Ken Park

I'm 16, I'm a skater, I'm in high school, I have parents I don't get along with.

Although I don't partake in these actions, the people whom I spend my weekends with do constantly. This movie is a very realistic account of the life that is lead by many of those close to me.

Banning this movie does kids a favor, it doesn't let our parents see the ridiculous lives we lead. All of us kids should see this movie so we can all question our actions and realize the hole we've dug ourselves. But parents should be protected from seeing such films as "Kids" and "Ken Park". These are the realities we try so hard to keep from our parents, why would we want to let larry clark show them?

I was unaffected by this movie, impressed at the reality it captured, but unaffected by the actions in which the kids partook, except Tate's ordeal, although I know kids like that, I generaly don't associate with them, and that made his part of the movie very difficult to handle.

Larry Clark scares me. I just hope my parents don't get a hold of this movie, or "KIDS". He has done a terrific job of grabbing the reality of our lives, and I would hope he keeps making these amazingly realistic movies, as long as my parents don't see them.

ken park or krap nek as they say is basically four episodes with each episode dealing with an individual's family situation or lack thereof. These episodes are inter-cut within each other.

Though Larry's Clark's movies deal with very explicit, or "realistic" subject matter his presentation is overwrought. Characters are more caricatures than 'real' people. The zealot father, the aging housewife, the weird kid, the father with unrequited love. The scenes with these characters were hard for me to take in. The actions and reactions they take seemed so hackneyed to me. Could it be that Larry Clark is developing a "larry clarkness"? a style? As one who is purported to be a breaker of styles and conventions this movie was shot pretty conventionally with lots of sex. I wasn't too impressed with this effort. Some shots, as Larry Clark says, are there for realistic purposes but I just found it to be sensationalistic and unnecessary.

The cinematography was great that is probably due to the Ed Lachman. The blue and red tinge really added to their respective scenes. Probably use of tungsten for outdoors and daylight inside.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I could swear Larry Clark is moving from realism to symbolism. In one scene he has the family gather together on the front steps. Your good Ole' American suburban family, full of deceit and infidelity but putting up a great face none the less. It seemed like a tableau.

I didn't enjoy this latest offering by Larry Clark. It was as if he took Todd Solondz' Happiness, removed all wit, all semblance of plot and character development, and threw in a few explicit sex scenes for some shock value.

After watching Bully and Kids, I have come to accept Clark's style of storytelling, however I felt that this movie went nowhere. He's usually good at juggling multiple story lines that end up converging in a natural sense, but I felt that in Ken Park he didn't have a enough time to delve into any single character's storyline deep enough for the audience to become engaged with the characters, which to me is a crucial element in any good drama.

When the 1h10 mark came around, I was more alarmed by the fact that there were only 20 more minutes in which to resolve the story than by the incest and murder taking place on screen.

This failure was akin to Lukas Moodysson's A Hole in My Heart. I hope Larry Clark's work will only get better after this.

Ok, so the movie tries to express a message about today's youth and their disorientation. It tries it through shock technique, depicting sex at pornographic levels. But really, haven't we all seen it before, in a softer (and much better) way precisely on Larry Clark's "Kids"? I can acknowledge that there was an effort of putting morality together in this one, but really, what comes out even for an attentive spectator is that this movie ends up pushing the limits too much, and becomes boring at it. The result is another shock movie, another art house hardcore piece, that, to me, didn't stick too much. Clearly, more gratuitous than mind-bending. Give us a story instead.

The Australian government had this film banned. So, that obviously meant that this obscure film that I had never heard of was worth seeing. Thanks to them and the acclaim of Australian film critics (notably Margaret Pomeranz), I - and I assume many others - sought out this film so we could watch it for ourselves.

Whilst the film is certainly not perfect, and is in many ways superficial in it's treatment of the numerous relationships presented (at 90min, they could have easily added another half hour to expand on these), I am glad that films like this exist, if only because they offer an escape from the increasingly similar plots and content of the majority of modern cinema.