline operator and you are completely ecstatic. But I had no idea what the Circle company was about. Otherwise, I was rather disappointed. The whole idea of the movie seems to me naive rather than interesting. It goes to the absolute extreme where people are the perfect sheep and social networks go through a perfect recession. On top of that, Emma Watson’s acting is so believable that no matter what she did I would be shocked. And that’s actually what happened. (02/18/2018)

I was looking forward to a demonic Tom Hanks but it didn’t happen! The plot about installing Big Brother in every household wasn’t bad, but the film ends at the very moment when it could at last have started to operate in the nicely presented world. Emma Watson is pleasantly down to earth, but that’s more or less it. P.S. I liked the clean design of all of the apps shown. (04/18/2020)

Interesting in places and makes you think about halfway through (the election), but in the end it is still a predictable routine with a sniffing finale, in which you will learn everything in a few dozen minutes. I would expect something bolder than such a simple critique of all those internets. Tom Hanks was great, Emma Watson less so... And John Boyega's character? Deus ex machina, nothing else. (02/03/2019)

I guess it's the four months of retakes and frantic reshoots after disastrous test screenings, but if it weren't for the occasionally inventive eye of cinematographer Libatique, this would be an utterly unbelievable failure of almost every factor involved in the making of the film. Taking the characters' crazy behavior, hiccupping motivations, or Emma Watson's epic lack of charisma (again) are just the tip of the pile of twisted corpses. The concentration of all of the story's kinks into three corporate lectures, where the protagonists say things and the hyperactive seated crowd reacts to them depending on what stage the film is in at the time, is a major bummer. It's just that since the film doesn't provide the viewer with any more information than anyone else in it has, we actually find ourselves in a situation where all the elements of the film are acting in ways that are meant to scare and outrage us, and yet they see the same things we do. And a movie where everyone knows everything we know, and we're supposed to be terrified of what's going on in it while its actors don't get it, creates nothing but the feeling that we're watching a total bunch of manipulated idiots, and there's no reason to want any other outcome than an asteroid crash the size of Texas that ends this whole fictional world and all the morons in it. (08/08/2017)

The film has an incredibly good theme, but there were simply too many elements here that bothered me and spoiled the overall experience. First and foremost it was the character of Emma Watson, who I just didn't find good, her development odd, and her motivations lacking. Then there was also the smallness of the theme, which seemed to have only local impacts, not global ones, with just a few hints. But it will make you think, a lot. And that is a good thing. (05/01/2017)

An interesting theme outlining a near and quite likely future, but it's all made in such a lousy way that it gets boring at times. And here I was thinking I couldn’t possibly be bored by such a subject. It is terribly filmed, its cast is ridiculous and the writing poor. Why? For starters, the characters are seriously underdeveloped. I'm no expert on screenplays or Film Studies student, but I think that screenwriters should have a clear idea of the characters’ development, motivations, dilemmas, and sooner or later there should be at least a hint of sense or justification to their actions. None of that happens in The Circle. Things just occur for no particular reason. There is no hidden mystery about this, it's just terribly written, plain and simple. Let’s not forget about the second reason. The movie also boasts of being a thriller, but when a movie lasts 110 minutes, you’d expect there to be suspense earlier than just a few minutes before its ending. Plus, it all ends with the part of the story where movies of a similar type are normally just getting started. I don't mean to be overly critical, but The Circle is a hot candidate for the disappointment of the year. (09/12/2017)