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Paranoid Park
IFC First Take


6.9

based on 27 reviews
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How did we calculate this?

based on 20 votes
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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

TV Guide Ken Fox

It's all confusing, woozy and slightly stoned, and feels very much like adolescence.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

The story's fractured structure - and Christopher Doyle's dreamlike cinematography - make for a striking mood piece.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Slight but fascinating.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Carl G gave it a2:
I was rather irritated after leaving this movie, there was no plot development, the dialog was unbearable, what made up for it was the fact that when I left I told all the people waiting in line that Kerry dies at the end. Save your money.

Chad S. gave it a9:
Alex(Gabe Nevins) names the film. In his notebook, he inscribes the title, in pencil, just like the opening credits sequence for "Almost Famous". It was Cameron Crowe's hand. He was the author, just like Alex is the author of "Paranoid Park". Many films are told non-linearly, but since the filmmaker gives us the illusion that he's assigning the storytelling duties to a character, the disjointed narrative has an organic feel, because Alex tells his story as a means to avoid incriminating himself. Since Alex is an amateur writer, the non-sequential ordering of scenes have an artless feel. Like "Storytelling", the Todd Solondz film about how the line between non-fiction and fiction are often blurred, "Paranoid Park" is about, storytelling; subjective storytelling. The truth of what really happened at the trainyard is in Alex's letter to a friend: Alex disturbed the crime scene. That's my best guess.

Z. Wyatt gave it a10:
This was just spectacular film-making. Intimate, claustrophobic. Pure tone throughout.

Andrew R. gave it a0:
This movie is way too long at 87 minutes. The "acting" is terrible. I can't understand how Van Zant keeps getting money to make films.

Ken H. gave it a9:
Its a slow-moving, stylized and quiet film that will only reward viewers who are attentive and thoughtful. If you are looking for a standard narrative and standard "good versus evil" ethics, you will certainly be disappointed. What we do get is an impressive film that tries to create a few days in the life of a typical teenager when something extraordinary happens to him. I suppose you could call it a coming of age flick, but you'd be missing the point if you labeled it simply as that. It has only one real fault -- a select few of the young actors fail as actors and it can wrench the viewer right out of the moment.

Michael C. gave it a9:
I liked its slowness.

Josh B. gave it a4:
I get why all the critics went ga-ga for this movie-- it's very atmospheric and arty. But it's hard to care about any of the characters, so at the end I was left with a big "So what?"

Paranoid Park IFC First Take

Paranoid Park
IFC First Take