Appropriately, these words are placed as captions in the filler part that goes between each movie segment. The segments themselves show plenty of longboard surf footage interspersed with quick interviews of surfers such as Joel Tudor and Bonga Perkins. The movie is chock-full of surfing footage, with only small portions of scenic filler imagery. Some transitions shots include dolphins in the surf lineup, a sailboat harbor, and black & white film of hula dancing girls on land. For surfing footage, slow-motion is used along with real-time motion. Most surfing footage was shot from land, but there was some motor-boat footage, along with other in-water footage. There are no underwater shots. Most wave faces are around 4 to 8 feet high but there are some occasional 15 foot waves. There is a brief five-minute segment on women longboard surfers. Wordz was made in 2002, and it's amazing how antiquated the decade-ago ladies swimsuit styles look from the perspective of 2012! In only ten years, women's swimsuit styles have changed that much! The rest of the film is about male longboarders. Most surfers have longboards between 9 to 10 feet length, although Titus Kinimaka has an interesting board that's 12-feet long. Some techniques shown are: nose- riding, cross-stepping, switching feet, rail-riding, drop-knee turns, hanging-5, cutbacks, tube rides, and side-stepping, on both single fin and thruster longboards. Wordz finishes with some more suggestive caption words, then glides into the end credits.

Negatives: Although this isn't the fault of the movie producers, the Wordz footage was shot just before the widescreen film/video format became popular. So, the frame-dimensions or 'aspect ratio' were 4:3 in this movie, meaning there was side-imagery lost when compared to a potential widescreen version.

Positives:
Although the movie does not show extremely long-duration waves, the rides last long enough to see the surfer do his tricks. This movie is not a 'quick-edit' style, as is found in many movies about shortboard surfing. Rather, as is suitable for the more graceful style of longboarding, Wordz uses many dissolve transitions between clips. Wordz has the occasional slow-motion scenes, but is mostly real-time. The movie doesn't dwell on any particular image, like artsy underwater shots, or inland filler footage, but instead lets the surfing do the talking.

Photography:
This film has good, but not great, photography. It is standard photography with nothing fancy and glitzy. If you are expecting Taylor Steele-level photography, then you won't find it here. However, the photography quality in Wordz is not amateurish either, since the camera is always close enough to the surfer to almost fill the frame. Almost everything is stable, in focus, and well-exposed.

"I have a lot of haole brothers all over the world."                  -Titus Kinimaka (Hawaiian longboard surfer)

Editing:
The editing is adequate. As mentioned, the movie is highly segmented. So much so that Wordz could have easily been bundled up into 5-minute chunks for TV, since the segment transitions resemble those lead-ins to TV commercial breaks. It would make an enjoyable TV show to watch too.

Sound:
The sound quality is adequate. The surfer interviews all came out loud and clear. There is some stereo channel mixing, while most of the audio is 'mono' sounding, but still okay.

Music: (6/10)
This movie features some background rap songs, acoustic guitar songs, saxophone songs, and a Hawaiian ditty. Almost all the songs have singing in them. This is all off-the-shelf music from various artists. The first song is Steppenwolf's fine classic rock song, Magic Carpet Ride. But then, the music becomes a variety of different tunes, with a bunch of so-so styles. All the songs have a slightly uplifting quality to them, though, which helps make the film an overall lively experience to watch.

Fair warning:
This reviewer saw neither the original theatrical release nor the DVD version, but rather tried Amazon.com's instant movie web-download. The color quality of the online version looked 'washed out,' probably caused by a faulty cinema-to-video transfer, and not the online viewing experience. That means the DVD version of Wordz is likely slightly 'washed out' too. The original theatrical release, with its original colors, must have been much more stunning.

Favorite Moment:
A funny moment in Wordz - a longboarding lexicon is when a longboard is snapped in half, off-camera, and the nose section floats away. So, a male surfer takes the remaining tail section of the longboard and bodysurfs it to shore, doing a reasonably good job of it too!

Summary:
Wordz is recommended for any longboarder's surfing video collection. The film has no overall message in the end. Interviewees say what they admire about longboarding — thoughts that are universal longboard surfer values, no matter what the decade. Wordz is a fine collection of good longboard surfing imagery sprinkled with suggestive mood-setting captions in the transitions between segments. Although the music isn't incredible, it's okay, and the surf footage makes you want to go longboarding. Wordz - a longboarding lexicon is of adequate quality, and is an enjoyable and uplifting film to watch.