The Circle Review

How would you feel about working for a company that has a lot of possibilities? That has great health benefits, that make you feel welcome, that allow you to socialize, that increase your opportunities, that is trying to make the world a better place? That all sounds good. What if this company is trying to take over the world, that wants to but into your personal life, that guilt trips you when you want time away from others and to be alone? Would you want to work for that company? I sure wouldn’t. Here is where you get the movie The Circle, that new movie with Tom Hanks, Emma Watson, and John Boyega. The one thing you will be hearing is how it’s a cautionary tale of the dangers of technology taking over our private lives, and it could be seen throughout the movie. It also seemed like it went to extreme lengths to show the dangers. If you want to inject paranoia into people about using their Facebook or Instagram accounts, you take them to something like this.

Please note, I am going to get into spoilers below, so you have been warned.

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While watching this movie, the second half reminded me of EdTV, you remember that one with Matthew McConaughey back in 1999, I didn’t see it all the way through, but basically the idea was that Matthew McConaughey has his entire life broadcasted on TV, just about 24/7, and it hits moments where his true friends distance themselves from him because they don’t want their lives public like that. Emma Watson’s character literally hits that point at the midpoint of the movie, where she decides to have her life broadcast 24/7 for everyone at this place The Circle. I kept sitting there thinking how uncomfortable it would be to have your life broadcast like that, no privacy whatsoever. Her parents get sick of the attention that they unplug themselves really quickly. This idea was presented back in 1999, apparently no one has learned that this is a bad idea. Still an interesting idea no doubt, I mean that I don’t know why people think it would be a great idea to implement in real life.

The one moment that hit really that really creepy vibe in my bones is when two employees approach Emma Watson and basically guilt trip her into not using their social accounts at The Circle, and not showing up to social events (even though they declare that it’s optional) during the weekends. That would be the killer for me, especially just how creepy that moment was.

The more and more I reflect on the movie, the more I realize just how over the top a lot of the situations are. Emma Watson learns of a cool design that her friend did, which was a chandelier made of deer antlers. She takes it and posts it on the Circle social media network, and there are many activists that see the post and declare the friend as a deer killer, to the point that they send him death threats, and he admits that he does not use his email much, and to see that shocks him. Honestly, out of anything going on in the world, and they go after a guy for making a chandelier out of deer antlers. What is more bizarre is when he comes to visit Emma Watson’s character to explain the situation, how they begin to video the conversation. Seriously who in all does that.

I do admit I see the dangers of technology invading our privacy, but I don’t ever see it going as far as many of the scenarios that are present in this movie. It felt like they were pushing beyond the boundaries of what could happen. Maybe I am wrong and I am downplaying this whole scenario, but this is beyond paranoia in my opinion.

The biggest flaw I found in the movie is John Boyega’s character. He plays a founder of The Circle, and admits to Emma Watson’s character when they first meet that the company grew in a way that he was not proud of, it was not how he envisioned it. He takes her to places to show some of the secrets of The Circle. Even near the end, he helps her uncover many of the darkest secrets of The Circle. Someone with such a high profile, and no one bothers going after him, especially when they go after many other characters for all their secrets. I was seriously waiting throughtout the movie for Tom Hanks and Patton Oswalt to expose him, but no, he never gets touched.

After all this, you would expect a big resolution, where The Circle disappears, or that it becomes this great company with John Boyega runs it and all is happily ever after. Well, you would be wrong, it didn’t seem like much really got resolved. Did Tom Hanks and Patton Oswalt go to jail? I just like Patton Oswalt’s pout face at the end when Emma Watson exposes all his secrets. Tom Hanks plays it off even though he is upset, but Patton Oswalt wears the face when someone sunk his battleship. Anyway, The Circle is supposedly shut down and redone, and it didn’t seem like anything got resolved.

I did like the majority of the performances. In case you didn’t know, this was Bill Paxton’s last movie, he played the father of Emma Watson who is struggling with Multiple Sclerosis. I also liked the concept it had.

This is one of those movies I am glad I saw. I actually did enjoy it, but I have a hard time recommending this one, unless you have a strong desire to see it.

Your Name Review

Last year, a movie took Japan by storm, whether the director, Makoto Shinkai, was planning for it to be as big of a movie as it was or not, the Japanese animated film (typically referred to as Anime) caught the attention of Japan, and has become the highest grossing Japanese animated film in Japan, even beating out Spirited Away. The success also translated well into other countries in Asia. This is where it started to catch fire. I first heard about Your Name back in December, when a YouTube reviewer by the name of Chris Stuckmann talked about it. The poster caught my attention, at that point, I started to look into it and found a trailer and was stunned by what I saw, and at that point, this movie came onto my radar and I knew that I needed to see this movie as soon as I can.

I first saw one of Makoto Shinkai's films on Netflix back in 2011 entitled "The Place Promised in Our Early Days", not knowing anything about the director but the animation looking stunning. I can’t tell you anything about the story as I don’t really remember much about it, but what I can tell you is that the animation was really pretty to look at. With the release of Your Name drawing closer to US theaters, I decided to check out another of the director’s works, a movie called “The Children Who Chase Lost Voices”, and the one thing that really stunned me about the movie was just how amazing the animation looked for the movie, the coloring was just incredible.

That is the first thing that really drew my attention to Your Name, was just how stunning the animation looked, from the night skies to the landscapes, especially the scene near the end of the movie which I don't want to spoil here but it takes place on top of a mountain. The coloring and how the image comes together is just breathtaking, I really don’t know how else to put it. Plus there are a lot of great sequences of Tokyo and also the countryside, everything about the animation is just breathtaking. That alone is worth the price of admission.

 

Regardless, it’s not just the animation that really got me invested in the movie, but it was how the story and characters worked. I will lay out the basic premise of the story, it is about a teenage boy from Tokyo, Taki Tachibana, and a teenage girl from the countryside, Mitsuha Miyamizu, who randomly start switching bodies with one another, think of Freaky Friday. These two eventually learn about one another’s lives, and some crazy things happen as the movie progresses. This was one of those movies that I easily could have gotten on Wikipedia and read the entire plot and know exactly what was going to happen, but for some reason I stayed away from any major spoilers, and I am really glad I did, as the twists that took place in the movie really caught my attention, and made the journey for the two main characters way more interesting that I thought it was going to be. I became so invested that I sat there just waiting and hoping that Taki and Mitsuha will get together. I will not spoil the movie any further than what I have said, as I think it’s worth experiencing for yourself.

Another aspect of the movie that I really liked was the music, which was done by a band in Japan known as Radwimps, following pursuit of many popular musicians of bands that have composed for feature length films. The music by Radwimps is very nice to listen to and it helps to compliment the beautiful animation, and also the journey of these two characters. They even wrote a few songs as well. An interesting note, for the English dub, they re-performed the songs in English, which is something that really doesn’t happen when Anime is dubbed into English.

This movie got a limited release on April 7 in the US, and I am very glad it did and that I got to see this on the big screen, as I feel this is one of those movies that is worth making the effort to see on the big screen. I strongly recommend this to any fan of Japanese animated films, anyone that has any sort of interest, even if it’s very small. Heck, even if you are looking for a good animated film to see, I recommend checking this out.  

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

This morning we were treated to the first footage of the most anticipated movie of the year, Star Wars The Last Jedi. If any of you read about my thoughts on The Force Awakens, you know one of the big things I really liked about it was that it gave us a lot to speculate about. "Who is Rey's parents?" being among the biggest questions, if not the biggest, and hope to get an answer in this coming movie. This will probably be one of those that I will have to make an effort to stay away from the Internet for a few days before this comes out, so I don't run into potential spoilers, or I might stay on and generate some fake spoilers.

Anyway, I have posted a link to the trailer above so you can check it out for yourself. This one already generates a few questions, sorry nothing with Luke saying, "Rey, my daughter!" So if you watch it looking for that, sorry :(. But watch it for yourself and begin speculating. I can already tell you, the wait for December is going to get a lot harder.