Tag: Psychological

I apologize. I have been doing mostly main stream movies lately. My only weird outlet has been in terms of documentaries, which also have been pretty standard lately.

But no, I need to take time every once in awhile to do something weird. Those indie and low budget movies you haven’t heard about. Which is why I picked Circle today. I heard about it a few weeks ago, and since I could remember the title, knew it was weird, and it was short (hey, I have time crunches some times), it was the perfect movie to review.

Fifty people. Strangers (mostly). They find themselves in a two tiered circle. You can visually see it above. They are each standing in their own red circle. If they try to step off, an alarm goes off. If they touch someone else, an alarm goes off. And in the middle of the circle is a mysterious sphere.

There is a African American man (Coley Speaks). A husband (Matt Corboy) and a wife (Julie Benz). A rich man (Daniel Lench), a pastor (Kurt Long), and a Bruce (David Reivers).

Every few minutes a deep thumping sound occurs from the center, and sure enough, a lightning beam shoots out of it and kills one of our fifty participants. Fuck. Don’t worry, you won’t get piles of bodies, they get whisked away, somewhat magically into the darkness around the room, never to be seen again. Turns out if you leave your circle or touch people after the warning, you too get shot and killed. Definitely a rough life.

There is a bearded man (Kaiwi Lyman). There is the first man that talks (Kevin Sheridan), and a silent man (Muneer Katchi). There is a college kid (Carter Jenkins), an atheist (Rene Heger) and an Eric (Michael Nardelli).

Oh see those arrows? Turns out if they turn their hands, the arrows light up around the room and only they can see their arrow. Turns out they get to vote on who is the next to get killed every time the thumping starts. Now things get interested. Who do they decide to kill? What happens when there is a tie? Does the last person alive get to leave? What if there are two people left, do they tie and both die? Fuck.

There is a soldier (Jordi Vilasuso), an Asian kid (Lawrence Kao) and a lawyer (Michael McLafferty). There is a pretty girl (Sara Sanderson), a tattooed man (Cesar Garcia) and a lesbian (Mercy Malick).

There is a cancer survivor (Lisa Pelikan), a one handed man (Zachary James Rukavina), a pregnant woman (Allegra Masters) and an 11 year old girl (Molly Jackson).

I do love me some psychological thrillers. I also love me some movies that take place for the most part in one room. I also love me some dialogue based movies. Needless to say, this movie has them all. An interesting premise, a constant guessing game who is going to die, and lots of arguing. Everyone is talking to save themselves, but some people get caught up in the moment. You can see several games and plans characters have to ensure their own survival, and it is wonderful. I also definitely enjoyed the ending.

There is one bad thing, technically. The acting. There is a lot of people involved, so it is all over the place. A lot of it is kind of shit. But I forgave it for the nice concept and story.

Honestly not much more I can say about this one. Under 90 minutes, on Netflix, and a nice way to spend the evening. Unless you aren’t into slightly weird shit.

Magic Magic. I like magic. I hope this movie is about magic.

You know, I sometimes watch movies just because there is magic in the title. That is why I watched Magic Mike, obviously. So this has double the magic, which is why I doubly chose to watch this movie.

But in all honesty, you know I am actually watching it for this creepy mother fucker right here.

Chile is a strange place, and that is what Magic Magic has really taught me.

Alicia (Juno Temple) is a young woman traveling to Chile with her cousin Sara (Emily Browning) who she hasn’t seen in some time. Alicia isn’t from the area, but Sara is going to school there, and even has a boyfriend, Agustin (Agustin Silva).

Well, as soon as they set off on a mini vacation to a cool house on a lake, Sara has to leave. She apparently has a test that she has to take, or she will fail the class. Bad timing. Alicia wants to stay with Sara, because she doesn’t know any of these people, but they all convince her to come along and it will be fun. Sure.

Alicia does not have a fun time. She drops Barbara’s (Catalina Sandino Moreno) bag in the water early on, so Barbara might dislike her. Brink (Michael Cera) keeps hitting on her, but she thinks he is a sadist.

Basically, everyone is out to get Alicia, and she doesn’t feel like they are the best sorts of people. And her friend has abandoned her! For more than a day like she promised. What the hell Sara. THESE PEOPLE MIGHT TRY TO KILL HER. AND YOU ARE GONE. FOR FUCKS SAKE SARA.

NO. FUCK SARA AND AGUSTIN AND BARABARA AND BRINK. ESPECIALLY BRINK. HE IS PROBABLY A RAPIST. NO DEFINITELY A RAPIST.

Look at him, staring into her back like that.

Sorry, I went a little bit off the edge there at the end of that plot outline.

Kind of like how Sara starts freaking out. First small gradual freak outs, but over time, full on freak out mode. See, I modeled it after the movie, you’re welcome.

This movie is pretty weird, and it really doesn’t have magic in it, and definitely not two forms of magic. Allegedly psychology classes watch it to try and determine what is wrong with Sara, but I doubt that. This movie literally came out mid August, 2013, so as of now, they can’t possibly have that info to back it up. Wikipedia is lying.

I think the acting from Juno Temple and Michael Cera here are incredible. Cera is creepy while also maintaining a nice guy attitude towards things, while Temple feels like her life is crumbling away from her. She is only on vacation for like three or four days, to give the movie even more context.

The ending was surprising, but if you pay enough attention to the details, you can see how and why it happened. However, it still felt a bit cut off and left unfinished by the end, bugging me pretty hardcore. There is also a lot of Spanish in this movie, but no subtitles, so maybe it is meant for the viewers to relate better to Sara throughout, in an unfamiliar area.

Overall, it is just okay, and would be best seen for the pretty good acting. The plot and ending could have been a bit better.