Something I didn't get the chance to talk about recently has been Lost Media. Especially since the 2020s, so far has been incredible for Lost Media discoveries, in 2022 alone such pieces as the 1982 Macy's thanksgiving day parade footage, Quantum Quest, the 1964 Jeopardy pilot and the Sesame Street episode with Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch were found and that's barely scratching the surface. So, with all the exciting discoveries of lost media being found, I thought I'd take a look at a piece of lost media that has since been found. Silver Circle, an animated thriller from 2013 that saw a limited release in theatres before releasing on several now defunct digital platforms. As of November 29, 2021, a LostMediaWiki user uploaded a copy of the movie to MEGA, making the movie public, so special thanks to flashfire42, but was the effort worth it?
Okay, normally I pose a question like that and then get on with the review, but I just want to say, good or not, it is a good thing this movie is available. There are very few pieces of media that I think really should stay lost, and most of those are like, footage of horrible deaths and atrocities, yeah the Lost Media community has its share of weirdos and sickos. Any piece of art or media can give us a good glimpse into the culture and beliefs of the artist and/or the era they were creating in, so I'm glad that this movie is available as of now, even though it is really, really bad.
The movie follows a federal agent named Jay Nelson, as he investigates an arson, meeting an attractive woman named Zoe Taylor while asking some questions. However, the investigation is a bit more than it seems. It's a standard mystery thriller, with one small, itty bitty detail, it is hugely libertarian. This is a... topic I don't want to touch, since my own political beliefs are complicated, I'm not even going to try and discuss this movie's political beliefs, just know that one of the main criticisms of this movie is the political stance, whether or not that is fair is... a question for another day, I'm just stating the fact that this movie is based in libertarianist politics. The plot isn't bad, it's just not wholly interesting. I guess I should talk a little about the politics of this movie, especially since this movie got an endorsement from Ron Paul, but like, what can I really bring up other than saying, "it's there"? The movie makes commentary about inflation and the worth of the American dollar, and it just kind gives off the vibe that this movie was made for the message before much else.
Characters are... mixed. On the one hand, they're pretty generic and boring, but on the other hand, they do have some small quips and jabs that are, not exactly realistic, but makes their interactions a bit more believable. It would probably be more believable if most of the dialogue didn't come off as exposition, plain old boring ass exposition. I guess it wouldn't sound so much as exposition if the voice actors were better than okay. I swear mot of the male characters have the same or similar sounding voices, and some are given annoying accents. The performances themselves aren't bad, but they aren't special, they're just your standard, "Doing what's asked of me and not much else" kind of performance
The Animation is bad, almost mockbuster quality, but with the attempt to make it look cel shaded. Characters move in an uncanny way that is too natural to be a cartoon, but too mechanical to be human. Environmental details literally only exist as part of the texture, leaves on the ground don't move when something moves over them. On top of that, for a dystopic future, I'm not really seeing much of the "Future", like I get this isn't like a Star Trek, Blade Runner or Red Dwarf style future, but like, even The Terminator had some futuristic elements to it, this movie's future doesn't even have smartphones which were a thing back in 2013, they've been a thing since the 2000s. Every synopsis I can find for the movie says it's set in a dystopian future, and I see a lot of the dystopian, but it just looks like a dystopian current day setting. Character models are ugly, with weird lumps and bumps all over their faces, I guess to indicate facial structure and age, but it just looks ugly, and the facial animations, I mean you could pause this movie at any random shot and get a weird, hilarious or uncanny facial expression. I haven't seen facial animation this bad since that Hercules and Xena movie I reviewed back in 2019.
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