FILM REVIEWS: Paranoia

After sitting through a movie like Paranoia, you start to wonder why movies like this are even made. Clearly not to win Oscars or make money, it seems-- This thing flopped in every conceivable definition of the word. After following that train of thought a bit, you also start to wonder how in the world Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman got involved in a thing like this, and why if the director could get two big-name actors like them, he had to settle for someone like Liam Hemsworth in the lead. In short, the pointlessness of the movie’s creation transfers over to the movie itself. This is probably one of the stupidest pieces of crap ever made, an enormous heaping of cinematic drivel that should leave film buffs angry and regular moviegoers confused.

Paranoia stars Thor’s little brother as Generic Young Twentysomething Handsome Trying-To-Make-It-Big-In-The-City Guy, who is (as his name suggests) trying to gain some traction to be successful in the corporate world. Right off the bat, this movie was destined to be awful-- It starts with a five-minute monologue from Hemsworth about life in corporate America. I don’t know if the writers thought they were exposing some revelatory truths here, but every line spoken in this movie is a cliche. “Used to be, if you did well in high school, you’d get into the right college... get a degree... blah blah blah blah blah opportunity blah blah success.” It is boring, poorly-written, incredibly bland trite, and it doesn’t help that it’s spoken by one of the least accomplished actors in all of Hollywood. No joking here, Liam Hemsworth absolutely cannot act to save his life. He is 2013’s Taylor Lautner or Sam Worthington-- an arrogant carbon-copy of every young and shitty actor ever. His delivery is consistently flat and toneless, and you don’t root for him at all through the course of the movie, because his character is such an unlikable fuckhead.

Then there’s the plot, which pits Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford against each other in a world of corporate espionage and technology. Does it sound interesting? Yes! Is it? Oh good holy Mary mother of fucking Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick no. In fact, Ford and Oldman don’t even meet face-to-face until halfway through the movie, and even then it’s a throwaway scene. So what else is the audience watching this movie for? Hemsworth? Please. Even when these two distinguished actors have screen time separately, they totally phone in their performances, not bothering to actually make the drivel they’re spouting sound good. And honestly, I can’t blame them, because that’s a nearly impossible task.

This is the first movie I’ve ever seen where every single line of dialogue spoken is either a cliche or makes no sense. Well, besides The Room. Half the time, the characters talk like robots filling up space and providing exposition when necessary. Oldman’s assistant is the most objectionable on this front, as her only purpose is to try and help the audience give a shit about the asinine plot. She does this by babbling techo mumbo-jumbo and explaining to us why the characters are the way they are. This is like having a character in Citizen Kane who turns to the audience and says “Just so you know, Rosebud is the sled. It was a symbol of Kane’s childhood that he never recovered. Therefore, he remained a broken man even though he was surrounded by all the money in the world.” Why would you have a character whose sole purpose is to describe other characters, especially when you can reveal their secrets and developments through far more intuitive ways? Aaargh... why...

Then the other half of the dialogue is taken up by the derpiest cliches of all time, none of which actually make sense within the context of the movie. In one scene, Hemsworth is confessing to a friend of his that all the horrible things happening have been his fault, and that his corporate espionage is the cause of all their troubles. He says “I’m the reason for all of this.” Then, without questioning that or asking for a further explanation, his friend says “The real question is... what are we going to do about it?” What? In what universe does this reaction make sense? This is one of many, many, MANY eye-roll-inducing scenes in this war crime of a movie. Some of the dialogue is so bad, it physically hurt me to listen to it.

I’m not going to spend any more time reviewing this shit, so Final Score for Paranoia? Yeah, you guessed it, 1/10. It doesn’t quite hit the point of no return at 0/10, mainly because it’s just aggressively bland and just passively bad. There’s no substance whatsoever here, but I honestly am way too indifferent to it to actually loathe it with a passion. Yeah, it’s bad, but it’s actually worth watching just to laugh at how much of a derp Liam Hemsworth looks like when he runs. But altogether, this is one of the worst movies of the year, not to mention one of the most boring. And that’s a deadly combination.

FILM REVIEWS: Ender's Game

To all those who say that the adventure/sci-fi genre is dead... I point you to Ender’s Game. Although it’s light-years (no pun intended) behind the best Star Wars and Star Trek films, and doesn’t have any of the great performances of Gravity, Blade Runner, or Alien, this old-school summer-action-style adventure is still a lot of fun. There’s nothing here that will challenge your mind, nothing that will make you think, and not much in the way of a memorable plot... but in comparison to some of the shit we’ve been getting this year, this is a welcome and pleasant surprise.

Ender’s Game is the film adaptation of the best-selling novel by Orson Scott Card, a project that has been anticipated and hinted at for years. Having read the book, I knew the plot twists and spoilers beforehand, making the movie not too original for me. However, if you HAVEN’T read the book, this movie is a fun (if predictable) thrill ride that will entertain you immensely if you’re willing to sit back and turn off your brain for a couple hours. And to address the detractors of Mr. Card: Yes, the author of the original novel is a flaming asshole who thinks that homosexuality is an abomination. But there’s a thing called “Separating the art from the man.” Roman Polanski, Clint Eastwood, and Morgan Freeman have all done objectionable things off-camera, but that doesn’t make their movies any less enjoyable. Boycotts are lame. Get over it.

Ender’s Game stars that little asswipe from Hugo as Ender Wiggin, a cadet for the Generic Future-Space Military Academy Thingamajig. Simply put, the character is awesome, but the actor sucks. Assa Buttholefield has never delivered a good performance, and this is just another fine example of that. He’s bland, cold, and there’s nothing about him that makes you think that he has a soul of any kind. His emotional scenes feel blank, and the plot makes him out to be some kind of robot. The character is NOT. He is conflicted about the morality of his actions, and that results in a twist ending and spectacular climax that the movie failed to adapt from the book. It’s a disappointment, yes, but the rest of the movie is good enough to hold him up.

Harrison Ford plays the Generic Army Colonel/General Badass Old Guy who enlists Ender (what the fuck kind of a name is Ender anyway?) to travel to space for battle school. This is the best part of the movie, as all of the visuals in these scenes looked exactly as I had imagined them when I read the book as a kid. There’s a general sense of sweeping grandeur, awe, and fantasticalness that contributes greatly to the movie’s storytelling. Rarely do visuals actually play a role in this, but they definitely do in Ender’s Game. And Ford is awesome as always in this, helped along by Ben Kingsley (who is also guilty of being in that enormous fuckfest that is Hugo), who delivers one of his better performances from recent memory. Of course, I can’t watch him onscreen anymore without thinking “This guy was in Species... heh heh.” But that’s just me.

When the final plot twist rolls around, you’re pretty much hooked, because even if the central performance isn’t too strong, the dialogue is taken (sometimes word-for-word) from the book, making it a lot better than anything the writers of this thing could probably have come up with. The battle scenes between Ender and the Formics (originally called “Buggers” in the book; the name was changed because it was considered offensive) are beautifully shot, technically brilliant, and awe-inspiring. But here is where the movie fails: Although it looks great, the acting is passable, and the dialogue is good, it still doesn’t quite transfer the magic of the book to the screen. It has action without depth, dialogue without a point, and characters without hearts. It’s a fun yet joyless experience that, sadly, doesn’t live up to its source material.

Final Score for Ender’s Game: 6/10 stars. A fun movie no matter how you slice it, but the more you think about it after leaving the theater, the less you like it. And if you have some reservations about Card’s beliefs, I wouldn’t recommend it, because frankly, it’s not worth it. He won’t be getting any of the box office, but if this movie is successful enough, the producers will undoubtedly pick it up as a franchise and begin working on the sequels-- Three of them. It’s a fun summer blockbuster that, for some reason, came out in November. Nothing more, nothing less. Purists will hate it, casual fans will love it, and they’re both right and wrong, because all it is is terribly mediocre.