What is the value of black life? Few films have posed this question so insistently, and so thoroughly, as Hoop Dreams. The film was an unlikely success, achieving both critical acclaim and crossover box-office appeal despite its three hours. More importantly, Hoop Dreams enlarged the scale of what a socially engaged documentary could be: probing and comprehensive, intimate and grand, thrilling and devastating. It did so by placing the matter of black lives in the center of the screen.
Genevieve Yue
January 3, 2017