A Movie Review of Paranoia, the Worst Film of the Decade

                             

"I wonder how many movies are just a bet someone in Hollywood lost." This is the only justification I can conceive of as I watch Paranoia. It is unbelievably bad. Even the presence of movie stars the likes of Gary Oldman, Richard Dreyfuss and Harrison Ford can't salvage any sort of value from this train wreck. In fact, hiring A-listers for this movie is an absolutely insane move that I still can't wrap my head around. It's like enveloping a turd in a couple of hundred dollar bills and handing it to someone like a disturbed lunatic who honestly thinks someone won't notice that there's a pile of shit underneath.

Set in New York City and written by someone with an outdated understanding of the Brooklyn-Manhattan dynamic, the backdrop serves merely as an aesthetically appealing and familiar setting to assure the viewer that this is actually a movie and not some shitty YouTube video your friend is trying to show you. Evidently written by foreigners with a cursory understanding of cinematic platitudes, I can only imagine the script was conceived by throwing a blindfolded writer in a room who was then told to point at random words written on the wall until there was enough to fill and hour and half. 

                                          

Not only is the dialogue clunky, but Liam Hemsworth's deliverance of it is marred even further by a completely emotionless performance. He's like a barely sentient cardboard cutout that finds its way into scenes with the intention of displaying its biceps. He reads his lines like a Garmin GPS giving directions, occasionally raising his eyebrows to demonstrate that he's at least an expensive animatronic. But Hemsworth isn't the only aloof thespian in this merry band of players. His friend and archetypically nerdy friend wanders in, apparently reading his lines on the palm of his hand when we aren't looking. I expect this type of acting from a kindergarten play put on before a sea of miserable parents. I'm 20 years old and I already know what it feels like to be disappointed in a child.

There's a plot, or so I am led to believe by the dialogue that vaguely implies a preceding scene. This elusive storyline opens on a business team lead by Hemsworth, presumably because he was bigger than the rest of them and established his dominance by beating his chest on the first day. His team is made up of the aforementioned nerd, an annoying guy in red pants that just has to be a producer's son, and two girls to balance out the averages.

The acting delivered by this supporting cast of characters ranges from amateur to "reading the script behind a Wendy's and hoping it doesn't end up being porn." Needless to say, this distracts almost entirely from the atrocious script that underlies this parade of vomit inducing "acting." So it least it has that going for it.

During the brief times I occasionally noticed the plot, I learned several things: there is only club worth going to in New York City and it's got a very patient bouncer with an iPad, Amber Heard really wants Liam Hemsworth to leave her alone, Gary Oldman is better at chess than Liam Hemsworth, and that the script was clearly written by a man that just discovered that feminism was a thing. You almost can't get mad at the innocently sexist overtones during every conversation concerning females. Almost.

Amber Heard brings an irritation to every scene that brings out some of the best acting in the film. To be clear, this is still pushing against the tide of an absurdly bad script, but her perpetually miffed demeanor is accomplished in part by what must be honest and real revulsion towards the lines she is being forced to read. Cast as the clichéd and, frankly, rather insulting "bitchy, irritable woman trying to break into the boy's club," you can almost see Heard lift her head up from the script after every scene and sigh, "Really, guys?"

                             

It's a full thirty minutes into the movie and there still hasn't been a sturdy groundwork laid. The already shaky plot coupled with a weak script comes tumbling down before it can even announce its presence. The next hour is spent picking surviving plot points from the wreckage, piecing together a mediocre story from the disaster. The time between actual meaningful, story driving dialogue increases as the movie progresses, leaving long periods of awkward dead air in which the actors stare at each other, visibly uncomfortable.

The arrival of Harrison Ford on to the scene only drives the stake deeper into the writhing carcass of this film. There's something morally deplorable about watching Han Solo/Indiana Jones fumble through a script so rife with terrible lines at it physically pains him to read it. I can only imagine Ford is here to make enough money to buy his wife a nice birthday present.

At this point in the plot, about halfway through the movie, things are just sort of fucking happening with no rhyme or reason. There is no attempt being made to connect things and it's rapidly devolving into anarchy. Characters pop out of nowhere to say shit. Hemsworth's friend randomly shows up at his office to bitch about the job he didn't get in a Tucker Carlson inspired outfit that makes you wonder why he should have gotten it in the first place. But bemoaning the lack of connection with the characters in this travesty seems like a hat on a hat. There isn't even a shadow of an expectation that the audience should feel empathy for any of these bland caricatures. Besides Hemsworth's mildly sick father and a passing reference to his long dead mother, the emotional charge is nonexistent, opting for a series of situations in which ridiculous sounding humans exchange clumsily written scripts until someone tells them that they can go home.

Ford's gruff and prickly temperament eventually can't contain itself any longer and comes across through the script as tired and just-fucking-through-with-it. He delivers every line with the hope that it will be the last thing he has to say. Part of you hopes that they'll have mercy and kill off his character so that the poor man can go home and spend his remaining time on earth with his family.

                            

The story doesn't build up to an ending so much as it runs flailing towards the finish line, falling in a pathetic slump at the end. The final thirty minutes of the movie are spent desperately trying to convince you that there is some sort of suspense to be felt, but instead you're left with the impression that several out of sequence events were edited together to finish up a movie the actors lost heart in during their initial five minutes on set.

Much like Hemsworth's character, the movie aspires to be a Gordon Gekko but only ever amounts to an incompetent and, inevitably, unsuccessful Jordan Belfort clone. Cashing in on the most recent spike in douchebags trying to make it big, the movie hits all the buzz words (finance, technology, espionage) without any of the complexity. A superficial pile of trite and incoherent crap that barely qualifies as a film. Ultimately, the movie produces no apparent moral, offers up nothing in the way of critical thought and fails to resonate at all, leaving only the lasting impression of nausea that one normally associates with consuming 90 minutes worth of shit.

On a scale of 1 to 5 stars, I give this movie the faint blinking of a passing airplane you mistook for a star. 

As you may have noticed, the above is a movie review. Not my normal purview, but in trying to expand this blog's reach, I thought it may be interesting to watch a really bad movie and review it weekly. This is the first test of that feature. Hopefully you like it! If it gets enough of a response, I may continue this as a recurring post. If not, it will languish in the halls of failed blog features. Either way, hit me with your feedback and give any blog suggestions you have. They may or may not be taken into consideration. Thanks for reading! 

Let's Talk About the World Cup

As a purveyor of all things current and relevant, I would be remiss if I didn't address the most current and relevant thing of all: the World Cup. Typically, as an American, I would not give two shits about an event that is no more or less interesting than the various ball-oriented past times of my home country. Why the global community has such a fascination with kicking a ball back and forth down a field will forever be a mystery to me. But this World Cup has been a wellspring of news beyond mere sports related events. Indeed, it would seem that for the first time, the World Cup's games are being overshadowed by the wheelings and dealings of the sinister corporation behind it. I am, of course, referring to Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). Known to most Americans (as John Oliver hilariously pointed out in a recent segment) as the best selling video game series, FIFA is the governing body for all soccer related events. Admittedly, most of the information I will present in this post and the initial inspiration for it originated from the aforementioned Last Week Tonight with John Oliver segment (seen below). I am presenting this information in text form for ease of access and to further drive the point home that the World Cup is, honestly, sort of evil.

Look, to start with, allow me to say this: the people playing soccer ("futebol", for the stickler assholes among you) are not inherently nor overtly evil. They are, I am sure, playing for the love of the game. Furthermore, fans of soccer (futebol) are not responsible for knowing every single detail about the background corruption of their favorite event. How could you possibly know that FIFA is pretty much the Council of Villains trying their very best to replace lower income countries with giant soccer fields? That said, with recent details coming swiftly to light, you are becoming more and more responsible for being aware of the sordid details that are bubbling to the surface. Knowing what is now public knowledge will put you in sort of a moral dilemma when it comes to tuning in to the World Cup tonight (or today, depending on where you are). This is good. This means you still possess empathy. Let's put that empathy into action, shall we?

First of all, let's overview what the hell is even happening. I'm sure you're aware that there have been protests in Brazil concerning the World Cup. If you're like me, you probably dismissed this as crazy soccer fans angry over game-related decisions. This is, decidedly, not the case. The true cause of all this unrest centers around the exorbitant amount of money that the government has spent/is spending on the World Cup/2016 Olympics. Because some genius thought that a country like Brazil could handle the two largest international sporting events in the world within the span of two years. At an estimated $11 billion, this World Cup is over twice as expensive as the South African World Cup and the most expensive one to date.  So what, right? Big events require big money. True, but when the money is coming at the expense of an infamously income disparate population, one starts to question the importance of a fucking soccer game. At least, that's what the majority of Brazil is questioning.



A recent Pew Research Center Poll found that 61% of respondents believed that the World Cup would be bad for their country. Alas, they were right. To start with, the claim that Brazilian merchants would benefit from the World Cup is absolute horse shit. According to CNN, only official partners of FIFA are allowed to sell their wares within the stadium, eliminating the ability of native Brazilian merchants to hock their merchandise to the majority of interested parties. But beyond merely screwing the local businesses out of selling their shit to the onslaught of tourists, FIFA and the World Cup have managed to give the finger to even the most remote members of the population. Manaus, a city known for being really far away from everything else, is the host city for several games, namely the current (or recent depending on how fast I am) Italy-England game.  It also has no home team and its $270 million stadium will probably go mostly unused after the World Cup. Now, this may be unsurprising to a country as adept at wasting money as the United States is, but for a developing country like Brazil, this is absolutely abhorrent.

Of course, Brazil's denizens have responded appropriately with protests led by organizations like the Homeless Workers Movement and public transport workers (among many others) but they have been met with a brutal police force armed with tear gas and rubber bullets. Their outcries are an attempt to highlight the crimes mentioned above along with the plain and simple fact that FIFA is using the World Cup as an excuse to bleed Brazil of its resources and money before leaving with most of the profits (an estimated $4.5 billion). Furthermore, FIFA will be exempt from all taxes during their gleeful romp through Brazil, managing to deprive Brazil from even profiting off of having the World Cup there in the first place.

Not content with merely shoving their hand up the collective ass of Brazil, FIFA decided to start shifting things around a bit too. Eleven years ago, in response to alcohol related violence, Brazil banned the consumption of alcohol within stadiums. This seems like a reasonable solution for curbing the violence associated with a historically violent group of fans. There's just one, y'know, minor issue: Budweiser is a World Cup sponsor and they would like for their shitty beer to be sold at the games. "No problem!" says FIFA. FIFA's secretary general, John Valcke assured the media that having beer at the games was something that "we won't negotiate." Eventually, through a process that you can read about here, FIFA was able to get Brazil to lift the ban of alcoholic beverages for a month. Which, if you don't think about it, seems nice and fun. But if you do think about it, you realize that a corporation just bullied a country's government into briefly repealing a law at the behest of a massive alcohol company.

But this is just a taste of the every day villainy that FIFA takes part in, ranging from bribery accusations to, well, more bribery and corruption accusations. Headed up by perpetual evil emperor Sepp Blatter, FIFA is a veritable den of underhanded dealings and general fuckery. The latter including Blatter's hilarious assertion that FIFA is a non-profit organization (with $1 billion in reserves) and his eye-roll worthy sexist comment about how women's soccer could gain more attention if they put the women in shorter shorts. As for the future of the World Cup, a quick viewing of the above video will reveal how Qatar, the "lucky" 2022 World Cup host country is, for all intents and purposes, a slave state whose citizens will have no choice but to help set up in anticipation for a bunch of shitty, drunk soccer fans.

I started with it and I'll end with it: lovers and players of soccer are not to blame for the god awful events transpiring as a result of FIFA's ultra-capitalist endeavors. And, aside from a few douchebags, including noted asshole, Ronaldo, I do think most people see the rising unrest in Brazil as a real problem that deserves attention. Look, I doubt you're going to stop watching the World Cup just because some guy on the internet told you it was evil (even though it is) and I wouldn't expect that from you. What I do expect is a level of social awareness when you are watching this year's festivities. I'd like for you to keep in mind that all of this enjoyment is coming to you at the expense of millions of people in a developing country who aren't likely to see a dime when it's all over with. With that in mind, I'd like you to reconsider how much undying support you show for the next World Cup. And, as always, I'd just like for you to be mindful of everything you see or hear. Soccer is fun (I guess...) and is meant to be pure, unadulterated enjoyment for the masses. Unfortunately, some assholes in Switzerland decided they were going to take advantage of this almost blinding allegiance to the game. Don't let them take advantage of you.