James Ponsoldt

In the second act of The Circle (a film so poorly structured that it feels like it has five acts instead of three), Emma Watson’s painfully earnest protagonist Mae Holland decides to go “transparent” and have her entire life live-streamed around the clock, save for the occasional three-minute bathroom break. Throughout these sequences, CGI text boxes appear on screen to display viewer comments in “real-time,” with half-baked thoughts ranging from “I just ate cheese from last year” to “My girlfriend dumped me.” Those comments, often irrelevant and ineloquent, are the only part of The Circle that feels remotely relevant or clever…or entertaining. The rest, like the titular shape, is hollow.

You know when you’re casually scrolling through Facebook reading statuses and an ad pops up for that random blender you were researching on Amazon? Or when that person you went on a really awkward Tinder date with shows up in Instagram’s recommendations to follow list? If you think the internet is terrifying now, just be glad we don’t live in a world with The Circle… yet.

There’s a good chance even those not celebrating March 17 will have plenty to watch in its stead, but the Amazon crowd in particular will be busy. The new crop of 2017 pilots has arrived, including The Legend of Master Legend, a new series from Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, and more, all visible in a first trailer.

It’s that time of the year again, and Amazon’s latest crop of pilots are here to crowd your St. Patrick’s Day schedule even further. Not only do you have Iron Fist to watch that weekend, but also The Legend of Master Legend, a new series from Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, and Robb Stark in space!

Google is a wonderful company! They manufacture high-quality products and provide a web-surfing experience unparalleled in its intuitiveness and user ease. They’ve made tracking down a specific page in the endless expanse of the Internet into a few simple clicks, drastically cutting down research time. They connect people. They make the world a better place.

What’s more relevant right now than tech thriller about privacy and the dangers of the digital age? After the latest season of Black Mirror continued to explore the tech terrors of the not-so-distant future, James Ponsoldt’s latest film is all about how much a social media platform called The Circle can help humanity and potentially harm it.

Surprise! Disney is making a live-action and CGI hybrid movie that isn’t a remake of one of their established properties — it’s like Christmas in August, or maybe someone at the studio realized they have enough live-action remakes in development to get them through the next 30 years and into nuclear winter. In any case, Disney has hired End of the Tour and The Spectacular Now director James Ponsoldt to take on their latest live-action / CGI project, Wild City.

Major studios have been in nostalgia overdrive for years, with everything from Transformers to new Star Wars sequels to Disney’s live-action remakes of classic animated films, and even a…Power Rangers movie…yeah, sure, why not. But A24 has their sights set on a different kind of nostalgia with plans to revisit the golden age of MTV with James Ponsoldt, the director of The Spectacular Now and last year’s acclaimed drama The End of the Tour.

The cast for James Ponsoldt’s The Circle continues to get better and better — comedian / author / actor Patton Oswalt is the latest to join the lineup, which already includes Tom Hanks, Emma Watson, Karen Gillan and John Boyega. This group of people could sit in a literal circle and play bongos and we’d still totally watch it and find it completely compelling.

The cast of James Ponsoldt’s The Circle is shaping up to be a fairly exciting lineup: Tom Hanks, Emma Watson and John Boyega were previously announced for the adaptation of Dave Eggers’ novel, and now he’s gone and cast your favorite former Doctor Who companion and Guardians of the Galaxy star Karen Gillan. Ugh, this movie sounds terrible.