The Circle

Synopsis: Mae Holland (Emma Watson) seizes the opportunity of a lifetime when she lands a job with the world's most powerful technology and social media company. Encouraged by the company's founder (Tom Hanks), Mae joins a groundbreaking experiment that pushes the boundaries of privacy, ethics and personal freedom. Her participation in the experiment, and every decision she makes soon starts to affect the lives and futures of her friends, family and that of humanity.

Movie review: "The Circle" was a movie that I was really looking forward to seeing because it has an all-star cast and seemed to have an interesting plot. It was based on a bestselling book that was well received and this movie had a great director who also directed the movie "The Spectacular Now" which I loved. This movie did not live up to the hype but quite the opposite; it was one of my most disappointing movies of this year. "The Circle" stars Emma Watson as Mae Holland who seizes the opportunity of a lifetime at a job with the world's most powerful technology and social media company. Encouraged by the company's founder played by Tom Hanks, Mae joins a groundbreaking experiment that tests the boundaries of privacy, ethics and personal freedom. Her participation in the experiment and every decision she makes will start to affect the lives and futures of her friends, family and humanity. Everything in this film was bad from start to finish. First the editing in this movie is a mess — scenes swap from scene to scene without warning or telling you what is going on. I was watching this film for 30 minutes and was completely baffled as to what this film was even about. Second, the characters were so badly written — you just couldn't relate to any of them or get the back story on any of them. I love Emma Watson and I think she is a great actress but this is her worst performance because Mae was just a boring, one note character with no development. Tom Hanks is in the movie for only 15 minutes which was a mistake because he is one of the best actors working today and he was wasted in this movie. John Boyega who I believe is one of the best new up and coming actors in this industry and I wish he had more screen time, but once again his character was bland and didn't know much about him other than he invented the technology to spy on the whole world. Third, the dialogue scenes in this movie are so monotonous and pointless, and they slow down the entire film especially when they talk about the types of software; it really loses the audiences' attention. Finally, the ending of this movie is bad — usually when a movie ends it has a climax and a resolution but "The Circle" did not have one. It just ends with no warning and it felt forced. "The Circle" had a great premise based on a bestselling book and a cast of talented actors but with a confusing plot and badly written characters combined with incompetent directing, this movie had too many obstacles to be a success. Instead it is one of my most disappointing movies of 2017 I am giving "The Circle" a 1 out of 5 stars.

Director: James Ponsoldt

Cast: Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega, Ellar Coltrane,

Glenne Headly, Bill Paxton, Karen Gillan, and Patton Oswalt

Runtime: 110 minutes