High Flying Bird
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Year Released: 2019
Rating: 2.0
Nearly destitute NBA player Erick Scott (Melvin Gregg) has bills to pay and the league is in a lockout period with the Slaveowners - sorry, just 'owners' - not wanting to budge in their 'negotiations' with the Players Association, so his agent Ray (André Holland) tries coming up with ideas to get him more press. The black-and-white interviews with actual ball players feel like they came from a documentary I would rather watch than this, and the movie just crawls along, with Soderbergh-the-Technician forgetting to direct his actors or build up an actual sense of drama and being overly concerned with how his iPhone captures the Manhattan skyscrapers. It should come as no surprise that all the villains are Caucasian (here we go again) and that the smugness factor is out-of-control. Should Apple need anyone to test their future cameras for durability and lighting, forget Mark Romanek - this is their guy.
