Metacritic Movie Ratings
Paranoid Park Reviews

A sample of reviews from critics across the country.

• 100

  out of 100

  Los Angeles TimesCarina Chocano

  Youth and death meet again in Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park, a gorgeously stark, mesmerizingly elliptical story told in the same lyrical-prosaic style that has characterized his latest films.

  Read full review

• 100

  out of 100

  The New York TimesManohla Dargis

  A haunting, voluptuously beautiful portrait of a teenage boy who, after being suddenly caught in midflight, falls to earth.

  Read full review

• 90

  out of 100

  VarietyTodd McCarthy

  Through immaculate use of picture, sound and time, the director adds another panel to his series of pictures about disaffected, disconnected youth.

  Read full review

• 90

  out of 100

  Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern

  It's a new and inspired vision of a familiar state of being -- teenage anomie amidst the crumbling wreckage of a middle-class American family. In the space of 78 minutes, Mr. Van Sant and his cinematographer, the peerless Christopher Doyle, manage to suffuse that state with haunting sadness, ubiquitous danger, pulsing power and flickers of hope.

  Read full review

• 83

  out of 100

  Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman

  Paranoid Park has the slightly glum insularity of minimalist fiction, but it's the first of Van Sant's blitzed-generation films in which a young man wakes up instead of shutting down.

  Read full review

• 80

  out of 100

  The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt

  In Paranoid Park, Gus Van Sant enters the world of high school kids just as he did in "Elephant," achieving this time a much sharper, more focused portrait of how these rapidly maturing young people act, think, speak and behave.

  Read full review

See all Paranoid Park movie reviews at Metacritic.com