The Circle (I) (2018) User Reviews

This is a wonderful short!

[owens-richard · 8/10 · 4 December 2017]

This is a touching short story about a boy named Lucas (Noah Schnapp of Stranger Things) reconnecting with his estranged father (Ryan Phillipe) who is a street artist during the Great Depression era.

Perhaps, the most impressive aspect of this short is that it was shot entirely with a camera mounted on a DJI Inspire 2 drone.

Truly an outstanding production from talented people with state of the art equipment. Well done!

Very good 8 minute film -- watched it streaming

[garretsr · 8/10 · 26 April 2021]

This was a very good short film. It was only about 7.5 minutes long (10.5 with credits) and was easily located for streaming.

It is a nice vignette about family relationships and art as a unifying force. The plot is concise and easy to follow. I will say that I was surprised by some of the plot points.

Given how short the film is, further discussion of the plot would likely give away too much.

For those who care, this follows the traditional (Aristotelian) unities in that it the action occurs in a small town over less than 24 hours. However, it wouldn't be considered a classical tragedy, but would likely be considered a tragedy under the modern Hegelian Tragedy standard.

May the circle be unbroken

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 4 March 2018]

"The Circle" is a fairly new American live action short film. It says here on imdb that it is a 2018 release, but the Youtube video I watched where the director uploaded it was from 2017 already. It runs for 7 minutes plus another 3 minutes of credits, so you can actually watch this one pretty quickly. But you really only should if you are a great fan of Ryan Phillippe (who's basically the only grown-up actors here next to a cast of young performers), a pretty big rising star a few years, actually decades almost, back when he was with Reese Witherspoon still. Director Schwartz here made this as his most recent work and he is certainly not a rookie, even if he is far from being as prolific as his writer Olmstead here. The film plays a long time back and we watch a father-son story with a little crime included too and a bit for the heart, but really nothing of it all is too effective from the story-telling perspective I must say. The area where the film delivers best and maybe the only area where the film really delivers is the physical looks. Camera work, costumes and sets are all solid, I just wish the plot could have been better or at least had more attention to detail. The way it actually turned out I must give the movie a thumbs-down as a whole and I find it fairly overrated here on imdb. Not recommended.

Good effort.

[sybil11 · 5/10 · 27 November 2020]

Admittedly, I searched for this movie after seeing it in an Instagram post, just a couple of minutes ago. At first, I thought it was a full-length movie, but then came to see that it was actually a short film, and decided to watch it immediately since it is only 7 minutes.

Story and writing wise, it started out okay, but then towards the conflict to conclusion of the movie, the writing (and some of the acting) got a little more cringey, and I'm not too sure if that insert of the plank breaking, made any sense. Also, was it just me or did the house look a little modern?? Especially that shelf, which takes up like half the shot at one point. There's a couple of other things I could go on about, but I guess I could be nitpicking as it is a short film... It was definitely, nonetheless a good effort, and to leave it on a positive note, the costuming, and the fact that this was filmed entirely on a drone, is pretty awesome. Definitely check it out if you are curious, and have a couple of minutes to spare.