In a world at war, where Iraq means almost nothing to the youth of America, Alex’s late-coming conscience lights up the surrounding gloom like a fireball. There’s no resolution as such, but that’s the importance of this small but engrossing film. At first, his performance seems odd and borderline amateur, but over time Van Sant plays his hand to reveal Best of all is newcomer Gabe Nevins as Alex, whose stuttering voiceover punctuates the film. Van Sant has a particular flair for casting, and the teens assembled here are far removed from the kids of The OC, complete with spots, puppy fat and endearingly clumsy attempts at fashion sense. However, this isn’t simply an avant-garde exercise. There are no featured reviews for Paranoid because the movie has not released yet (). The same goes for the film’s extraordinary score, a mash-up of alt-rock and jarring classical that creates a mood quite unlike Van Sant’s previous efforts. Riding the concrete waves of the skate park, Doyle’s camera rolls and bodyswerves through its protagonist’s playground, the Paranoid Park of the title. With Doyle behind the lens, the film has a different look to Van Sant’s previous collaborations with Harris Savides at once strangely elegant and dishevelled. To those who find all these films boring anyway, the difference will be negligible, but to those who think Van Sant has stumbled on a provocative new style when most of his peers are foundering, it seems he’s getting more radical in his old age. The former is easily Stone’s most popular presidential movie. Kennedy Nixon, about the downfall of Richard Nixon’s career and W., a satire of the Bush administration. presidents: JFK, about the assassination of John F. But although Paranoid Park also features an unexpected (and untypically gory) death, this latest film stands apart from that trilogy. JFK (8.0) Unsurprisingly, considering his politically charged filmmaking style, Oliver Stone has made three movies about U.S. I am, however, a very enthusiastic viewer of these beautiful, campy, paranoid movies, and I recommend watching them this spooky season, especially if you need a break from the ghosts and ghouls. Van Sant’s conversion began with desert ordeal Gerry, followed by Columbine essay Elephant, and Kurt Cobain homage Last Days. Although he made his name with big-name indie fare, and even flirted with the studios, Van Sant has not simply gone back to his roots but even further, using non-professionals and an experimental style more extreme than the one he began with. But then, Gus Van Sant hasn’t been in Hollywood for a while. It’s busy, but lacks any sense of movement, and is too visually monotonous to work on an abstract level.You know you’re not in Hollywood anymore when the main character’s Uncle Tommy turns out to be Christopher Doyle, the bad-boy cinematographer whose prowess behind the lens is exceeded only by his performance in the bar. This is the sort of movie where it takes a half-dozen shots for a man to jump over a fence. Making good on his name, Megaton takes the quantity-over-quality approach, executing a flurry of cuts across as many sloppy angles as possible, producing a gurgling brownish soup of photochemical textures and handheld jitters. Pierre Morel, the cinematographer-turned-director behind the original Taken and the parkour flick District B13, at least had the good sense to move the camera with Neeson, playing off of his size and heft to create momentum. So what, exactly, is wrong with Taken 3? A lot of things, most of which can be attributed to the fact that director Olivier Megaton-who also helmed Taken 2-couldn’t mount an action scene if his life depended on it. He’s an invulnerable action hero for the same reasons why he’s a difficult parent and partner. He’s the perfect father for a kid who’s been kidnapped by armed thugs, but over-protective and awkward otherwise-a fact that Taken 3 underscores when Mills, who can effortlessly elude the best and brightest of the LAPD, slumps over after learning that his now grown-up daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) is pregnant. What makes Mills compelling-aside from Neeson’s performance, naturally-is the fact that his cartoonish over-preparedness and ability to escape from any situation are rooted in anxiety.
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