Will we allow technology to ruin us?

The Circle wrings its hands over a problem that already has been explored elsewhere. The movie fails to pack a persuasive punch.

When we're on-line are we using our computers or are our computers using us? And what about all those apps that allow us to share everything about our lives? Have we become genial participants in the destruction of our own privacy?

These and related questions constantly are debated when we discuss -- often on the very technology that's under consideration -- the increasingly linked world many of us spend far too much time inhabiting.

The great fear, of course, is that corporations with sinister motives are taking charge of all this "connection," turning us into a nation of idiots who blindly worship technology without giving enough thought to the gods before whom we're bowing. It's not only our data but our heads that are stuck in various clouds.

Such thoughts inform The Circle, a new movie based on a 2014 novel by Dave Eggers, who co-wrote the screenplay with the movie's director James Ponsoldt (The End of the Tour and The Spectacular Now).

The movie stars Emma Watson as a young woman who lands her dream job with a company called The Circle. The Circle seems to be one of those "hot" Silicon Valley businesses that specialize in developing apps that create synthetic communities. The company's latest invention -- a tiny camera that can be placed anywhere without fear of detection -- is celebrated at a gathering presided over by the company's president, Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks).

Bailey calls the project SeeChange. He introduces the camera with the committed fervor of someone who believes that life never again will be the same -- and that the great shift he's selling is a very good thing.

Bearded and adopting the friendly attitude of a tycoon who's adored by his employees, Hanks appears only intermittently as the movie introduces Emma's Mae to The Circle's corporate culture, which includes monitoring every employee's health and pushing participation in a variety of extra-curricular activities designed to strengthen bonds of camaraderie.

Of course, everything at The Circle seems a bit artificial, and the company's concern about the well-being of its workers might be a bit much even for these isolated tech nerds to swallow.

Much of the movie plays like a parody of the sort of companies at which campuses have replaced offices and order is imposed in ways that sustain an illusion of free-form play.

Eamon rules the company with a partner, an underutilized Patton Oswalt, who does more to suggest manipulative ambition than Hanks.

A wasted John Boyega portrays Ty, the man who created the company's signature app, TruYou. Ty wanders around the campus, occasionally bumping into Mae with whom he shares his cynicism about The Circle.

Privacy becomes the movie's big issue. How much are we willing to surrender? Are the benefits of SeeChange (everything from suicide prevention to halting child abuse) real?

Mae becomes the human guinea pig for testing SeeChange, wearing the tiny camera at all times and turning into an Internet star. She also loses her relationship with a low-tech pal, Ellar Coltrane in a wobbly performance that makes him appear like a non-actor and makes us even more appreciative of the work that director Richard Linklater did with him in Boyhood.

Watson's performance seems to stick close to the surface, but her character could have been better drawn. Same goes for Hanks' Eamon, and although the movie raises intriguing questions, it expresses them with a ton of on-the-nose dialogue that lacks the eloquence of, say, the on-the-nose dialogue Patty Chayefsky wrote for Network, a movie that, in its talky way, was prescient about reality TV and the tendency to turn news into entertainment.

Besides, the principal characters in Network were grown-ups, not 29somethings who seem to approach the workplace as if it were the playgrounds they wish they'd never outgrown.

The late Bill Paxton appears as Mae's father, a man crippled by MS. Paxton's presence -- which reminds us of his absence -- has an emotional impact the filmmakers couldn't have anticipated.

There's nothing wrong with a movie that wants to play with issues and ideas. What such movies need, though, are deeper characters than those who populate The Circle.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to Google a name that I saw dropped on Facebook.

A close encounter with a literary star

David Foster Wallace meets a journalist in The End of the Tour The result: An intriguing movie.

The End of the Tour, a movie about a literary promotional tour taken by the late David Foster Wallace, is less a movie than a conversation.

That's not to say that End of the Tour, which stars Jason Segel as Wallace and Jesse Eisenberg as a journalist who's writing a Rolling Stone article about the author, lacks cinematic flavor.

As directed by James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now), End of the Tour has the personal tension of a theatrical piece, but the movie also opens the door to Wallace's unkempt private world.

I've never had much interest in Segel (Forgetting Sarah Marshall). He's mostly as a comic actor, but he's never been better than he is as Wallace, a writer of disheveled charm and much admired accomplishment.

Siegel conveys Wallace's insecurities, his ordinariness (which may partly have been a pose) and his casual expressions of brilliance.

When Wallace stops to consider the answer a question, he's not stalling for time: He's really thinking -- not only about what he wants to say, but about how it might sound in an interview.

Eisenberg, an actor of accusatory nervousness, is equally good as David Lipsky, the author and journalist who accompanied Wallace on the tail end of a book tour that ended in Minneapolis.

Lipsky wrote Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace, which was published 2010.

The events Lipsky wrote about, and which form the basis of the movie, take place in 1996. With Infinite Jest catching fire, Wallace began to learn the joys and liabilities of being a literary star, someone approached by outsiders with reverence.

For the most part, The End of the Tour is a two-hander with brief support coming from Mamie Gummer and Mickey Sumner as women who turn up for Wallace's reading in Minneapolis.

Joan Cusack has a funny turn as the person assigned to "handle" Wallace in Minneapolis, a thankless job performed by a cheerfully dim woman.

After listening to Wallace's interview with the local public radio station, Cusack's character says that she found the author so interesting, she might have to read his book.

Levels of complexity ripple through The End of the Tour.

An envious Lipsky tries to be as smart and perceptive as possible, but he seems to know that he's not on Wallace's level. And, yes, it matters to him.

For his part, Wallace isn't only talking to Lipsky, he's talking to himself, airing fears about how celebrity, though desirable in small doses, may actually destroy him. Can an icon, even a newly minted one, ever have normal conversations?

The movie opens in 2008 with Lipsky learning about Wallace's death. The story then flashes back to the meeting that constitutes the bulk of the movie. Some of this close encounter takes place in Wallace's home, some in Lipsky's rented car, and some in hotel rooms.

Our knowledge of Wallace's death adds eerie resonance to much of what follows. His insecurities never seem trivial.

The same can't be said for some of Wallace's pop-cultural preoccupations: Crappy television and movies and junk food washed down with soda become bricks in the wall Wallace builds to zone himself off from the world.

The End of the Tour isn't a bio-pic. You won't learn anything about Wallace's early life. When we meet him, he's teaching writing at Illinois State University. He avoids the New York limelight. He covers his head with an ever-present bandanna, but worries that even that may be seen as an affectation, a bit of self-conscious branding.

His problem: He's an observer who suddenly has become the observed.

Lipsky sleeps on a mattress on the floor of Wallace's modest, disheveled home, and the two men develop an intimacy that keeps blurring lines: Are they friends? Are they journalist and subject? Are they a couple of competitive writers? Is it possible to have an honest conversation with a tape recorder constantly running?

End of the Tour is a movie about intimacy in a contrived context, about letting one's guard down and about protecting private places. It's an intriguing endeavor, and it has been made with intelligence, humor and haunting traces of wistful sadness.

The world eventually would lose Wallace; here we see a writer who may already have been losing himself.

Finally, a worthy teen movie

Before The Spectacular Now, I wondered whether I'd ever want to see another film about adolescence, but director James Ponsoldt's addition to the genre qualifies as a remarkable achievement, a movie full of real feelings and real problems -- in short, a film about young people that refuses to pander.

Adapted from a novel by Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now reflects Ponsoldt's desire to find a bit of truth in a genre that doesn't always value honesty.

Ponsoldt’s cast earns some of the credit. Miles Teller) plays Sutter, an underachieving kid who's flirting with alcoholism. Sutter lives with his mom (Jennifer Jason Leigh), works part-time at a men's clothing store, parties hard and seems committed to a philosophy he calls "living in the moment."

Immersion in the present is well and good, but it's pretty clear that Sutter might be on the verge of throwing his life away. College? No. A future? Why bother? We know that Sutter’s spectacular present eventually will give way to the mediocrity that often results from squandered potential. How long will it take before the flask Sutter carries ceases to be a sign of rebellion and becomes a badge of dishonor?

Sutter is smart, amusing and glib in ways that can seem off-putting at first, as if Teller has been instructed to do a Vince Vaughn imitation. Don't give up on the kid, though; as the story progresses, he reveals depths that go beyond the surface of his clever retorts. He begins to question his views, in part because he forms relationship with Aimee (Shailene Woodley), a classmate who's not at the center of high-school party life and who’s a bit more substantial than the girl (Brie Larson) who dumps Sutter in the movie's early going, although she's no ditz, either.

Aimee and Sutter meet in an early morning scene in which Sutter awakens on Aimee's lawn. Drunk as usual, he forgot where he left his car. An exchange develops: Sutter asks Aimee to help him learn geometry; he basically schools her in how to have a better time in high school.

Lurking in the background is Sutter's father (Kyle Chandler), a heavy drinker who Sutter hasn't seen in years. His mother won't even tell Sutter where his dad lives. When he learns his father's whereabouts from his sister (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Sutter decides to visit. Dad, we soon learn, is a preview of coming attractions for what Sutter easily could become, an irresponsible jerk.

Spectacular Now provides Teller with a breakthrough role. Woodley -- familiar as George Clooney's teen-age daughter in The Descendants -- continues to impress.

Shot in Athens, Georgia -- where Ponsoldt grew up, The Spectacular Now is more than a good teen movie; it's a good movie, a look at characters we come to care about right up until the film's mildly ambiguous conclusion.