mark-951-337630 Reviews

The Circle (I) (2017)

Sharing is not Caring...

[8/10 · 30 July 2017]

I watched this film without reading a single review; my 14 year old son and I watched the trailer, thought it looked cool and watched it. Now I'm reading many poor reviews and wondering why?

This film won't set your world on fire or win an Oscar for best actress etc, but the message is compelling.

Taking a spin on how much data we give away to companies like Google, Amazon or Apple, The Circle focuses on privacy and our right to it, or lack of rights to it, in modern society.

The interesting take from this is that my children and I have differing views on the value of sharing on social media; after watching the film the 14 year old was a lot more aware of the issues around making our lives so public.

This film doesn't deserve an Oscar, but it does deserve better reviews than it has received. Sure, you can pick holes in some of the plot, but its message is strong. It was fantastic to watch Tom Hanks in a role not based on a true story, with a hint of menace to his character. Bill Paxton's final ever role before his sad passing is touching, and Emma Watson was interesting in her portrayal of Mae Holland.

If you're looking for something different to watch, ignore the reviews and give this a go.

2012: Ice Age (2011 Video)

So Bad It's (Almost) Good

[1/10 · 3 December 2011]

This was shown on the SyFy Channel in the UK so I had a pretty good idea it was going to be a low budget piece of made-for-TV entertainment... what I didn't realise was just HOW low budget it actually would be.

From the outset, the film sets its standards low with poor quality special effects and over-acted bad acting, and it doesn't really improve from there.

Throughout the movie, which follows the age-old ethos of all B-movie disaster films, so many questionable decisions are made by the stars, who manage to narrowly avoid disaster at all points in their effort to make it across to New York to find their daughter as a glacier destroys the whole of North America.

Sci-fi movies do require the viewer to release their grip on reality just a little bit to make the script ring true, but in this the acting is poor, the special effects even more so, and the plot line so full of holes even somebody with the wildest imagine (my 12 year old son, for example) struggled to find the story even in the slightest bit believable.

Instead, we chose to find entertainment in spotting the continuity errors (of which there are many), the low-rent graphics (at one point the car they are driving becomes a CGI version in order to get away with an otherwise-impossible J-turn at a junction) and the clichéd plot, which struggles to hold your attention.

Worth watching if the battery's expired in your remote control and you can't be bothered to get up and turn the TV over...