Paranoid Park

Director: Gus Van Sant

2007 / 85min / DCP

Adapting Blake Nelson’s Y.A. novel of the same name, Van Sant renders the youth gathering place of the skate park a voluptuous dreamscape with the help of cinematographers Chris Doyle and Rain Kathy Li. Teenaged skate rat Alex—Gabe Nevins, leading a largely amateur cast recruited via MySpace—finds himself a prime suspect in the death of a security guard, silently carrying a crushing burden of knowledge through his daily rounds, a contrast to the gravity-defying liberation he finds carving it up at “Paranoid Park.”