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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
64
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69
Ashes of Time Redux
68
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54
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76
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
xx
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Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
50
Breakfast with Scot
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Changeling
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Choke
84
Christmas Tale, A
41
Cthulhu
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
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Dostana
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Dukes, The
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Eden
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Filth and Wisdom
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Frost/Nixon
82
Frozen River
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Girl Cut in Two, A
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84
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Hounddog
26
House of the Sleeping Beauties
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How About You
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72
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I.O.U.S. A
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63
JCVD
27
Lake City
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Man on Wire
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Momma's Man
51
Morning Light
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xx
Nobel Son
40
Other End of the Line, The
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
75
Pool, The
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
82
Rachel Getting Married
56
Religulous
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
53
RocknRolla
57
Sixty Six
85
Slumdog Millionaire
57
Special
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
67
Synecdoche, New York
82
Tell No One
83
Trouble the Water
43
Tru Loved
83
U2 3D
59
We Are Wizards
55
What Just Happened?
89
Man on Wire
85
Slumdog Millionaire
84
Momma's Man
84
Christmas Tale, A
84
Happy-Go-Lucky
83
Trouble the Water
83
U2 3D
82
Tell No One
82
Rachel Getting Married
82
Frozen River
82
Let the Right One In
81
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
79
Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
78
I've Loved You So Long
77
Pray the Devil Back to Hell
76
Betrayal - Nerakhoon, The
75
Pool, The
73
Girl Cut in Two, A
72
I Served the King of England
71
Frost/Nixon
70
I.O.U.S. A
69
Ashes of Time Redux
69
Fear(s) of the Dark
68
August Evening
68
Hunger
67
Synecdoche, New York
64
Appaloosa
63
JCVD
63
Eden
63
Changeling
62
Duchess, The
59
We Are Wizards
57
Special
57
Sixty Six
56
Religulous
55
Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The
55
What Just Happened?
54
Battle in Seattle
54
Good Dick
53
RocknRolla
51
Morning Light
50
Breakfast with Scot
47
How About You
47
Choke
46
Dukes, The
43
Tru Loved
43
Gardens of the Night
41
Cthulhu
40
Igor
40
Other End of the Line, The
34
My Name Is Bruce
34
Otto; or Up with Dead People
32
Repo! The Genetic Opera
31
Hounddog
30
Guitar, The
28
Fireproof
27
Lake City
26
House of the Sleeping Beauties
26
Filth and Wisdom
xx
Dostana
xx
Black Balloon, The
xx
Let Them Chirp Awhile
xx
Local Color
xx
Nobel Son
xx
Extreme Movie
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Lords of Dogtown
Sony Pictures Entertainment
FILM:
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for drug and alcohol content, sexuality, violence, language and reckless behavior - all involving teens
Starring
Emile Hirsch,
Victor Rasuk,
John Robinson,
Michael Angarano,
Nikki Reed,
Heath Ledger,
Johnny Knoxville,
and
Alexis Arquette
From the dangerous waves off a long-forgotten pier to the concrete wasteland of a city slum, Lords of Dogtown brings to cinematic life the rebel beginnings of some unforgettable sports culture stars. (Sony)
| GENRE(S): |
Action
|
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Stacy Peralta
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Catherine Hardwicke
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: September 27, 2005
Theatrical: June 3, 2005
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
107 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA / Germany |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
Lords of Dogtown is a docudrama, rare in its grit and authenticity, that also strives for the mythical youth-rebel excitement of something like "8 Mile."
80
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
From start to finish, is pretty much a blast.
80
Los Angeles Times
Kevin Thomas
As beautifully structured as one of the Z-Boys' graceful and intricate maneuvers. It is economic yet possesses depth and is visually striking, capturing an idea of what life is like in a very fast lane.
78
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
Works best when it seems like it's not working at all.
75
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Hardwicke whips up a frenzy of crazy-cool board action, with Alva choreographing the stunts. Even when the slippery-slope-of-success cliches halt the film's momentum, the ready-to-rock actors rev it up again.
75
USA Today
Mike Clark
The skating scenes are their own reward: It's hard to think of a movie since 1950's "Sunset Boulevard" that has gotten more dramatic impact out of a pool.
75
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
The movie is like a daydream, and it's most infectious when the characters are in motion or misbehaving, which is often.
75
San Francisco Chronicle
Peter Hartlaub
Peralta uses the creative liberties of fiction to focus on the one thing he couldn't convey in his historical record -- the sense of tribalism among skateboarders, who live by a code that most law-abiding citizens misunderstand for hooliganism.
75
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
Though the fiction doesn't quite equal the documentary in razzle-dazzle impact, it's a credible, handsome and engaging entertainment.
70
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
There are times when even a director's worst impulses aren't enough to sink a movie, and somehow Lords of Dogtown stays afloat, largely because many of its actors transcend Hardwicke's heavy-handed storytelling.
70
Newsweek
Devin Gordon
It's one of those juicy stories that have the added virtue of being true.
67
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
An excellent documentary equal parts extreme sports and social anthropology.
63
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
The film doesn't hold together in any compelling way.
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
So the questions arises: Why bother watching the contrived fiction when the eye-popping fact is readily available? Answer: Why, indeed.
63
New York Post
Kyle Smith
The story meanders from competition to competition (up the ramps, down the ramps) and seems like it could end at any point. The characters are similarly underdeveloped.
63
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Nearly everything fresh and exciting about the 2002 documentary "Dogtown and Z-Boys" - the story of the Santa Monica-Ocean Park-Venice area misfits who revolutionized skateboarding in the 1970s - becomes studied and secondhand in The Lords of Dogtown.
60
Dallas Observer
Robert Wilonsky
After trying to prove himself a serious actor in deadly dull movies, Ledger lightens up and brightens up a movie that attempts the trick of bringing a new spin to an old story but can't pull off the stunt.
60
The Hollywood Reporter
Frank Scheck
Takes a surprisingly gritty approach that gives the material some gravitas but also robs it of some of its fun.
60
Village Voice
Ed Halter
Hardwicke's pop-Cassavetes melodrama nevertheless rides as smoothly as a big-budget after-school special, capturing youth struggles from an appropriately blown-out teen's-eye perspective.
60
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Nathan Rabin
It's no surprise that when it ultimately tries to pluck at the heartstrings, it rings hollow. The film lives and dies by speed.
60
Empire
Alan Morrison
A hanging-out movie that’s as close as you’ll ever get to soaking up the time, the place and the attitude. Too slack for mainstream audiences, though.
50
Variety
Robert Koehler
It's a wipeout once the pic skids into melodrama and an overly schematic sense of how success tore the group apart.
50
LA Weekly
Scott Foundas
Unfortunately, whenever Ledger isn't onscreen, Lords of Dogtown takes a spill.
50
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
Too much of Lords of Dogtown still feels conventional and sugar-coated.
50
Washington Post
Michael O'Sullivan
Lords of Dogtown isn't a cop-out, but rather an ever-so-slight concession to commercialism.
50
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
Inept storytelling is one of Lords of Dogtown's great frustrations.
50
Chicago Tribune
Allison Benedikt
The look and feel here is classic Hardwicke: gritty and dark, so as to fool you into thinking this film is serious business.
50
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
The new film, superficial and chaotic, delivers a rough sense of place, a reasonable number of skateboard thrills and very little character development or story.
50
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
Although Catherine Hardwicke, the director of Lords of Dogtown, has a good sense for the period and does what she can with her actors, we've seen the originals, and these aren't the originals.
50
TV Guide
Ken Fox
The skating photography is excellent and, like the documentary's soundtrack, songs from the Stooges, Blue Oyster Cult and the Weirdos set the proper mood. But this dramatization does nothing Peralta's documentary didn't do better.
50
Premiere
Kevin Allison
Lords of Dogtown may pop for the skateboarding crowd. It fizzles for the rest.
40
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
If Lords of Dogtown accomplishes nothing else, it shows how hard writing a fiction film can be, and what a vast artistic distance can stand between a bad fiction film and the first-rate documentary that inspired it.
38
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
A tormented dramatization of the exact same events, and it's as bad as the earlier film ("Dogtown and Z-Boys") was good.
30
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
Excruciatingly narcissistic.
20
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
Has all the energy and spontaneity of a bowl of waxed fruit. If watching "Dogtown and Z-Boys" was tantamount to witnessing history itself, watching "Lords of Dogtown," which Peralta wrote, feels more like watching a stiff, meticulously choreographed reenactment.
 The average user rating for this movie is 8.8 (out of 10) based on 44 User Votes
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