"Paranoid Park"

I'm weighing on on this rather late in blog-time, and I'm already looking at a backlog of stuff to write up, so I'll just express my very enthusiastic approval of Gus van Sant's troubled-teen-tone-poem (yes, it's not as if he's breaking much thematic new ground here, obviously). I will also note that when he's wearing his art-film-hat (which I suspect, and hope, is a permanent fixture), complex structure suit him better than simple ones. That is, the forward-and-back motion of Elephant and the out-of-order flashbacking of Paranoid Park work a whole lot better than the more linear slogs of Gerry and Last Days.