The Movie: The Circle
The Director: James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now)
The Cast: Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega, Ellar Coltrane, Karen Gillan, Patton Oswalt, Bill Paxton, Nate Corddry, Glenne Headley, Mamoudou Athie, Smith Cho, Amir Talai, Poorna Jagannathan
The Story: A woman lands a dream job at a powerful tech company, only to uncover a nefarious agenda that will affect the lives of her friends, family and that of humanity.
The Review:
This is one of those movies that has a lot of potential and there's actually a lot to like although director James Ponsoldt wasn't able to put together a completely coherent film with the material he was given. From what I understand, there are also a lot of mixed feelings about the book so it makes sense that adapting it into a movie would be met with mixed reviews as well. One of the highlights of the production is the lineup of quality actors who were brought in and it's a pleasure to watch them all do their thing together.
Emma Watson is legitimately establishing herself as a major Hollywood star and she falls perfectly into place right next to the one and only Tom Hanks who is good in this picture but isn't really given much to do other than a few Steve Jobs-like moments. My favorite performance comes from Karen Gillan who is absolutely dazzling in her role as Watson's friend and mentor within the Circle although her character takes a big turn and pretty much disappears about halfway in. Two other noteworthy additions to the cast are John Boyega who is severely underutilized and the recently departed Bill Paxton who takes on a relatively small, yet challenging role and leaves us with one final, memorable performance.
The Verdict:
The Circle is a movie that goes round and round and then falls flat on its face. There are a lot of twists and turns, only a few of which work very well, although I was actually really happy with the biggest reveal, which happens right as the movie comes to its semi exciting conclusion.
No comments :
Post a Comment