Lords of Dogtown is a beautiful film that fits more in the “and then the band split up” music genre than a sports film. Lords of Dogtown is based on the real life story of teenage skateboarders in 70s California who became pioneers of extreme sports. Catherine Hardwicke visually captures the dynamic and anarchic energy of that teenage, initially androgynous, subculture without minimizing the dysfunction caused by a world without unconditional, loving adult supervision or economic security. Hardwick also manages to subtlety allude to racial dynamics of respectability without heavy-handed or clumsy application. Lords of Dogtown ended up in my queue because Heath Ledger is in it, and I have a goal that I will see every movie that he ever appeared in. Thank God for goals otherwise I would have never seen Lords of Dogtown! Lords of Dogtown is a must see because it successfully brought this viewer into a world and time foreign to me, but I still instantly cared about the people who inhabited it.