Hoop Dreams (1994)
Directed by Steve James
Every school day, African-American teenagers William Gates and Arthur Agee travel 90 minutes each way from inner-city Chicago to St. Joseph High School in Westchester, Illinois, a predominately white suburban school well-known for the excellence of its basketball program. Gates and Agee dream of NBA stardom, and with the support of their close-knit families, they battle the social and physical obstacles that stand in their way. This acclaimed documentary was shot over the course of five years.
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What critics compared Hoop Dreams to
This, Eberts best film of the 1990s, is major league compared to cloying 1986 crowd-pleaser Hoosiers aka Best Shot and to most other feel-good fictions of sports as metaphor for the redemptive in the American Way of Life.
But when I want a sports film that’s honest about the intersection of athletic ability and economic/racial disparity, I’ll stick with Hoop Dreams.
"Friday Night Lights" gets you cheering for the Panthers, but it's a far cry from the usual rah-rah sports-movie formula--closer, in texture and ambition, to the documentary "Hoop Dreams" than to the pious "Remember the Titans."