{"id":518,"date":"2017-07-25T16:00:38","date_gmt":"2017-07-25T22:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=518"},"modified":"2017-09-10T16:41:29","modified_gmt":"2017-09-10T22:41:29","slug":"movie-the-circle-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2017\/07\/25\/movie-the-circle-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: The Circle (2017)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/8\/80\/The_Circle_%282017_film%29.png\" alt=\"The Circle\" width=\"220\" height=\"326\" \/>The Circle<br \/>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2017<br \/>\nRating: PG-13<br \/>\nLength: 110 minutes \/ 1.83 hours<\/p>\n<p>In an ever-increasingly digital world, practically everyone online is concerned with privacy. Of course, we are willing to give up this privacy to make our lives more convenient. In <em>The Circle<\/em> (2017), the eponymous corporation is merely a stand-in for Google\/Facebook\/Amazon\/Apple and is essentially a conglomeration of sorts of these tech companies. Of course, just like that antiquated operating system you\u2019ve meant to update, <em>The Circle<\/em> contains a premise about five years too late. When the book this movie was based on came out, I\u2019m sure it was thought-provoking; now it\u2019s more a matter of \u201cYeah, yeah, we\u2019ve heard this already.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Part of what strikes me about this film is that several segments of it probably worked better in the book. When I\u2019m watching characters explain \u201cmandatory fun\u201d I can\u2019t help but cringe and wonder if it reads better than the performance I saw. Granted, there are segments which are better on the big screen, like <em>The<\/em> <em>Truman Show<\/em> (1998)-esque \u201cTransparency\u201d montage filled with the prolific and inane chatter of the internet surrounding the space around the main character. I\u2019m also sure that plenty was cut to make the book film-length since some characters like Ty Lafitte (John Boyega) and Annie Allerton (Karen Gillan) were undeveloped at best.<\/p>\n<p>When it comes right down to it, the one element of this film that I felt was the most unbelievable was the na\u00efvet\u00e9 of the characters, both main and collective. So many of the \u201cgood ideas\u201d immediately raised red flags in my head regarding privacy and cybersecurity, let alone the mere legality of them. And yet, these characters marched blindly on, filled with idealism in their semi-utopian constructs that would lead to dystopia. Don\u2019t get me wrong, some of the ideas might have merit in our world, but the dance between the utopian and dystopian was a consequence of not thinking these concepts through to their logical conclusions.<\/p>\n<p>A cautionary tale for a fate that has already happened, I give <em>The Circle<\/em> 3.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h1><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/><\/strong><strong>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/><\/strong><strong>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/><\/strong><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Circle Year: 2017 Rating: PG-13 Length: 110 minutes \/ 1.83 hours In an ever-increasingly digital world, practically everyone online is concerned with privacy. Of course, we are willing to give up this privacy to make our lives more convenient. In The Circle (2017), the eponymous corporation is merely a stand-in for Google\/Facebook\/Amazon\/Apple and is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,2],"tags":[349,90,55,315,13,8,654,653,655],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-0-stars","category-movie","tag-349","tag-adaptation","tag-book","tag-dystopian","tag-movie","tag-review","tag-technology","tag-the-circle","tag-the-truman-show"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":804,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions\/804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}