Riding Giants

Billed as a documentary about the evolution of the big wave surf movements in Hawaii and California, Stacy Peralta's thorough, albeit over-long, film is more like a gushing love letter. That's both good and bad. Good in that the director's affection for his subject means we get a chronologically detailed look at the sport. But bad in that we never really come to understand what motivates people to risk their lives in pursuit of the big one. However, Peralta's status as an action sports documentary filmmaker will surely be boosted with this film. His previous doc, Dogtown and Z-Boys, was an amazing homage to the early days of skateboarding. Like with that film, Peralta has found some period footage that shows how things really were as titans of the Pacific like Greg Noll and Laird Hamilton revolutionised the sport. Oddly, the disc includes two commentary tracks that are really just narrations over a narration. Really just nostalgic reminiscing, re-telling the same stories that the film itself tells in different ways. A 30-minute "making of" reveals more interesting facts about how the footage was compiled. (Sony)