Some people think Leonardo DiCaprio became a star when he acted in James Cameron’s Titanic. Others believe his stardom predated that movie when he starred opposite Claire Danes in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet. However, the movie that made him an up-and-comer is a film that seems to have been all but erased from his filmography: the 1995 drama The Basketball Diaries, a movie that teamed him with a young Mark Wahlberg, earned good reviews and became a VHS cult hit among teens of the nineties. Yet, it’s a tough film to find unless you’re willing to shell out big bucks for the long, out-of-print Blu-ray (never released in the U.S) or an old-school DVD. You won’t find it on streaming, and it remains an oddly obscure film considering how popular it was in the nineties. What gives?

The Basketball Diaries is based on the life of Jim Carroll,...