Fresh
For those few soul-freezing moments, you get a glimpse of the great actor Leonardo DiCaprio is going to be.
Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
The Basketball Diaries
The true story of the death of innocence and the birth of an artist.
1995 · 1h 42m · R
Crime, Drama
Directed by
Scott Kalvert
Overview
A high school basketball player’s life turns upside down after free-falling into the harrowing world of drug addiction.
Director and cast
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
46%
Tomatometer
Rotten
Significantly, the movie keeps the hero's reformation offscreen as well as unexplained; it's more interested in shock effects than in candor or elucidation.
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
Rotten
The star shines, but the movie is hard to watch.
Janet Maslin, New York Times
Rotten
You leave The Basketball Diaries believing that Leonardo DiCaprio can do anything.
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
Rotten
Although it masquerades as a cautionary tale about the horrors of heroin, this epic of teen-age angst is more accurately seen as a reverential wallow in the gutter of self-absorption.
Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
More films
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Crime · Drama · NC-17
The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.
- Runtime
- 1h 42m
- Director
- Darren Aronofsky
- Cast
- Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly
IMDb
8.3
Rotten Tomatoes
80%
Metacritic
71
Comments
Talk about the film with other members