The Basketball Diaries

The Basketball Diaries (1995) is a hard-edged drama you can watch online on iFILM, with Leonardo DiCaprio in one of his earliest leading roles. The script comes straight from the published diaries of poet and musician Jim Carroll.

Jim is the star of his Catholic-school basketball team, fast on the court and full of promise. Then the streets pull him under. A little heroin turns into a habit, and to keep it fed he steals, hustles and burns through everyone who still cares about him. A young Mark Wahlberg plays his friend Mickey, Lorraine Bracco is his mother, and Ernie Hudson shows up as the ex-junkie who tries to pull Jim back. Scott Kalvert directed, moving over from music videos for his first feature.

Nothing here is softened: the withdrawal, the nights on the pavement and the slow climb back are all shown plainly. The tagline called it the story of the death of innocence and the birth of an artist, and that is exactly the arc Jim travels. Stream The Basketball Diaries (1995) online on iFILM.