What I've Watched: Paranoid Park

I really dig skateboarding. It's damn cool, in fact. I tried getting good at it when I was a teenager, but I'll be honest in saying that I didn't give it 100%. Hell, I probably gave it about 20%, and that won't get you anywhere but basic olleys and injuries. I wish I would have done it, though, because I do think (perhaps blindly) that I would have been good at it. I was quite a good soccer player, and those who are good on their feet usually have no problem making it on a board.

Alas, it was not meant to be, so instead I live vicariously through my buddies Kelly and Eric. You'll probably see them in my NY Skate Park gallery, where we were under the Brooklyn Bridge and people were killing on the ramps. I'll be posting that one in the coming weeks, so be on the lookout.

Anyway, this all gets us to today's review of Paranoid Park, an off-kilter murder mystery from Gus Van Sant. Yeah, after he got super, duper famous from Good Will Hunting, he decided to go off a do a bunch of low-budg indie films with casts of unknowns. He did one about in a Columbine-inspired tale, and Paranoid Park is primarily about a skater who accidentally kills a security guard and is dealing with the aftermath and whether he's gonna get caught or not.

It's the silence that makes this movie strong. The main character, Alex, is soft-spoken and you're left wondering whether it's that he's a typical teenager or if it's because he's freaking out over the death he just caused. But his eyes tell a lot, and for an unknown actor he delivers strong. The others in the cast are not bad, either, from the bitchy, preening ex-girlfriend to even the local skaters who kick it down at the skatepark. The music's dissonance and the switchback plot cuts sometimes confuse the issue and don't do as good a job as other movies who execute this technique. But it's still a solid film, and its brief running time make it a worthy watch if you're looking for something interesting and untypical from mainstream film.