Paranoid Park

It's hard to believe that a middle-aged filmmaker can fully evoke the chaotic, anxious world of a troubled teenager, but that's what Gus Van Sant has done with Paranoid Park. Alex (newcomer Gabe Nevins), a teenaged boy whose parents are going through a difficult divorce, is drawn to the rough community that's built up around the titular skateboarding park in Portland, Ore. One night, when an older boy is showing him how to hop a freight train, Alex accidentally kills a security guard. The movie captures the before and after by looping back and forth in time, focusing far more closely on Alex's state of mind than the investigation that threatens to close around him. Filmgoers leery of the drawn-out, atmospheric sequences of Van Sant's recent films (like Gerry and Last Days) need not fear; though Paranoid Park favors mood over plot, it successfully balances character, mood, and story, resulting in considerable dramatic tension, similar to Van Sant's meditation on the Columbine shootings, Elephant. This is not a thriller; Paranoid Park pays as much attention to Alex's relationship with his girlfriend Jennifer (Taylor Momsen, Gossip Girl) as to the killing. The result is a vivid, compelling portrait of adolescence, in all its messiness and confusion. This may be Van Sant's best film since his early masterpieces, Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho. --Bret Fetzer