It remains the greatest, most incredibly moving sports documentary ever made...

| May 28, 2024

Recruiters, coaches, teachers–even the boys’ fathers–could be easy targets, but the filmmakers forgo cheap shots.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 7, 2022

At once a rigorous exploration of the sports-educational industrial complex and an intimate piece of portraiture...

| Mar 27, 2020

The film is rich in backstage tension, from Agee's bad grades to Gates's knee injuries, while the glaring social inequality is reflected in the violent fathers and criminal friends who populate the outskirts of the tale.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 28, 2019

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.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 25, 2019

Utterly, heartbreakingly lucid.

| Apr 10, 2018

| Original Score: A | Sep 7, 2011

It's about three hours long. But it moves like Isiah, fast and smooth, and it's over in a heartbreak.

| Aug 3, 2008

Hoop Dreams has shown us that the rules of the game are stacked against kids like Gates and Agee. Even better, it shows us how they fight back, with the inside moves of hope.

| Mar 31, 2008

A heady dose of the American dream and the American nightmare combined -- a numbing investigation of how one point on an exam or one basket or turnover in a game can make all the difference in a family's fortunes.

| Mar 21, 2007

A prodigious achievement that conveys the fabric of modern American life, aspirations and incidentally, sports, in close-up and at length, Hoop Dreams is a documentary slam dunk.

Full Review | Mar 21, 2007

This is the best type of documentary, giving an intensely personal story you can't help but become involved in, and also raises fundamental issues about America in the 90s.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 30, 2006

Unforgettable.

| Jun 24, 2006

The film's great achievement is to reveal the relentless way in which coaches and recruiters refuse to see Arthur and William as anything other than social cliches.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 20, 2003

An extraordinarily affecting documentary.

| Jan 1, 2000

The most powerful movie about sports ever made.

| Jan 1, 2000

Along the way it becomes a revealing and heartbreaking story about life in America.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 1, 2000

A documentary that breathes new life into the subject by showing the everyday reality of that dream.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 1, 2000

More of an extended, rousing sociology lesson than anything else, it's also the single most remarkable documentary to come down the pike in a long while. And I'm not even a basektball fan.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 1, 2000

| Original Score: A | Oct 14, 1994