Critics - A League Of His Own

David Edelstein on High Flying Bird and Arctic … Sara Holdren on True West … Matt Zoller Seitz on Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes.

- David Edelstein

MOVIES / DAVID EDELSTEIN

A League of His Own

An agent tries to blow up the NBA in High Flying Bird.

STEVEN SODERBERGH’S made-for- Netflix movie High Flying Bird (from a script by the playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney) takes place in Manhattan during a months long NBA lockout with no agreement in sight between owners and players. It sounds like the premise for a rowdy big-business melodrama with fast talk and hoops, but the tone from the start is chill, bordering on mournful, and it’s marinated in righteous resentment.

The story opens in a fancy restaurant high above the city, where a seasoned agent, Ray (André Holland), lambastes his young client, the No. 1 draft pick Erick Scott (Melvin Gregg), for taking out a high-interest loan that—with no checks coming in—Erick can’t pay back. Erick’s precarious finances, says Ray, are no fluke: This kid is one more in a line of black NBA players lured with crazy-big money by white club owners and then left high and dry. Ray, we see, has one foot in gung ho capitalism and one in raising his players’ historical consciousness, and the stances aren’t easy to reconcile. His harangue is capped by news that his corporate credit card has been canceled, and he has to walk to work, where his smug white superior (Zachary Quinto) in a faceless corner office seems ready to dump him.