We were the only two people at Friday night’s showing of Paranoid Park but that suited the movie well. I’d never even heard of it until a couple of hours before we went, so all I knew was that it featured skateboarding and was directed by Gus Van Sant. Years ago I sat in a packed Chicago theater totally mesmerized by My Own Private Idaho, a flawed but deep and moving film about love and betrayal and friendship. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was such a total mess that I assumed that GVS was a mere mortal director and promptly forgot about keeping up with his stuff. I’ve never seen Good Will Hunting (and I actually like Robin Williams) nor did I bother with the remake of Psycho he did a few years back. But Paranoid Park was intimate and light and lazy, showing so much more than telling. There’s some great super-8 POV skateboarding footage mixed in here and there, and some very keen slo-mo sequences that I’m sure are used all over MTV but seemed anything but cliche in this movie.
I’d actually been gearing up for weeks to see Iron Man with a fellow comic book enthusiast and we finally made that on Sunday afternoon. It really is one of the finest superhero movies ever. Robert Downey Jr. is a true movie star and deserves to be making this sort of comeback. And it had been a decade since I’d fallen deeply in love with Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love so it was great to have her melt my heart again. I was trying to describe Iron Man to Deanna and she remarked that Paranoid Park was probably its polar opposite; low budget, simple plot, no special effects, non-actors performing more or less as themselves. My passion and patience for film isn’t what it used to be but a two movie weekend IN THE THEATER is a rare treat that I am still savoring.
Aaron Scholz 