dir. Helen Stickler

Fri-Thurs Aug 29-Sept 4 at the Varsity. Every pop-culture uprising has at least one casualty. In the skateboarding explosion of the 1980s, Mark "Gator" Rogowski was that casualty. Handsome, arrogant, charming, and talented (though, it should be noted, not as talented as many of his peers), Gator was the anointed poster boy for a sport that was just emerging from its pseudo-outlaw roots, with skaters being plucked from empty swimming pools and deposited into national tours. The most famous skater of his time, routinely appearing in the pages of Thrasher and other skating magazines, Gator was showered with fame and wealth at an absurdly young age. Before his 20s had peaked it was all over.

Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator, an impressive new documentary directed by Helen Stickler, chronicles Gator's life, from his early teens boarding at the Del Mar skate park in San Diego to his incarceration in 1992 for the brutal slaying of a young, beautiful woman. Also chronicled in the film (for the stories cannot be separated) is skateboarding's ascent from the passion of outcasts to corporate product, as well as the eventual return to its roots, with skateboarders turning their backs on corporate culture and, in the process, returning once again to the streets.

Over the years, the nasty tale of Mark "Gator" Rogowski's crime has turned almost to urban legend. But these are the facts: On March 20, 1991, Rogowski pummeled a 21-year-old woman named Jessica Bergsten unconscious with a Club steering-wheel lock, then raped her for three hours before finally stuffing her into a surfboard bag and strangling her. He then drove her out to the desert and deposited her body among the cacti. Two months later, having seemingly gotten away with the crime, Rogowski marched into a police station and confessed.

What drove Gator to both commit the crime and then confess to it is the heart of Stoked, and the film points to three culprits. There is Gator himself, of course, who was diagnosed with severe manic-depressive bipolar disorder by his court-appointed shrink; there is his father, who abandoned him at a young age; and there is the cruel, rapid way in which Gator tumbled from his peak and, almost overnight, became obsolete.

Any athlete who passes his prime without realizing it is a sad case, to be sure, but rarely is an athlete kicked toward the dustbin as quickly as Gator was; in the span of a single year his career went from mountaintop to septic tank. The main cause of his fall was a major upheaval in the sport, when skaters fled the skate parks (which were closing due to skyrocketing insurance rates) and returned to the streets. In the process, the new generation--those who had previously worshipped Gator and his colleagues (including Tony Hawk, Lance Mountain, Christian Hosoi, and Steve Caballero, among others)--turned their backs on the corporate infestation of the sport. Chief among the corporate hordes was Vision, which had begun as a small skateboard manufacturing company and had, over the years, bloomed into a board/fashion/video monstrosity. Suddenly, in 1991, Vision was the enemy of skating, and Gator, its favorite son, was almost immediately very lame.

There is a scene late in Stoked where Gator, having realized his career is tumbling, tries his hand at street skating with disastrous results. Grinding curbs is a different beast from grabbing air in a half-pipe, and Gator, who was able to glide with the best, finds himself continually stumbling and failing on the pavement. The frustration and anger he vents is both frightening and heartbreaking, and is a perfect example of this little documentary's power. Here, after all, is a man who committed a brutal crime--a former skating star turned Jesus freak who took out his pain at being dumped by his girlfriend on an unsuspecting young woman--and yet, watching him stumble and fall, and knowing just how big he was a few months prior, you feel for him. Gator is currently serving 31 years, but his life really spanned a mere 12 months. BRADLEY STEINBACHER

The Other Side of the Bed

dir. Emilio Martínez-Lázaro

Opens Fri Aug 29 at the Uptown. Pedro is heartbroken over Paula, who still hasn't revealed that she's in love with his best friend, Javier. Javier's girlfriend, Sonia, tries to cheer up the inconsolable Pedro, and complications ensue. They are all tremendously engaging characters, especially Pedro (Guillermo Toledo), schlumpy and power-eating to assuage his unhappiness, but gaining a kind of radiance as the caddish Javier (Ernesto Alterio), who seems to have everything, falls apart. Even though at times it has the feel of an episode of Friends, The Other Side of the Bed moves beyond triteness by suggesting, at the end, that the right arrangement of these particular people isn't necessarily obvious. On top of everything, song-and-dance numbers erupt periodically throughout the film, although they're less like reflections of actual emotions than the kind of lip-synching heartsick teenagers do in front of the bedroom mirror, with a few Fly Girl moves thrown in. The musical numbers don't make sense, but no matter. It's absurd, it's a romp, it puts the farce back into romantic comedy, which is probably why I left the theater humming the theme from The Barber of Seville. This silly movie had made me, of all things, happy. EMILY HALL