Movie review – “Lords of Dogtown” (2005) ***1/2

Visually arresting look at the rise of skateboarding in the late 70s California. Combines elements of the sports movie with "rise and fall" sagas - early success, corruption in the Garden of Eden, redemption. Giving it extra weight is the character of the friend of theirs with brain cancer. Heath Ledger's flamboyant support performance as an early supporter of the skaters who didn't realise what he had is a forerunner in some ways to the flamboyance he would later bring to the Joker.