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36
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93
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79
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76
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73
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71
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69
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67
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65
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64
Wanted
62
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61
Stop Loss
61
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58
Mist, The
57
Forbidden Kingdom, The
57
Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
55
Street Kings
55
Nim's Island
55
Baby Mama
54
You Don't Mess with the Zohan
54
Get Smart
53
Sex and the City: The Movie
49
Hancock
48
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
47
Strangers, The
44
Ruins, The
41
Drillbit Taylor
37
Made of Honor
37
Shutter
37
Speed Racer
36
College Road Trip
36
What Happens in Vegas...
35
Jumper
34
Happening, The
34
10,000 B.C.
33
Superhero Movie
31
Deception
24
Love Guru, The
22
Postal
xx
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
xx
Mamma Mia!
xx
Dark Knight, The
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

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80
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76
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47
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80
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59
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55
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63
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72
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51
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56
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70
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83
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86
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79
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62
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37
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64
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66
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55
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72
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64
XXY
67
Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
75
Young@Heart
86
Up the Yangtze
86
Flight of the Red Balloon, The
84
My Winnipeg
84
Edge of Heaven, The
83
Chop Shop
83
Paranoid Park
83
Alexandra
83
U2 3D
83
Chris & Don. A Love Story
82
Last Mistress, The
81
Tell No One
80
Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
80
Band's Visit, The
79
Reprise
79
Encounters at the End of the World
79
Visitor, The
78
Counterfeiters, The
76
Beauty in Trouble
76
Shotgun Stories
75
Young@Heart
74
Mongol
74
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
73
Duchess of Langeais, The
72
Woman on the Beach
72
Priceless
72
Tuya's Marriage
72
Surfwise
71
To the Limit
71
My Brother Is an Only Child
71
Roman de gare
70
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70
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70
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70
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69
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69
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69
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68
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68
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68
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67
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66
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66
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64
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64
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64
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64
Water Lilies
64
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63
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63
Gunnin for that #1 Spot
63
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62
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62
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62
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62
Kiss the Bride
61
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61
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60
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60
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60
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59
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57
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56
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56
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56
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55
Quid Pro Quo
55
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55
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55
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55
Without the King
54
Tracey Fragments, The
53
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52
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52
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52
Mother of Tears, The
52
My Blueberry Nights
51
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51
Promotion, The
51
Savage Grace
49
Children of Huang Shi, The
47
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45
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38
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37
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34
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33
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30
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29
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xx
Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Paranoid Park
IFC First Take
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for some disturbing images, language and sexual content
Starring
Gabe Nevins,
Daniel Liu,
Taylor Momsen,
Jake Miller,
and
Lauren McKinney
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)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Blake Nelson (novel)
Gus Van Sant
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Gus Van Sant
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
Theatrical: March 7, 2008
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
90 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
France / USA |

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
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.

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

100
San Francisco Chronicle
David Wiegand
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.

100
Los Angeles Times
Carina Chocano
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.

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

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

90
New York Magazine
David Edelstein
Paranoid Park is a supernaturally perfect fusion of Van Sant’s current conceptual-art-project head-trip aesthetic and Blake Nelson’s finely tuned first-person “young adult” novel.

90
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
It's a new and inspired vision of a familiar state of being -- teenage anomie amidst the crumbling wreckage of a middle-class American family. In the space of 78 minutes, Mr. Van Sant and his cinematographer, the peerless Christopher Doyle, manage to suffuse that state with haunting sadness, ubiquitous danger, pulsing power and flickers of hope.

89
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
Paranoid Park shows the Portland-based director to be working at the pinnacle of his art in every frame, in every composition. It's breathtaking, heartbreaking, tragic, gorgeous, and true all at the same time.

88
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
“Elephant” may have won the Palme d’Or at Cannes but it really didn’t have anything to say about anything. Modest and artful, Paranoid Park says a great deal.

88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Jason McBride
It might seem, from 2002's "Gerry" to his ersatz Kurt Cobain biopic, "Last Days," that Gus Van Sant has been making the same movie: an enigmatic and poetic paean to (teenaged) male beauty, disaffection and inscrutability.

88
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
The story of Paranoid Park may center on an extreme and unusual case, but it's Van Sant's understanding of -- and compassion for -- the hell of growing up that makes the film such a profound and lasting pleasure.

88
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
It's terribly strong -- in structural ingenuity, emotional pull, and particularly visual beauty.

88
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
The film's sound design, sampling Beethoven and Nino Rota, among others, links up with visual miracles performed by Rain Kathy Li and Wong Kar-Wai's noted cinematographer, Christopher Doyle (In the Mood for Love), to take us inside Alex's head. The result, a defiant slap at slick Hollywood formula, is mesmerizing.

83
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
Paranoid Park has the slightly glum insularity of minimalist fiction, but it's the first of Van Sant's blitzed-generation films in which a young man wakes up instead of shutting down.

80
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
In Paranoid Park, Gus Van Sant enters the world of high school kids just as he did in "Elephant," achieving this time a much sharper, more focused portrait of how these rapidly maturing young people act, think, speak and behave.

80
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
Van Sant is such an assured filmmaker that Paranoid Park is almost inescapably absorbing; he has found a particularly engaging leading man in Miller, whose expressive, even painterly face goes from blank to angelic in the blink of a long-lashed eye.

75
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Van Sant has been quoted in recent media reports as being done with the type of filmmaking that these four movies represent. If that's true, then Paranoid Park is a fine summation of what he learned from making them.

75
TV Guide
Ken Fox
It's all confusing, woozy and slightly stoned, and feels very much like adolescence.

75
New York Daily News
Elizabeth Weitzman
The story's fractured structure - and Christopher Doyle's dreamlike cinematography - make for a striking mood piece.

75
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
Slight but fascinating.

75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Paranoid Park is a rare breed: a movie about teenagers in which the characters talk like real teenagers, act like real teenagers, and are played by real teenagers.

63
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
The fluid film cinematography of Christopher Doyle and Rain Kathy Li, intercut with grainy Super-8 shots of park regulars, tracks the skaters in their free-flying, free-styling and free-falling grace. In these privileged moments, the film is close to transcendence, defying time, space and gravity.

60
Film Threat
Rick Kisonak
The chief triumph here, it seems to me though, is one of style over substance. The disaffected kids who shuffle through its universe have nothing to say, nothing to tell us. I’m not sure the movie has a whole lot more.

60
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
If Paranoid Park is mainly an accumulation of the signs and symbols and images inside Van Sant's own head, that's artistically legitimate. When he makes a feeble effort to connect Alex's plight to the Iraq war and the cultural climate of Bush-era America, I just don't buy it.

58
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
Paranoid Park is a movie about its teen hero's inability to express his feelings: to himself, to his parents, to his friends and, unfortunately, to the audience.

50
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
There's some striking camerawork by Christopher Doyle (in 35-millimeter) and Rain Kathy Li (in Super-8), though this doesn't alter the overall feeling of random, nihilistic drift.


The average user rating for this movie is 6.9 (out of 10) based on 20 User Votes
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