jackcwelch23 I have always been fascinated with people who do some of the lurid stuff you read about in the news. The face of a civil society, with smiling faces on billboards, chirpy television show hosts and politicians talking about morals and ethics. This of course, is not the tone of every day peoples lives behind closed doors. We all have unacceptable desires that we seldom share. Trying to marry your own daughter to keep others away from her, strangling yourself while pleasuring yourself and having an affair with a teen aged boy are just a handful of the taboo topics dealt with here very bluntly. While the film has the subtlety of a bag of sledgehammers and basically lacks a plot the performances are strong and the sequence of events is admittedly interesting. Having been a fan of Larry Clarks for years, this was his last movie that was truly daring, wassup rockers and marfa girl being complete wastes of time. Ken park works as it doesn't filter any of its subject matter and as such was doomed to only be seen by a tiny amount of people in its initial run. As time has passed its shocking content has not become easier to handle and it really is a movie you cannot recommend to anyone. I still value having watched it, because it reminds me that were all a little twisted, these people are just on the end of the spectrum.

Steve Pulaski Ken Park is a masterpiece of adolescent nihilism, suburban anarchy, broken values, and the real value of family from the offbeat minds of its director Larry Clark and writer Harmony Korine. Clark and Korine's depictions of troubled cultures, as well as their emphasis on sex and teen angst, are germane enough to work like bread and butter, and in Ken Park some of their most incredible work surfaces to make one like me wish their filmography together wasn't limited to just two films.Six years prior to Ken Park was Kids, a film so similar to the one at hand you could call Ken Park a sequel in some regards. Clark directed Kids and guided the cast of young actors wonderfully thanks to his own personal experiences of adolescent recklessness and disregard for societal norms, while Korine, who was twenty-eight at the time, wrote the film still a part of that drug-driven, often reckless lifestyle. The film seemed to bleed authenticity to the point where calling it something like a documentary would not be a strained comparison.The film follows four young characters, each with a sense of brokenness in their lives. Shawn (James Bullard) is a skater-punk, who continues to have a relationship with his girlfriend's mother. Claude (Stephen Jasso) lives with an alcoholic father, disgusted at his son's lack of manliness and his pregnant mother, who he cares for and still receives no personal thanks or defense from his father whatsoever. Peaches (Tiffany Limos) lives with her deeply religious father, but still engages in sexual activity to which he responds with a grueling and a deeply disturbing punishment. Finally, there's Tate, arguably the most broken of them all. Tate (James Ransone) is sociopathic, with frequent violent tendencies and a habit of verbal abusing all around him. He lives with his grandparents, who he resents, and is one of the darkest characters I've seen in quite sometime.This is arguably Clark's most disturbing picture, with Kids perhaps tying with its frightening qualities. Kids focused more on dialog and character relations, while Ken Park explores the same themes as in that film, but with much more visually shocking instances that capture the rawness of the adolescents' behavior. Within the first twenty minutes of the film, a young male performs oral sex on a female in a scene that would be tonally erotic if not for the fact that the kids are young and the visuals so dirty, taking place in a home in a low-income area with the character performing oral sex on his girlfriend's mother nonetheless. Another explicit sex scene takes place later in the film, this time a threeway in an equally disturbing way, along with a scene of autoerotic asphyxiation and many scenes of graphic brutality. The disturbing element comes from how both Clark and Korine never cut away from what is occurring on screen. They want it all to continue, as disturbing as it is, and they want to depict the sex, brutality, and scenes of vile human behavior without a filter. The other thought that continuously butts at the mind is how familiar with this particular lifestyle both men actually are. Clark has made his drug use public and Korine has only recently became clean. Both men have more skeletons in the closet and dark patches separately than the nearest ten souls combined.It's no doubt the film's main target of criticism, next to its pessimistic, dark qualities, will be its portrayal of sex, which will be called exploitative and borderline pornographic. What the people who cheaply criticize it like that fail to see is that sex is how these cold characters interact and show appreciation. Their numbness to society and each other makes it so sex is the only way they can accurately exercise their feelings. It's sad, given how young these kids are, and the poor souls are robbed of an emotional/moral compass or an outlet of expression other than effectively lowering the impact an act like sex can have. What Ken Park is ultimately about is how to play the cards one is dealt, and a showcase for several examples of young people with broken homes and a frightening lack of a moral compass in their life. Don't let the frequent sex scenes and often startling imagery confuse you - this is a story of broken families and several characters who, while intertwining in each others lives, don't offer anything other than being there to share the suffering. However, sometimes, that's really all we need in life.Starring: James Bullard, Stephen Jasso, Tiffany Limos, and James Ransone. Directed by: Larry Clark.

Rectangular_businessman This was the first Larry Clark movie that I've seen in my life, but it left me without any desire to see another film directed by him.Honestly, this has to be one of the most boring and pointless movies that I've seen in my entire life. It had an ugly and amateurish direction style (Yes, this is another one of those forced and poorly made "pseudorealistic" movies) and lots of forced and gratuitous content which seems to be put here just for the sake of shock.Personally, I didn't find "Ken Park" to be "disturbing" or "shocking" at all, I just find it boring, dull and stupid, without any redeeming value. The last scene was just pathetic, being almost like something borrowed from a very bad porn movie...Oh yeah, something totally "realistic" and "deep".Ken Park is the worst indie film that I've ever saw. For me, it was a complete waste of time.

catherinedownes1988 This film bored me to death. In a word, it's crap. It's a film that tries to be controversial by delving into the lives of a few teenagers. I'd love to know how many average looking boys really get to have sex with their girlfriend's hot mum. Unconvincing to say the least. I found the film very slow to get into, and was a bit confused at the start as to where the film was leading. I suppose the only character in the film worth watching was Tate, the others bored me (sorry for the repetition). Larry Clar has obviously tried to use a number of ways to 'shock' his audience but I would say he's ultimately failed. The slow deliverance and stereotypical teenage sex, drugs and rock and roll life style made me want to fall asleep.