Not for the first time in the past twelve months, I was struck with an intense yearning to disagree with the majority of the American population on viewing James Ponsoldt’s The Circle.
It would be fair to say that critics across the Atlantic were not exactly kind to Ponsoldt’s adaptation of Dave Eggers’ best selling novel in the wake of its Tribeca debut. Audiences too failed to warm to the film, in spite of a mightily impressive cast roster of Emma Watson, Tom Hanks and the late Bill Paxton to name just a few.
There’s a moment in Karl Freund’s original 1932 The Mummy – a then original feature designed to replicate the themes and successes of Universal’s contemporary horror films: Dracula, Frankenstein etc. – in which the Mummy himself (Boris Karloff playing Imhotep) is awoken from his sarcophagus slumber behind an unaware Ralph Norton (Bramwell Fletcher). It’s a scene that’s not quite as effective as it might have been but one that works by virtue of the brilliant tension of expectation that comes with viewers knowing exactly what is coming.
Studio Ghibli, that powerhouse of Japanese animation, stirred panic among certain cineastes back in 2014 when they announced that When Marnie Was Here would mark a temporary hiatus in production to coincide with the retirement of co-founder Hayao Miyazaki. Three years on, Miyazaki has thankfully resumed his position to direct one more feature – hoorah! In the meantime, to whet our appetites, Michaël Dudok de Wit’s The Red Turtle marks a excitingly potent co-production between Ghibli and European distributor Wild Bunch.
The Film Blog 