Paranoid Park

83

IFC First Take (90 minutes)
and Gus Van Sant
Gabe Nevins , Daniel Liu , Taylor Momsen , Jake Miller , and Lauren McKinney

Rating: R for some disturbing images, language and sexual content

Summary: An unsolved murder at Portland's infamous Paranoid Park brings detectives to a local high school, propelling a young skater into a moral odyssey in which he must not only deal with the pain and disconnect of adolescence but also the consequences of his own actions. As director of "My Own Private Idaho", "Good Will Hunting", "To Die For", and "Elephant", Gus Van Sant has created some of the most memorable works about youth ever committed to film. At the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, he was awarded the 60th Anniversary Prize for Paranoid Park, which is largely considered one of his finest films. (IFC First Take)

J. Hoberman
Village Voice:
(100) The pleasing circularity of Gus Van Sant's masterful Paranoid Park is not only a function of the film's narrative structure but reflects the arc of its maker's career. Few directors have revisited their earliest concerns with such vigor.

Manohla Dargis
The New York Times:
(100) A haunting, voluptuously beautiful portrait of a teenage boy who, after being suddenly caught in midflight, falls to earth.

David Wiegand
San Francisco Chronicle:
(100) Appropriately structured like a ride on skateboard: It swoops back and forth in time, hovers in midair, twists back on itself over and over again, then rolls into silence.

Carina Chocano
Los Angeles Times:
(100) Youth and death meet again in Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park, a gorgeously stark, mesmerizingly elliptical story told in the same lyrical-prosaic style that has characterized his latest films.

Keith Phipps
The Onion (A.V. Club):
(91) It's a film assembled from moments out of time, destined forever to weigh down the boy at their center.

Todd McCarthy
Variety:
(90) Through immaculate use of picture, sound and time, the director adds another panel to his series of pictures about disaffected, disconnected youth.

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