Only Gus Van Sant gets to make Paranoid Park.
What I mean is, frankly, it is possible I’d shrug this off if it was coming from some young unknown. Especially if it were from the So-and-so Brothers and shot digitally. But it isn’t. It’s the same dude who can play it totally straight and make Milk, if that sentence makes any sense.
Taking much of the shooting style of his brilliant “pure cinema” trilogy of Gerry, Elephant and Last Days with just a dash of CSI intrigue, the movie is an exercise in tone with enough kick-off momentum to sail on its own. I think that was a skateboard metaphor. Anyway, really well done stuff. In some other life, I’d’ve put this on my top 10 of the year, maybe.
