Your Reviews
Go SAMO...
Critic Reviews
Most movies stress the agony of art (think of Kirk Douglas' Van Gogh in "Lust for Life"). Schnabel's exceptional film honors his friend by showing the act of creation as a natural high.Full Review
The New York art world quickly makes Basquiat a star. His work is good (when you see it in the movie, you can feel why people liked it so much), but his story is better: from a cardboard box to a gallery opening!Full Review
Basquiat is an engrossing spectacle, but by the end, as a zoned-out Basquiat stands regally in a cruising Jeep, we realize that Schnabel has reconfigured his story as a kind of ghostly myth, and that we've never completely seen the man behind it.Full Review
It's smart and good-hearted and boasts an amazingly good score, but the film is limited by the very private nature of the man it portrays.Full Review
As writer and director, Schnabel should be commended for avoiding Hollywood's biopic cliches about artists, as Basquiat's meteoric rise to fame and tragic death at the age of 27 would have fit perfectly the timeworn formula.Full Review
