High Flying Bird

2019 sports movie without the sports

Rating: 10/20

Plot: A sports agent tries to keep his head above water and help his players survive a professional basketball lockout.

The best part of this movie is a scene where Kyle MacLachlan blows a snot rocket. That can't be a good thing.

I'm not sure what Steven Soderbergh is doing with these iPhones, but I don't like it. Opening dialogue is shot from all these odd camera angles that really don't add anything at all. Later, there's a conversation with five people in an office, and the camera work is about as bad as I've seen in a long time. I'm talking inept filmmaker bad. One shot that sort of typifies the way this movie is shot is one where characters at a bar are partially obscured by three glasses filled with limes, lemons, and cherries. Why? What's the point?

This was written by Tarrell Alvin McCraney, the screenwriter for Moonlight. The script wasn't as bad as the camerawork, but it wasn't as good as you'd expect from the screenwriter for Moonlight either. Sports jargon and street slang seemed forced in. The acting didn't help, some performers saying almost every single one of their lines like it was the most important thing that's every been said or will ever be said. Bill Duke, who I recently saw playing a very creepy character in Mandy, is playing a not-so-creepy character here. I enjoy seeing him. And I really think Zazie Beetz has that "it" that will make her always worth watching. Others were not so good.

There were lots of references to slavery in this, and while I think the ideas behind this movie were good ones and definitely worth exploring, it really should have been done with more care. It's a poorly-told story with incomplete characters . Poorly written, poorly shot, and poorly edited, this is the film equivalent of a double dribble.

At least I enjoyed the two Richie Havens songs that bookended this movie.

I'm going to pat myself on the back for that basketball reference and then go to bed.