Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001)

Director: Stacy Peralta

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Infectiously exuberant documentary chronicling the '70s golden age of US skateboarding. Director Peralta, a member of the legendary Z-Boys team operating out of LA's Zephyr surf/skate shop, cuts between terrific archive footage and interviews with the survivors, chubbier and balder, 25 years on. While the gang might have been as seminal and cool as everyone keeps telling us, the relentlessly uncritical tone gives the project a distinct feel of blowing their own trumpets. Modesty, of course, had no part in this aggressively renegade subculture, and neither, it seems, did loyalty - Sean Penn's drawling narration blithely tells how the ingrate crew cut their Zephyr ties at the first whiff of fame and fortune. It's never less than compulsively watchable, as it unfolds to a soundtrack of suitably kickass contemporary rock, but Peralta's approach falls a little short of his dynamite material - like Almost Famous, the movie's MOR line on sex and drugs is prissily evasive, and the package ends up a little too MTV for comfort: conventionally unconventional.

Author: NY 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Stacy Peralta

Producer: Agi Orsi

Cast: Zephyr Skateboard Team, Jay Adams, Tony Alva, Bob Biniak, Paul Constantineau, Shogo Kubo, Jim Muir, Peggy Oki, Stacy Peralta, Nathan Pratt, Wentzle Ruml, Allen Sarlo, Sean Penn full cast

Duration: 91 mins

Related articles


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.