Paranoid Park

Gus Van Sant returned to his roots as the foremost chronicler of Pacific Northwest teen alienation with this dreamy examination of bodies in motion and lives in stasis, which follows a young skateboarder in over his head after a trip to an edgy Portland skate park. Combining the youth culture fascination of Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho with the experimental bent of his Elephant and Last Days, the film benefits greatly from the cinematography of both Christopher Doyle (Wong Kar-wai’s longtime collaborator) and Rain Li, who provided the film’s Super 8mm imagery and was hailed by Variety as one of the “10 Best Cinematographers of the Year.”