Movie Review

High Flying Bird aims for the sky with intellectual story

For better or worse, movies that demonstrate a high degree of intelligence are a rare breed in Hollywood these days. That’s not to say that most films are dumb; just that in the name of bringing in money at the box office, many of them simplify their storytelling so that it can be enjoyed by as broad an audience as possible.

Not playing by those rules is the new Netflix movie High Flying Bird. Directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Tarell Alvin McCraney (Moonlight), the film centers on Ray Burke (Andre Holland), a sports agent whose biggest client is the recent No. 1 draft pick in the NBA, Erick Scott (Melvin Gregg). Trouble is, the NBA is in the midst of an extended lockout, meaning neither Erick nor Ray is getting paid.

Ray might have a plan to help put an end to the lockout, but, with the help of his assistant, Sam (Zazie Beetz), he must try to out-maneuver power players like player representative Myra (Sonja Sohn), league rep David Seton (Kyle MacLachlan), and Emera Umber (Jeryl Prescott), the mother/manager of another top player.

The 90-minute film puts the audience in the strange position of anticipating many events that are never actually shown. Soderbergh and McCraney allude to various consequential moments, but elide them in favor of a lot of speechifying. Oblique conversations in which you can understand every word and still not know what the characters are talking about fill the film.

What is clear is that the filmmakers are playing with a lot of intellectual ideas. They are interested in highlighting the inequities of leagues like the NBA, where players don’t have as much control as owners over their own fate. It’s a slight spoiler, but the viewpoints of civil rights icon Dr. Harry Edwards, who played an instrumental role in the Black Power Salute by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics, play a big part in this film.

Soderbergh also splices in interviews with actual young NBA players like Reggie Jackson, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Donovan Mitchell, who talk about their early experiences in the league. However, if he was trying to make comparisons between their lives and the story in the film, it doesn’t quite come across as intended.

Also, it seems slightly askew that Soderbergh would be the director to helm a film that has a lot to say about this specific African-American experience. With so many African-American filmmakers getting notice for their top-level work in recent years, having a white man, no matter how talented, lead the way in a film like this just strikes the wrong chord.

Despite the somewhat complicated nature of the film, the performances of Holland, Beetz, and Gregg remain compelling. You may not always comprehend their motivations, but the depth of feeling each demonstrates keeps the emotional aspect of the film on point. MacLachlan and Zachary Quinto, who plays Ray’s boss, are decent in limited roles, but they aren’t showcased enough to make much of an impact.

High Flying Bird is definitely not a film for the masses, so it will be interesting to see if it gains much of a foothold in ever-growing Netflix library. Like me, you may not be smart enough to grasp everything the film is trying to say, but Soderbergh and McCraney get points just for putting them out into the world.

Andre Holland in High Flying Bird.

Andre Holland in High Flying Bird

Photo by Peter Andrews

Andre Holland in High Flying Bird.

Movie Review

Comedy all-stars Jack Black and Paul Rudd can't save Anaconda sequel

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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