Paranoid Park

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  May 19, 2009

  TheMachinist

  'Paranoid Park' is another minimalistic film, with mostly amateus actors, from the critically acclaimed director Gus Van Sant. With a filmography consisting such films as 'Good Will Hunting', which is absolutely one of my favourites, and 'Drugstore Cowboy' and now with his latest...( read more) work 'Milk', Gus Van Sant has proved us all that he can make movies that will for sure be worth a look. But then again, he has made a remake of 'Psycho' so....
  
  'Elephant', which he made in 2003, was a succesful film. 'Paranoid Park' resembles it a lot in the way of filmmaking. Amateur actors, authentic look and so on. This film has its positive sides, mainly the cinematography by Christopher Doyle, but when everything else doesn't give you anything particularly special, it can't really be that great.
  
  Nothing much really happens here. Skater, high school kids just hanging around at Paranoid Park, watching other skaters do their thing. Then there's of course the everyday problems of dating and losing your virginity and listening to the annoying girlfriend. Oh yeah, and someone gets killed.
  
  Although 'Paranoid Park' only lasts for less then 90 minutes, it may at times feel a bit draging and boring. I had troubles to identify myself with the main characters. I'm just a 30 year old man who was born in yokel surroundings. When I see skaters, once again, do their thing, I'm not that interested of it.
  
  Even if the acting is solid, which is a great thing considering the amateur cast, when you skip everything else and leave just the murder, this could have worked better as a short film but not as a full length feature. But 'Paranoid Park' is in no way a bad work by Van Sant. I just don't see it as that special.

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  May 17, 2009

  ceWEBrity

  A stirring, subtle, visually remarkable piece by Gus Van Sant. If you saw flaws in Elephant, this rectifies them and expands on its companion piece's richness. Though the awful acting still remains, the situations Van Sant creates house them well - these kids aren't navigating pa...( read more)rticularly challenging or out-there roles, but instead are living the lives of a few ordinary teenagers who are in or around trouble. The awkwardness and lack of grandstanding (or presence of grandstanding, where appropriate) are a perfect fit for the teen experience. The only one who doesn't fit here is Taylor Momsen, who just feels far too accustomed to acting and movies and all that glossy desouled business. Gabe Nevins works as a good, solid blank slate, a perfect fit for a protagonist who isn't particularly bright or charismatic. He is stentorian and hard to read, almost enigmatic.
  
  I was surprised to see that Christopher Doyle filmed this movie, but upon actually watching it, the work is clearly his. Colorful and sharply framed, he always knows what to keep in the viewer's sight and what to keep away from them. Paranoid Park, against all odds, is bizarrely suspenseful for an otherwise quiet movie. The viewer knows within the first ten minutes that Alex killed the security guard, but it doesn't make the buildup to the act any less horrifying. Watching the event unfurl, by the way, is one of the most powerful scenes of 2008; the less you know about it, the better.
  
  Paranoid Park does ramble a little bit, and it feels as if Van Sant filmed 50 minutes of film and then just edited it all together really fancily to add another half hour. Even so, at 80 minutes, it's far more trim and meaningful than most of what you're likely to see.

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  February 10, 2009

  Cinema101

  It doesn't hit you until far after you've left the theater. This is a tragic, haunting portrayal of contemporary American youth, and a brilliant one.

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  November 24, 2008

  her69eyes

  Gus Van Sant, an iconic indie auteur best known for "Good Will Hunting" and the upcoming "Milk", found his cast for "Paranoid Park" via MySpace and a local newspaper. It's completely refreshing to see teenagers who look like teenagers, talk like teenagers, and act like teenagers....( read more) There's a character in the film with acne and the fact that she has acne is never mentioned, unlike how in any other film she'd be considered the ugly outcast. What "Ugly Betty" is becomes simple normalcy in the legitimate world "Paranoid Park" creates, and it's a big step for film that i'd love to see mainsteam pictures tackle. However, the films legitimacy is ultimately it's detriment. I think of another recent film where two young actors made their debut, "Let the Right One In", and compare their performances to those in this film. I'm fine with excusing inexperienced acting in an indie film - but some of this was far too bad to be considered "passable" for something that's not shown by a student in a film production classroom. I totally bought another Van Sant movie in a similar vein, "Elephant", and although this one visually worked, I never found myself doing anything other than asking myself why this kid needs to be walking in slow motion for the umpteenth time.
  
  Alex (Gabe Nevins) is a high school student who spends much of his time skateboarding. Unlike many other films about skateboarders, he's not necessarily rebellious and outrageous, rather a pretty normal guy. He could actually exist, and you'll be able to draw comparisons from him to people you've encountered (the same goes for everyone in this movie). He's dating a virgin cheerleader, Jennifer (Taylor Momsen), and he dreads the day where she eventually wants to have sex and complicate things. His friend, Jared (Jake Miller), on the other hand insists that getting laid is better than not getting laid, and that he should hold onto her for all she's worth. Alex's other buddy is Macy (Lauren McKinney), who is wise beyond her years and seems to have a crush on Alex.
  
  The title of the film is in reference to an imaginary skate park - one which is frequented by outcasts, druggies, and the like. One day, as him and a fellow skateboarder are trying to hitch a ride on a train, a security guard runs at them with his flashlight and tries to bat them off. Alex, scared, fires back and hits him with his skateboard, sending the guard into traintracks and is met with an oncoming train. Now, there's a detective on the case (Daniel Liu) who is sure that the culprit is a skateboarder who frequents Paranoid Park. The film, however, is not a detective thriller, and the whole murder story is almost a backdrop for the rest of the film. We never get a payoff, and we don't spend a whole time with the detective. Rather, it's about Alex's mind and his search for meaning. He has enough problems with his home life, girlfriend, and everything else that goes along with a teenager - but now being drawn this conception of the fragility of mortality has completely shattered his world.
  
  In the beginning of this review, I mentioned that Alex frequently walks around in slow motion. That is true. Of course, the artistic side of you can argue that these scenes were there to show Alex's indecisiveness and how involved he is with his own problems... but unfortunately, they come off as nothing more than an excuse to get another Elliot Smith song on the soundtrack. This is indie on top of indie on top of indie filmmaking... and although I usually do enjoy films like this, I found this one to be very self-indulgent. Some of the cinematography is beautiful, such as the skateboarding sequences - but there comes a point when you want to learn more about Alex's surroundings than seeing kickflips and grinds. While visually appealing, I found it to be emotionally lifeless.
  
  Gabe Nevins' performance is adequate and not bad for a newcomer. He shows little enthusiasm and comes off as a walking corpse, but that's what best fits his character. A few of the supporting players, like Jake Miller, were just inexcusably bad. When you see a film by a director like Gus Van Sant you'd expect great cinematography and at the very least decent acting, but some of these kids were just awful. I loved that they all looked like normal kids... but there comes a point when you're begging for one of the Jonas Brothers.
  
  That being said, however, I can at the very least say that "Paranoid Park" is an interesting film. It establishes a relentless mood through it's cinematography and music, and it that draws you in for the entirety of the story. That being said, I felt that "Elephant" said more about high schoolers more effectively. I really liked that film a lot, but this time around it's hard to swallow the pretentiousness and amateur acting.

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  October 30, 2008

  columbiatch

  Excellent stuff. a very dreamy and intimate portrayal of adolescence. Didn't fall into any kind of cliche resolution I was expecting and the film is about much more than its central incident. Love the Nino Rota music and the Scorpio Rising-like 8 mm footage of the skateboarding...( read more) subculture.

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  October 24, 2009

  rex889

  Paranoid Park: Si bien su Argumento es muy atrapante...... a mi no logro atraparme en la cinta..... a Medida que va pasando ...la filmación, se va notando el Toque de Gus Van Sant... Que vuelve para atras como Elephant.... sinceramente yo esparaba más de Paranoid Park.....
  La es...( read more)cena mejor lograda es la parte del accidente

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  October 12, 2009

  aleksei96

  Some kind of Drugstore Cowboy tale for the kids of Elephant, this minimalistic story goes almost masterpiece thanks to a very clever and poetic visual and sound editing. Dreamlike, captivating... the amateurish acting gives it some authenticity, but sometimes break the "spell"......( read more) all in all, very interesting movie if only for aesthetic value...

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  October 12, 2009

  ElCochran90

  What I'm trully beginning to love about Gus Van Sant's direction is his gradual change in his direction style. Looking closely at films like Gerry (2002), Elephant (2003), Last Days (2005) and Paranoid Park (2007), we can really appreciate a totally different direction, which is,...( read more) in my opinion, a very brave thing to do in a Hollywood world.
  
  I remember films like Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and Good Will Hunting (1997) and the talent these films showed, but the following films were the least thing I expected from Gus.
  
  Paranoid Park, although it portrays a simple plot exploring the skate culture, falls right into the American art film genre. Some shots are hypnotic and unbelievably beautiful. The acting was fine, the cinematography is outstanding, the pace is brilliantly slow and the result is an underrated gem.
  
  67/100

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  October 11, 2009

  wetground

  tão lento quanto elephant, mas menos interessante.

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  September 23, 2009

  magnolia12883

  Gus Van Sant's tone poem of a film is an elliptical, poetically hypnotic portrait of a young life interrupted by sudden death. Alex (Gabe Nevins) is a skateboard punk in Portland, Oregon. His life is dominated by hanging out with his friend Jared (Jake Miller) at the local homegr...( read more)own skateboard venue Paranoid Park, and maybe sorta-kinda liking the cheerleader Jennifer (Taylor Momsen). His mother (Grace Carter) and father (Jay 'Smay' Williamson) are separated and on the road to divorce, and thus too distracted to notice his behavior. His shiftless skate punk routine is altered one fateful night by an accident which comes to consume him: hopping trains with a stranger he met at the skate park, he's pursued by a security guard and hits him with his skateboard, which knocks him onto the tracks - where he's split in two by an oncoming train. Alex's initial reaction is one of shock, and then one of fear of being caught when a detective (Daniel Liu) starts looking into the event and asking all the skateboarders at Alex's school about whether they were there that weekend or not. As the net closes in, Alex grows more and more paranoid about getting caught, yet the weight of the guilt for what was, after all, accidental manslaughter, begins to seep its way into his conscience. What can he do to get this weight off his chest? Gus Van Sant, who wrote and directed this story from a novel by Blake Nelson, is the crown prince of independent cinema dating back to his breakthrough "Drugstore Cowboy" (1989) and its follow-up "My Own Private Idaho" (1991). Since then, he has varied from the darkly comedic ("To Die For") to the inspirational ("Good Will Hunting," "Finding Forrester"), from needless remakes ("Psycho") to doomed book adaptations ("Even Cowgirls Get the Blues"). This film has more in common with Van Sant's latest works: like "Gerry" (2002), "Elephant" (2003) and "Last Days" (2005), this is yet another spare, mutedly stylish slice of death-tinged life filled to the brim with lyrical touches. In his young and largely inexperienced cast, Van Sant has found the ideal people to play their parts, especially Nevins as Alex: he is sullen, introverted and withdrawn, in love with skateboarding but still a kid (too afraid to go to the park alone). The only thing that didn't work so well for me (though I suppose it was necessary) is the narration, based on the premise that Alex is writing down his tragic experience in a journal to exorcise his demons. The narration feels read and written, although that may be intentional to give the impression of being thought and written out as Alex goes along. Occaionally, the film fractures the narrative, doubling back to show an event or listen to a snippet of conversation again, and I believe we see Alex starting to write his journal two or three times throughout the film. Van Sant, with cinematographers Christopher Doyle and Rain Li, brings all of his growing visual gifts to the fore: whether it be playing with soft and solid focus and lighting exposures, or fast and slow motion, or even several long tracking shots following the main character through his landscape (notice in particular a shot near the beginning in which Alex is on a path between two sections of tall grass, the blue and gray coastline on the horizon). The impeccable soundtrack is dominated by everything from Nino Rota (particularly music from Fellini's "Juliet of the Spirits") to opera, hip hop, thrash metal, and even Elliot Smith (notice the re-use of "Angeles" from Van Sant's "Good Will Hunting"). Curiously, all of this works to make the film more a meandering but focused portrait of a consciousness awakened by accidental tragedy, where the plot is just there under the surface, keeping things moving right along. The results are alternatingly fascinating, haunting and beautiful.

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• Jake Miller
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