Love and Basketball

Childhood sweethearts (played by the charismatic Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps in later high school years and beyond) enter into an extended rocky romance while chasing dreams of becoming professional hoop stars. This romantic drama from writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood is well-acted, but its many conflicts involving love, infidelity, rivalry, trust, sexual equality and family dynamics are too slickly developed and resolved to be deeply moving. This Sundance Film Festival hit costars Alfre Woodard as a stately housewife and the ultra-smooth Dennis Haysbert as a retiring NBA ace.