My skateboarding career consisted of a single two-second ride, a pratfall, and my neighbor's plastic yellow skateboard going down a sewer grate. Yet, even though I couldn't participate, I always respected skateboarding as a potent cultural force that seemed to grow up in tandem with my generation. Whether or not you're part of that generation, you'll probably find Dogtown and Z-Boys an engaging portrait of the early pioneers of the high-flying vertical skateboarding that we all know and stare at in amazement. The filmmaking is top-notch, and since the director is one of the original Z-Boys, he offers a lot of great archival footage from the 70s.

Harold Check