Rize
A film by David LaChapelle
James Verniere
"Lords of the dance: The stars of the documentary `Rize' choose art over street violence."
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David Fear
"The movie mixes music-video-like sequences with fly-on-the-wall movements and has all the garish color of LaChapelle's cover shoots, but you'd be hard pressed to find a better slice of cultural anthropology or a more vibrant portrait of inner-city life."
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Robert Koehler
Eye-popping visuals and an appreciation of social complexities combine for an entirely satisfying experience that will bring audiences out of their seats in a good way.
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Sid Smith
"Thus "Rize" is a compelling, bittersweet hybrid of a movie, one celebrating an enormous and hitherto unsung underground talent, while suggesting that art goes only so far in solving the enormous challenges of the underprivileged life."
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Ernest Hardy
"In its final incarnation as Rize, the brief (84 minutes) documentary is LaChapelle's worshipful look at the hard-knock origins, dazzlingly talented young participants and multilayered meanings tucked within krumping — the raw, frenetic, hip-hop-derived, African-rooted style of dancing that blends sharp-focus athleticism with unbridled personal catharsis."
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Peter Travers
"David LaChapelle's RIZE is a visual miracle; an unexpected knockout as social history. An important film."
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Richard Harrington
"What RIZE reveals is that is disenfranchised communities beset by multiple blights of poverty drugs and gang violence, there have always been stubborn, heroic artistic response. This is simply one of the most dramatic and one of the most inspiring."
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Owen Gleiberman
"And here's the thing: The dancers are all, in movement and spirit, the resurrection of Rodney King."
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Kevin Thomas
"LaChapelle reveals he has the documentary filmmaker's gift for charting the evolution of a new form of artistic expression as a way of illuminating an entire world... a moving documentary"
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Elvis Mitchell
"There's a great documentary called "Rize," directed by the fashion style photographer David LaChapelle, about inner-city kids in South Central LA who turn away from violence and turn towards dance..."
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Sheri Linden
"An exhilarating portrait of a groundbreaking, up-from-the-L.A.-streets strain of athleticism as performance art"
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