The short life and big splash of the Haitian-born artist, Warhol satellite, and drug addict Jean-Michel Basquiat (played with Sabu-like gentleness and innocence by Jeffrey Wright), as commemorated by his fellow artist, his friend, and first-time filmmaker Julian Schnabel. This voice of authority, for all its contentment with cliché, conveys a good deal of knowingness (a hip cast: Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, Parker Posey, Courtney Love, Gary Oldman, Willem Dafoe, David Bowie as Warhol; a hip soundtrack: the Stones, the Pogues, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Gorecki). Knowingness but not informativeness; not believableness. Between the sketchy narrative and the jump-cut creative sessions, Basquiat's success looks even easier and less justified than his worst disparager could imagine. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd