Watch The Basketball Diaries For Free

Admirable film.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Absolutely loved this movie. This might be Leo at his best (sans Gilbert Grape). Easily could have turned into an after school special, but Kalvert walks this line brilliantly. In addition to Leo, this might be Wahlberg's best performance (sans Boogie Nights). It's a dark disturbing tale, that is told through bold and authentic performances.

Didn't know the movie, found it while browsing IMDb, so i wasn't expecting such a movie.It has a very powerful message, about drugs, like many other movies. But in this one you can see the process in much detail. Would say in some aspects similar to Requiem for a dream. Just maybe here you can grasp the intensity of the main character's feelings deeper.Leonardo DiCaprio, in my opinion makes a fabulous role in this movie. Although 21 years old, seems as though he was 15 (real protagonist's age), and so makes a stronger point. He is able to act scenes as though he really is a heavy heroin user therefore convincing the audience.Mark Wahlberg too, so young and great acting.Overall a dark, sometimes stressing, hard movie that I would recommend.

Very loosely based on the memoir of the same name, The Basketball Diaries transposes the late '60s adolescence of writer and artist Jim Carroll to some unspecified time period at least 15 years later, further confusing the time frame with three decades of rock music, some by Carroll himself.The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Lorraine Bracco, James Madio, and Mark Wahlberg.It was directed by Scott Kalvert.Jim and his Catholic school chums are on the hottest basketball team in New York, but their friend Bobby languishes in the hospital with leukemia. In-between typically boyish adventures, Jim scribbles in his notebook and experiments with sex and drugs. His group of friends begins to disintegrate after coach Swifty not only makes a pass at Jim, but also catches him and his pals using drugs on the court and kicks them off the team. Out of school and on the streets, Jim turns tricks, betrays friends, robs stores, and deals drugs to feed his heroin addiction. Not even the efforts of former addict Reggie can cure Jim.Soon, the dark streets of New York become a refuge from his mother's mounting concern for her son. He cannot go home and his only escape from the reality of the streets is heroin for which he steals, robs and prostitutes himself. Only with the help of Reggie, an older neighborhood friend with whom Jim "picked up a game" now and then, is he able to begin the long journey back to sanity, which ultimately ends with Jim's incarceration in a state penitentiary. After months in the hospital, he gets out and later does a talk show about his drug life, but before that he turned down free drugs given to him by his old friend, Pedro.Jim started out as a practice basketball player, and moved on to writing his memoirs.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.One thing about the plot is that the view never understand what really motivated this intelligent adolescent, a gifted basketball player and sensitive writer, to descend into the hellish life of a drug addict and hustler on the mean streets of New York.It only showed how drugs can destroy one's life.As for the movie,it was a must-see as you get a glimpse of the great actor Leonardo DiCaprio is going to be.

There was a huge uproar regarding this movie because of a scene where the main character walks into his classroom and starts gunning everybody down with a shotgun. As is typical everybody has missed the whole point of the movie. It is not designed to encourage school shootings, but to show people what heroin is really like. When it comes to violence on television and video games then I will repeat what was said to me once, not that anybody will listen - people are so stubborn that once that have a mindset, no amount of reason will change their mind. Anyway, before television there was an awful lot of violence - the Napoleonic Wars, the thirty years war, the crusades, and even World War I: probably one of the most violent of wars. Even then before literature or even the written language, Cain killed Abel, and he did not do it because a video game made him think that it was a good idea. Violence is apart of our nature and we do it because we are frustrated with the world and the way people react to us. It is basic to our nature, and I am not saying that it is alright, but rather stopping violence in the media is not going to change anything.The Basketball Diaries is about a heroin addict. We follow his life from when he becomes one to when he finally gives up. Even though he does not start off as a heroin addict, he is still taking drugs, or rather sniffing glue. He, Jim Carol, hangs with three other friends and they simply act like teenagers with a lot of energy. Jim is also a champion basketball player. There is a darker side to his life and that is that his best friend is dying of Leukemia. He does not want to believe it, but it is reality and once he dies things slowly begin to change. We are not sure what really happens, but I guess it has something to do with the realisation that they are no longer immortal. But that is not the main reason, it more has to do with the pain and the loss that he suffers after his friend dies, and it is not something that they could have fought against - in fact he was powerless to do anything about it. The realisation of ones weakness is a true humbliser.Starting the addiction is not focused that heavily on in the movie, but his first trip is, and it shows him running through a field of flowers. It is more that he describes how all of his pain has gone away - both the emotional and the physical. This is the thing about Heroin - it is one of the world's best painkillers, but it is also an incredibly addictive drug. What we see is how his life collapses around him as he becomes addicted to Heroin. He is kicked out of school, slowly looses his friends as they are each arrested for various crimes, and finally he himself is taken away as he lies in a pathetic heap before the door to his mothers' apartment. Near the end we even see him resort of Homosexuality, something that horrifies him, especially when he is molested by the basketball coach, to get money for drugs. This is further undermined when the drugs he purchases are fake.The Basketball Diaries is an incredible movie and shows something that we wish to ignore. The school shooting scene is not all that bad, and more shows his frustration with life and the way the drugs take away this frustration - but at a cost. It is something that has been taken right out of proportion and as such people take the wrong idea about the film.