pesic-1 Pretentious student film, probably made by a guy who is into skating and makes lots of videos about it. How do I know? There are long, slow-motion, ridiculously edited sequences of people skating every five minutes, during which nothing happens and which contribute nothing to the story or even the mood of the film. They are just there because the 'filmmaker' thought it would be cool. How old is he? Twelve? Then comes the scene where some Asian guy interrogates the protagonist about what happened. The lighting is terrible, and the focus is off (something you have to get used to in this film), resulting in a very unpleasant scene from the mere visual perspective. The dialogue isn't better either. Then the camera dollies in, but it does so in a weird way, focusing on the boy, yet leaving only a part of the Asian guy's face in the frame. You'd think a blind person operated that camera.Anyway, this is a tedious and very poorly made film on every level. Total zero. Just don't watch it.

Chris Roberts Paranoid Park is an unpredictable, fresh film from Gus Van Sant that tells the story of introspective-teen Alex's struggles with life as he gets involved with the killing of a train station security guard. The whole film hitches on the performance of its star, Gabe Nevins; fortunately, Nevins is in just about every scene of the movie. Nevins is an absolute newcomer to movie-acting, but he works perfectly here. Every scene that he's in, the viewer is completely captured in his quiet, emotional turmoil. Nevins' big, beautiful, sulky eyes tell a story all their own. He's wonderful.Unfortunately, the other young actors are not so comfortable or capable in front of the camera. They are genuine enough though for it to be forgiven though. The real problem here is Van Sant, who's cinematography is trying far too hard to "look" independent. The goofy camera angles and Van Sant's trademark moving-angle/moving-actor camera-work seem un-natural and distract from developing the characters more (which is where more focus was needed). The story jumps forwards and backwards in time so much that sometimes you don't know when you are, but once you've figured the chronology out, that's not a big complaint for me.Overall, the film is a success. It's a reasonable enough story with interesting characters that's well-held-together by an amazing and fresh young performance by Gabe Nevins (just watching him is reason enough to see this movie). As a bonus, the material he's acting out is unique and interesting. A solid thumbs-up purchase for me. Hopefully we see more of this young actor in the future.

Forsythe11 Not normally one I'd see, but my mate had heard it was good. I had heard of Gust Van Sant, of course, but hadn't seen any of his less well known works.This is a strange one. It's almost an art film in some respects. Much of the film is setting the tone and setting the mood. And it does this really well.But if you give yourself into it, you enter a dream world of beautiful photography and minimal performances. Kids skating. One witnesses something horrible. The film is about him dealing with the consequences.If you're the impatient type, give it a chance. It's oddly hypnotic and dream like.

mikenike8835 Let me start off by saying I didn't hate this movie. I found it interesting but that's as far as it went. Two major flaws for this movie was the acting and dialogue, which surprised me because so many other reviews suggested otherwise. I don't remember names but two of the worst actors were our main characters girlfriend, and the other girl he hung out with. It was one of those cases where they were self conscious of the camera, they both just seemed awkward and out of place. This didn't go for just those two though, almost everyone in the movie had at least one moment like this (with maybe an exception for the mom and dad). The dialogue in some parts was just terrible. There were definitely times where I laughed during a particular scene that wasn't meant to be funny. I don't know why this movie has received such high praise. My guess would be because its "Artsy". "Artsy", I hate the word. Its gets slapped on movies that would normally be deemed stupid/bad because it has "taste". Well, taste is like opinions, everyone's is different and some better then others. Personally, I think some experimental movies should just be left as experiments. I would not recommend this movie.