As teenage skateboarder Alex (Gabe Nevins) hops freight trains with a stranger, a security guard spots them and tries to forcibly remove them. Alex's life begins to fray after he is involved in the accidental death of the security guard.
Gus Van Sant's capper to a trilogy of experiments in elliptical narrative and lyrical structure is a masterful triumph of art, craft and empathy for the complicatedness of being a real teenager.
Regarding Paranoid Park as an elongated short rather than a feature helps a bit, because it's a miniature in spirit -- a small-format portrait of psychic malaise that just happens to last 84 minutes.
In the hands of cinematographic mastermind Christopher Doyle, teenage spats, telephone calls and coasting skateboarders are infused with lyricism and dreaminess.
