Paranoid Park (2007)
There's a moment early in Paranoid Park where the camera just lingers on a skate bowl, the concrete curves catching light in a way that feels almost underwater, and you think: right, this is going to be something special. Gus Van Sant has a gift for that kind of visual seduction, and his 2007 feature leans into it hard from the very first frame. The cinematography, and I genuinely mean this, is stunning. The skate parks and concrete bowls of Portland are shot with a dreamlike, hypnotic quality that makes the whole film feel like a memory being half-recalled, slightly distorted, the edges soft. Paired with a moody, atmospheric soundtrack that drifts in and out like static, Van Sant builds a mood that is genuinely arresting.
The story itself is built around a dark, life-altering accident, and the film is smart about how it reveals the truth of what happened. The narrative is fragmented, circling back on itself, teasing out details rather than laying them flat. When the full weight of it lands, it earns that weight. There is something genuinely heavy in the way the film handles guilt and the particular paralysis of being young and not knowing who to tell, or whether to tell anyone at all.
The emotional centre of all this is Gabe Nevins as the teenage protagonist Alex. It is a quietly internalised performance, the kind where very little is said aloud but a lot is happening behind the eyes, and it works. He holds the film's more abstract, drifting passages together better than you might expect from someone with little prior experience. Without him, the whole thing could easily float away.
But here is where it gets complicated. The supporting cast is, to be blunt, a decidedly mixed bag. Van Sant clearly went for authenticity by casting non-professional teenagers, and you can respect the impulse, but some of the line readings are genuinely, distractingly wooden. There are moments where the immersive bubble Van Sant has worked so carefully to build gets punctured by a delivery that just does not land, and it is hard to unsee once you have noticed it.
My bigger issue with the film, though, crystallised the very next day when I watched Mid90s. Jonah Hill's debut puts you right in the middle of youth culture, all bruised knees and bad decisions, and it does so with a sharp, lived-in naturalism that Paranoid Park cannot quite match. Van Sant, for all his visual brilliance, is observing his skaters through a thick pane of stylised glass. You feel the distance. Where Mid90s drags you into the mess, Paranoid Park keeps you at arm's length, and whether that is a feature or a flaw probably depends on your patience for a certain kind of arthouse cool.
And that is the frustration, really. This is a film that gets several things very right. The look, the tone, the central performance, the structural approach to its dark premise. But it sits in an awkward middle ground: too stylised to feel completely raw, too grounded in its grim subject matter to work purely as abstract mood. It is neither fish nor fowl, and you feel that tension throughout.
Three stars. Worth watching for the cinematography alone, and Nevins is a genuine find. But if you are coming to it hoping for something that captures youth with real, messy authenticity, I would start with Mid90s and work back from there.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2007 | Watched: 2026-08-02
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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Rent: Amazon Video
Buy: Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
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