I watched Spike Lee's He Got Game the other day.
The film's story centers around Jesus, a top high school basketball prospect (Ray Allen in a surprisingly effective performance) who's in the midst of making the "most important decision of his life": choosing which college to play for. Making matters more complicated, his father (Denzel Washington), who's been serving time in prison, has been released for a week to try to convince his son to attend Ball State (the governor's alma mater) in exchange for a reduced sentence.
I appreciated the movie's visual style, and the obvious passion with which it was made.
I first saw it in theaters when I was a sophomore at UC Irvine. But, like Hoop Dreams, I enjoyed it and was affected by it a lot more upon a second, years-later-as-my-perspective-has-matured viewing.
On a side note, Arthur Agee, one of the two boys featured in Hoop Dreams, makes a cameo appearance in the film's opening montage.
Sideways is another good movie I've seen recently. It's about two friends, who are very different, one is a nerdy, needy middle-school English teacher, the other is a fading TV actor who currently does voice overs for commercials.
Both movies are examples of cinema at its best.
