Paranoid Park...

The killer team of Gus van Sant and Christopher Doyle (on camera) has made a fantastic film called Paranoid Park. On the surface we see skateboards and surly teens in rainy Portland OR, but don't let that dissuade you. This is no Larry Clark drug-addled clusterfuck. What you get is a perfectly-rendered recreation of adolescent fear and guilt. The birth of a morality. It gave me a jolting flashback to that panicked sense one has in youth of learning on the job and making it up as you go. The lead actor's fixed face and monotonous voice are the thinnest of veils laid over a Vesuvius of inner activity. Doyle's camera work is so fluid and rich, it reminds us of exactly how dreamy those years were, how much color and beauty and danger there is in the world without are having the distance, the awareness of mortality, to appreciate them. It's a small movie with a big universe inside. Oh, and, don't watch any of the You Tube trailers or read any reviews. Best not to know anything going in.