“The Circle”

***

(PG-13, 1:50)

“The Circle,” based on Dave Eggers’ novel, is as chilling as the most frightening horror movie. Yet the world it depicts is practically our world, just a tiny leap into the near future. Directed by James Ponsoldt and adapted by Ponsoldt and Eggers, the movie tells the story of a young woman who goes to work at The Circle, a company that’s like a hellish cross between Facebook, Apple and Google. Young Mae (Emma Watson) is thrilled to be welcomed onto The Circle’s campus. Everyone is so cool. The place is run by its two founders, who, in an inspired bit of casting, are played by the inherently likable Tom Hanks and Patton Oswalt. What harm could those guys do?

What makes “The Circle” so valuable is that it articulates the mentality that could create and sustain a hellish future. After all, privacy may not be immoral, but it is most definitely subversive. It’s in private that people decide how they really feel and what they really want.

“The Circle” is very much a plea for the preservation and sanctification of privacy, but it’s nicely constructed in that no one character expresses the film’s distinct point of view.

“The Lost City of Z”

***1/2

(PG-13, 2:20)

Modest and majestic at once, the films of James Gray patiently burrow their way into the souls of their characters and, maybe, into you.

His latest is a period film with a pulse and a now-ness the genre often lacks. In it, Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) is a British officer craving action, assigned in 1906 on a mapmaking mission to the “blank spaces” of Bolivia. He travels across the Atlantic in search of glory and redemption. But while Fawcett’s journey is grueling and frightful, he finds not madness in the jungle, but wonder.

Believing that he found evidence of an ancient civilization, he returns to London, where he’s hailed as a hero — but also mocked, urged not to raise the stature of “the savage.” The jungle becomes Fawcett’s compulsion, and, to the detriment of all else, he swells with ambition. More trips follow, as does World War I, but the tension that moves to the fore in “The Lost City of Z” is over the sacrifices necessitated by his dreams. With Sienna Miller, Robert Pattinson.

Quick pick: “Beauty and the Beast.” This live-action/digital hybrid, directed by Bill Condon and starring Emma Watson and Dan Stevens in the title roles, is a happy enchantment. Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s songs still inspire joyful dance routines, and the choreographic extravaganza enfolds decades of Disney history. (PG, 2:09)

Quick pick: “Colossal.” This subversive, wildly ambitious creature feature ditches every classic trope and screenwriting rule from Asian “kaiju” films, turning the monster-movie genre into something darkly witty and weirdly modern, simultaneously sincere and screwball absurd. Starring Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis. (R, 1:50)