The Circle (2014)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Blistering performances.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

"The Circle" is a Swiss movie from last year and it was the country's official submission to the Academy Awards. However, Stefan Haupt's film did not even manage to make it on the short-list. Fans of the movie will say this is because it's a movie too controversial for the Academy, but lets keep in mind that they are always big on gay-themed films such as "Milk" and very recently "Dallas Buyers Club". In my opinion, the reason is that it is simply not a good film at all. I am actually surprised to see all the honors it got at the Swiss Film prize and several other ceremonies.In my opinion, there is nothing really memorable about these 100 minutes here. Some of the aspects, such as the acting are solid, but just not enough to make up for flaws on other areas. One of these would be Sven Schelker's performance. It was very obvious that he had no acting experienced in film before he made this. Really ridiculous that he got so many honors and a lot of acclaim here as he basically showed us the worst case-scenario of what happens when a Chris Colfer lookalike gives us the poorest man's version trying to copy Jared Leto's and Joel Grey's Academy Award winning performances. Downright horrible. Another problem I had with this film (and with Swiss movies in general) is that the always try to mix documentary elements with acting, usually from 2 different time periods like here and it rarely never works. It takes you completely out of the story in my opinion and I wish they would just decide for one of the two options. So yeah, forget what critics and audiences tell you, "Der Kreis" is not a great movie by any means. Not recommended.

The Circle seems like an unusually well-made home movie, like a 60th anniversary present from an extraordinarily rich and generous friend. It tells the personal story of an old gay Swiss couple through interviews with them and amazingly effective reenactments of their experiences in the mid-1950s in Zurich. They aren't particularly interesting people, but the movie is so well made that it's entertaining anyway.As a documentary of Switzerland's uniquely civilized history of homophobia it's a curiosity at best, like an inside look at the interpersonal relationships between employees at a flower shop. If the worst that ever happened was a threat of forced outing, then Swiss gays have a lot to be grateful for and always did.

Der Kreis is a Swiss movie shown in the U.S. with the title The Circle (2014). It's directed and co- written by Stefan Haupt. In Zurich, in 1958, a young gay teacher (Ernst) falls in love with a beautiful gay singer (Robi). Gay relationships were legal in Switzerland at the time, but discretion was still required. Ernst and Robi were members of The Circle, which was an organization of gay men. The Circle organized social events and published a magazine. They didn't disturb the social order, and the police didn't disturb them.However, in retrospect, the police were waiting for an excuse to cause trouble for gays. Suddenly, using the excuse of several murders among the gay community, the police got tough. They raided legal events, and arrested people who weren't guilty of any crime. This put the pressure on The Circle, and the film follows these events.The best part of the documentary is that Ernst and Robi are still alive, still a couple, and were willing to be part of the movie. So, the re-creations we see aren't just hypothetical. They are informed by the participation of people who were there.In my mind, this was the best film we saw as part of the superb Rochester ImageOut LGBT Film Festival. We saw it on the large screen at the Little Theatre, but it will work well on DVD.

While there is still a lot of homophobia and a lot of discrimination against gay people in general, this documentary does focus on a magazine that was developed and delivered so that people would not have to expose themselves. Nowadays with Internet and whatnot, it is obviously a lot easier to do that, but it is a true testament to time and will, to see what some people had to go through to reach a certain kind of freedom to express themselves.I hadn't heard of that particular magazine and had no clue what the movie was about, when I watched it at the Festival in Berlin. So while I was surprised by the topic itself, I have to admit, the movie itself is very well done. Nicely shot and edited, with lots of Interviews and people remembering what it was like, it does get you into that mindset ... Watch if you're not "afraid"