Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Gus Van Sant has been working on some great independent titles and forgoing the usual mainstream route. Paranoid Park reminded me a bit of his earlier film, Elephant, and takes the same route of hiring non-actors and using a low budget. Despite this approach Van Sant still delivers a very strong story with good character development. The film follows a high school skater who's involved in an unfortunate accident that costs a security guard his life. The film focuses on how this affects the boy's life and trying to figure out what to do. The narrative is weaved from different timelines allowing you to get a feel for the character before plunging you right into the events. I'm glad to see notable filmmakers start to go against the mainstream Hollywood feel with their films. Films like this show you don't need big names or high budgets to make an effective film.

This film was shot in both 35mm and Super 8 so the video quality varies significantly throughout. Most of the Super 8 footage looks pretty rough and typical of what we see with hand camera work. The film footage is nicely detailed though but reveals a noticeable level of grain that gives the film a somewhat dated appearance. This is exactly what the director intended, but it makes for an average HD viewing experience overall. Dimensionality is still strong though and given the nature of the film the viewing experience lends a lot to the emotion of the film.

As stylized as the video presentation is, it doesn't hold a candle to the audio. Tartan has included both a DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD soundtrack for this release. This is a bizarre soundtrack that mixes modern day music with what sounds like aging vinyl based tracks that have plenty of static and pops. The phasing of channels is also bizarre at time almost as if the director wanted to make a quasi surround soundstage out of the front two channels but decided to encode as surround anyways. This throws the balance of some of the voice work way out with weird imaging on the sidewalls and inconsistent levels compared to other dialogue in a scene. It is a trippy effect and one that will probably divide viewers. I did like the heavy use of different types of music to add to the atmosphere though and the lossless soundtracks deliver every detail whether you would want to hear them or not.

Extras are in standard definition PAL and include a production feature, the trailer and a look at the concept of the film.

While not my favorite film from Gus Van Sant, Paranoid Park is still an effective character drama. Tartan has done a great job bringing this bizarre A/V experience to Blu-ray and its region friendly encoding makes it a safe import. Fans of Van Sant's other project films should definitely give this one a look.