Tom Hanks and Dave Eggers

[Jeff]

Tom Tykwer's A Hologram for the King. Somehow they resurrected both Don LaFontaine and the 90s for this trailer. Only thing missing was a record scratch.

[Trees]

Tom Tykwer's A Hologram for the King. Somehow they resurrected both Don LaFontaine and the 90s for this trailer. Only thing missing was a record scratch.

Ha, well, at least they are trying something at least somewhat original. This type of film requires very nuanced directing. We'll see.

[colinr0380]

I haven't looked at the trailer yet, but this being a Tom Tykwer film at what point does Tom Hanks get run over by a car?

EDIT: Having now looked at the trailer I'm getting a suspiciously heavy Salmon Fishing In The Yemen-vibe from it!

[domino harvey]

Embarrassing trailer for the Circle-- are Hanks and Eggers BFF or something?

[mfunk9786]

Pretty sure that Hologram for a King was LQ's most reviled film of last year, suffice it to say I didn't go find out for myself whether I agreed

[domino harvey]

I don't think I even bothered to write it up but it did suck (though I wish I lived in a world in which it was the worst film of the year)

[knives]

I thought it was adequate though nothing to feel about one way or the other. I think the most memorable thing was a friend comparing it to Salmon Fishing in Yemen.

[beamish13]

I'm genuinely mystified as to what Hanks sees in Eggers, who is a complete hack and self-aggrandizing embarrassment to literature.

[domino harvey]

A review comparing Eggers' source novel for the Circle and dinosaur erotica

[DarkImbecile]

Matt Zoller Seitz wrote in his review that James Ponsoldt's The Circle was a movie "that has nothing and everything wrong with it." The former is definitely not true, and while saying the latter is accurate would be going a step too far, it's a small step. The movie is a mishmash of half-formed ideas, the best of which might have been interesting to examine five or ten years ago, but none of which are articulated or reinforced with the kind of conviction or artistry needed to make them compelling or entertaining.

Several good actors are wasted (including Bill Paxton in his last film role), some not-very-good actors are overused (if you thought Ellar Coltrane was a factor keeping Boyhood from being unequivocally great, you'll be amazed that he made this bad movie this much worse), and some don't even really have a performance left in the film (John Boyega's dialogue is so heavily made up of obvious ADR and he spends so much his clearly trimmed screen time with his face hidden by the shot selections that the most interesting part of watching the movie was trying to figure what they could have had him saying originally that was that much worse to justify what they did to remove it).

Much of what's been bothered to be said about the movie has focused on the misguided and halfhearted technophobia, but rather than beat that dead horse, let me note that the true heart of the film's failure is that it's a techno-thriller with even less of a clue about being thrilling than it has about technology. The disturbing second-half decline of one character turns out to be - brace yourself - a wheat allergy and work-life balance issues. One character's vaguely ominous warnings about the central company culminate in the stunning revelation that... well, nothing, just vague insinuation delivered with entirely unearned urgency. Sure, the climactic sequence that culminates in a character's death is entirely contrived and avoidable, but it also has no apparent consequences for anyone involved. Maybe the most head-scratchingly bad decision in the film was to build one of the central suspense sequences in one of the least inherently cinematic situations that is also poorly executed: a character alone... in a kayak... at night... in the fog. It reads as though this could maybe be made visually interesting, but let me assure you that it is absolutely not.

A baffling mis-step from Ponsoldt, and a shameful waste of the cast.

[ntnon]

Matt Zoller Seitz wrote in his review that James Ponsoldt's The Circle was a movie "that has nothing and everything wrong with it." The former is definitely not true, and while saying the latter is accurate would be going a step too far, it's a small step. The movie is a mishmash of half-formed ideas...

A baffling mis-step from Ponsoldt, and a shameful waste of the cast.

What confused me (most?) was the apparent lack of about-face - from Watson's Mae out-of-the-blue embracing of being constantly connected to her extolling the virtues of a government takeover and on to the inevitable consequences of misguided application of crowdsourced information gathering, the clear next step was for her to reject the tech and embrace privacy. Instead... she doubles down on the obviously-flawed and tyrannical concept.