Skate Kitchen
Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: August 10, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
72
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 29 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
3
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangAug 16, 2018
Moselle’s movie is an empowering portrait of young women on wheels, but it proves no less surefooted when the wheels come off. Read full review
90
Vanity FairRichard Lawson
The wonderful thing about Skate Kitchen is how inviting it is, welcoming you into its community and showing you around with cheery spunk. Skate Kitchen is a warm movie. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Carly LewisAug 17, 2018
Moselle believes in the power of girls. The friendships through which Camille learns how to be loved become the anguish that breaks her heart and the forgiveness that humbly heals her. And resiliently they soar through the city, a harmony of wheels on pavement. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeGraham AmbroseAug 15, 2018
A coming-of-age story set on four wheels, has the distinct charm of a film assured of its voice, even as its central character strives to find her own. Read full review
88
Movie NationRoger MooreAug 12, 2018
Moselle’s second film to focus on a fringe-dwelling “pack” but first to be a narrative, fictional feature, has an intimacy that the novelty of a free-range family of raised-by-themselves boys did not. Read full review
83
The Film StageJordan Raup
It’s such a step-up in vibrancy, scope, and emotion that it feels like the introduction of an entirely different, more accomplished filmmaker. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric Kohn
Without breaking a lot of new ground, the result is one of the more positive depictions of millennial community-building in recent cinema. None of the group’s fancy flips or grinds top the degree to which “Skate Kitchen” turns its subjects into a fascinating microcosm of American youth. Read full review
83
The PlaylistKimber Myers
As in “The Wolfpack,” Moselle doesn’t just capture the rebellions of her characters, she expresses their triumphs and joys with intimacy and detail. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawOct 2, 2018
Just as in Stacy Peralta’s classic 2001 documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, this gives its audience a sense of the almost pastoral innocence of skateboarding, its devotion to nothing more or less than having fun: a subversive urban vocation that is dedicated to the art of pleasure. Read full review
80
EmpireJimi FamurewaOct 1, 2018
A minor-key coming-of-age triumph that manages to simultaneously be relatable and wildly distinctive. Will almost certainly have lapsed, adult skateboarders (unwisely) dusting down their decks. Read full review
80
Village VoiceApril WolfeAug 9, 2018
In Skate Kitchen, the kids come as they are, and they’re wildly fascinating. Read full review
80
The New York TimesGlenn KennyAug 9, 2018
The movie’s disinclination to judge doesn’t deprive it of a point of view. Skate Kitchen is unfailingly compassionate to, and genuinely appreciative of, the people it chronicles. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeFore
Less a coming-of-age film than a series of crucial episodes in that process, Skate Kitchen mixes dreaminess and disillusionment as it observes the choices Camille makes and the ensuing fallout. Read full review
80
TheWrapAlonso Duralde
Skate Kitchen is a funny and stirring saga of female empowerment that will no doubt delight young women who skate while inspiring many more to pick up a board. It also heralds Moselle as a director who can easily switch stance on both sides of the fiction/non-fiction divide. Read full review
80
VarietyAndrew Barker
Skate Kitchen has plenty to say about the lengths to which young women must go to clear out a little breathing room in testosterone-heavy spaces, but it is first and foremost an irresistible hangout movie. Read full review
75
Original-CinLiam LaceyAug 22, 2018
As fresh as the female perspective is, as Skate Kitchen circles and swoops through the Manhattan twilight toward its conclusion, there is a sense of missed potential, that the film could have been much richer than it is. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayAug 21, 2018
The result is a movie that feels both hard-edged and dreamy; punk-rock and lyrical; wised-up and unbearably tender. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzAug 10, 2018
A solid hangout movie as well as a band-of-buddies film — genres that tend to revolve around young men. It's also a movie that deliberately blurs the line between documentary and fiction: the main characters are all real New York skaters who are playing characters who are very close to themselves in real life. Read full review
75
New York PostSara StewartAug 9, 2018
These dynamos don’t need a screenplay to hold anyone’s attention. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattAug 8, 2018
Shot by cinematographer Shabier Kirchner in hazy, endless-summer half-light, Kitchen finds a kind of urban poetry in the swooping parabolas of the skate park and the rumbling scrape of wheels on pavement. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubKatie RifeAug 8, 2018
In fact, all the weed smoking and street-smart sidewalk banter aside, Skate Kitchen’s perspective is, in many ways, downright innocent; as such, it may be a better fit for adolescent viewers than adult ones. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaAug 17, 2018
It never gets tiring to watch the girls coast down the Manhattan streets, cocky and breezy and effortless, turning the heads of younger girls who gaze at them, starstruck. But it’s also featherlight, not meant to endure much longer than those brief airborne moments Camille and her friends live for. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovAug 15, 2018
Skate Kitchen’s mild melodrama meanders all over the place, not unlike the many skateboarders who shred the skate parks and streets, carving hypnotic, slo-mo figure-eights or outrageous triple ollies on every available surface and obstacle. Read full review
63
Slant MagazinePat BrownAug 5, 2018
The film is empathetic toward and clear-eyed about its young characters, even if the drama it constructs around them tends toward the superficial. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfAug 10, 2018
If you remember Larry Clark’s downbeat 1995 "Kids," a vastly more adventurous movie, you’ll feel a depressing sense of indie sellout. Read full review
60
The GuardianCharles BramescoAug 9, 2018
Moselle is at her most astute when concentrating on the fragile social dynamics that govern the tribes adolescents divide themselves into for survival’s sake. Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Simran HansOct 2, 2018
I can’t shake the inkling that it would’ve worked better as straight documentary. Read full review
37
Film Journal InternationalSimi HorwitzAug 9, 2018
In the end, Skate Kitchen is a frustrating film that’s supposed to elicit a heady sense of freedom, girl power and a rush of sisterhood. It doesn’t. Instead, one is left feeling vaguely hollow. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJan 5, 2019
As an exploration and celebration of a sub-culture, the movie fails. The people don’t seem especially bright or interesting. Whatever fascination Moselle felt for this world doesn’t come across in the movie. Read full review
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