The Basketball Diaries (1995)

Directed by Scott Kalvert. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, James Madio, Lorraine Bracco, Ernie Hudson, Patrick McGaw, Michael Imperioli, Bruno Kirby, Juliette Lewis, Roy Cooper, Alexander Chaplin. [R]

Adaptation of Jim Carroll’s cult autobiographical novel (itself on the fringes of being a cult movie) casts young DiCaprio not-very-convincingly as a Catholic school poet-slash-basketball-prospect who runs around with a pack of delinquent friends, develops a serious drug habit, and records his experiences in a journal. The latter aspect anticipates something abstruse and romantically tragic about the experience, but when he does take the time to wax poetic, it often rings of cloddish navel-gazing, and the experiences themselves are a bit suspect as they so often have the clean-line conspiracy of missing pieces, stock character types, and dramatic license. The actors put in the effort, as do the filmmakers, but the results are as unsatisfying as they are unpersuasive, and the film is fatally uncertain about the sincerity of its anti-hero, the cycle of junk, and the aesthetic strategy—early on, showy camera movements dominate; later, unflattering color contrasts; elsewhere, no distinctive style to speak of. Carroll cameos and sings a few songs on the soundtrack (either with the Jim Carroll Band or other musicians); Michael Rapaport also makes a brief appearance.

45/100