The Basketball Diaries 1995

Janet Maslin, New York Times: The star shines, but the movie is hard to watch. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: 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. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: 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. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: For those few soul-freezing moments, you get a glimpse of the great actor Leonardo DiCaprio is going to be. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Facile escapes are rejected, and the resolution is acceptable because we can believe it. In fact, that's the reason this film works as well as it does: credibility. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Will there ever be a market for a movie about a character who hurries past his drug phase because he can't wait to tell you what he did after he pulled his act together? Probably not. Read more

Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle: Amazingly, though, even with Kalvert's lack of style and vision, the greatness of DiCaprio's performance is undiminished. Read more

Time Out: The angel-faced DiCaprio is a gifted actor, but he lacks the authority and physical presence to keep us with him. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: Read more

Joe Brown, Washington Post: A movie for masochists, an unrelentingly ugly 'Just Say No' propaganda movie, it might have been bankrolled by Nancy Reagan. Read more

Hal Hinson, Washington Post: DiCaprio goes as far into the hell of drug abuse as any actor ever has -- and comes out a star. Read more