Dogtown And Z-Boys

A dazzlingly crafted documentary about the ’70s surf punks of lower Los Angeles who singlehandedly turned skateboarding into an extreme sport. We see endless Super-8 footage of long-blond-haired kids — think Hanson in the urban wasteland — as they ride low on their boards and then advance to empty swimming pools, zipping along the surfaces of the concrete basins and right up into the air. Sure, it’s only skateboarding. But the thrill of Dogtown is that the kids who had the audacity to kick a concrete sport into the third dimension, carving up space with their boards, were as obsessive as the creators of punk rock or Cubism. The movie invites you to share their free ride. A-