Click here to copy URL

Hoop Dreams

1994

Steve James

Documentary

7.6

1,630

Documentary Two ordinary inner-city kids dare to dream the impossible — professional basketball glory — in this epic chronicle of hope and faith. Filmed over a five-year period, Hoop Dreams follows young Arthur Agee and William Gates as they navigate the complex, competitive world of scholastic athletics while striving to overcome the intense pressures of family life and the realities of their Chicago streets. This Sundance Award Audience Winner ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"'Hoop Dreams' has the form of a sports documentary, but along the way it becomes a revealing and heartbreaking story about life in America. (...) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Caryn James The New York Times	"A brilliantly revealing documentary (...) [This] fascinating, suspenseful film turns the endless revision of the American dream into high drama."	POS
United States	Jonathan Rosenbaum Chicago Reader	"Even if you're as bored by team sports as I am, you won't be able to tear your eyes away from this memorable cast of characters and the action-packed story, which speaks volumes about the way we live and think"	POS
United States	Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"Thrilling (...) One of the best movies of the year"	POS
United States	A.A. Dowd AV Club	"[A] nonfiction masterpiece (...) As a sports movie, 'Hoop Dreams' is both stirring and wrenching (...) Multi-dimensional 'characters' also emerge"	POS
United States	Hal Hinson The Washington Post	"The most powerful movie about sports ever made"	POS
United States	Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly	"'Hoop Dreams' is an astonishing emotional experience — it has highs, lows, and everything in between"	POS
United Kingdom	Kim Newman Empire	"This is the best type of documentary, giving an intensely personal story you can’t help but become involved in (...) A truly great documentary (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United Kingdom	Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"Perhaps James’s biggest achievement is his unshowy emphasis on the poetry of basketball itself: the jump shot, the slam-dunk, ecstatic physical expressions of pure transcendental success (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United Kingdom	Kevin Maher The Times	"One of the first films to suggest that what happens behind a sport is more interesting than the action (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS

Return to movie

We encourage you to check the reviews' original sources. Intellectual property rights of these reviews belong to their authors and/or the correspondent media from which they have been extracted. If you'd like to help us to add more reviews to your favorite movies, just send us a message.