Emma Stone has come a long way from her La La Land character Mia’s humble barista origins: she’s now the highest-paid actress of this year, thanks mostly to last year’s Damien Chazelle film that rocketed her around the awards circuit last winter.
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.
Although the tale (as old as tiiiime) of Beauty and the Beast is a self-contained one with no existing basis for continuation, that hasn’t stopped Disney from considering the possibilities of a follow-up to their recent live-action reimagining — especially now that it’s earned over $1 billion at the box office, breaking a previous record held by the seemingly untouchable Star Wars. But while Disney has been mulling a potential spinoff or prequel, Emma Watson would rather see a direct sequel, and she’s already come up with a good starting point.
Are you a formerly handsome, monstrously cursed prince with lots of money, a huge castle, and in dire need of a beautiful woman to show you true love? Well this Belle figure from Hot Toys may not be real, but you look like a minotaur, so it’s about as good as you’re going to get.
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.