Movie review

Matt & Ben (and Viola) make early case as Oscar MVPs for 'Air'

In many ways, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have defined the last 30 years of movies. Rising with a bunch of other young actors in the early ‘90s, they shot their shot with 1997’s Good Will Hunting, walking away with an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in the process. Both have remained at the top of the industry ever since, being part of big franchises and grabbing multiple other Oscar nominations/wins.

They’re back together in a somewhat unlikely way in Air, about the courting of soon-to-be basketball superstar Michael Jordan by Nike to endorse their shoes. Damon plays Sonny Vaccaro, who worked as a talent scout for Nike in the early 1980s. The then-nascent basketball division of the company had difficulty competing with the likes of Adidas and Converse to get players to wear their shoes, and they were looking to find the next attainable star from the now-legendary 1984 NBA Draft.

Convinced Jordan is worth more than any other player – or any other three players – Vaccaro pleads his case to Nike VP Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) and CEO Phil Knight (Affleck), along with Jordan’s agent David Falk (Chris Messina).

But ultimately, the person who will make or break the deal is Jordan’s mother Deloris (Viola Davis), a woman who’s not only protective of her son as a person, but of his potential legacy in the years to come.

Directed by Affleck and written by first-time screenwriter Alex Convery, the film is a light and fun look at a bit of sports history where the actual sport is rarely glimpsed. Anyone who’s had even a passing interest in the NBA in the past 40 years knows what an impact Jordan has had on the sport and shoe industry surrounding it. But somehow the film is able to make a story with a pre-ordained outcome into a compelling one, thanks to behind-the-scenes drama that they execute well.

Vaccaro and Knight are well-known names for sports fans, but they’re not in the public eye so much that people know what their personalities are. Damon and Affleck use this to their advantage, creating characters that perhaps hue closer to their real-life friendship than the men they’re portraying. The same sense of enjoyment pervades all of the inter-company relationships shown at Nike, so that even as the characters are stressing about their futures, the film never gets bogged down in unnecessary torment.

The focus on Deloris, not Michael, Jordan is also a smart choice. Not only does it allow the filmmakers to avoid the pitfall of casting the wrong person to portray one of the most famous men on Earth, but it brings in a level of emotionality that the film might not have had otherwise. Michael is still present, but they cleverly stage the scenes with the Jordan family so that Deloris is always the one in charge.

Speaking of casting, every role is filled almost perfectly. Damon and Affleck lead the way, naturally, and each is clearly having a ball. Bateman, with his deadpan demeanor, is a great foil for Damon, and their scenes together are a joy to watch. Davis, robbed of an Oscar nomination for The Woman King, could easily be nominated here, as she bonds the two sides of the story together. Supporting performances by Messina, Chris Tucker, Matthew Moher, Julius Tennon, and Marlon Wayans all serve to make the film better.

Air could have been a wonky deep-dive into sports statistics and business machinations, but Affleck and his team concentrate instead on the people involved in the deals, which is exactly what the story needed. It’s only April, but don’t be surprised if this film is a top contender during the 2023 awards season.

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Air is currently running in theaters.

Photo courtesy of Prime Video

Matt Damon in Air.

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Movie Review

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya face pre-marriage jitters in The Drama

Photo courtesy of A24

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya in The Drama.

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya will be seen together a lot at the movies in 2026, with mega-films like The Odyssey and Dune: Part Three coming out later in the year. But fans can get a much more intimate look at the two stars in a film that offers a unique take on relationship struggles, The Drama.

Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Pattinson) are a New York couple who are engaged to be married. After a quick-but-effective montage of their courtship, the story joins them as they are just days away from their wedding. As they get all the details like music, flowers, and food finalized, a visit to the caterer with married friends Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie) proves fateful.

A few too many drinks leads to each member of the group deciding to divulge the worst thing they’ve ever done. While each story is slightly shocking, Emma’s takes the cake, so much so that Charlie starts to question their relationship. As they get closer to the wedding date, Charlie finds it increasingly difficult to get beyond Emma’s revelation, with each real or imagined conversation threatening to derail their previously tight bond.

Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli, the film is provocative, funny, and cringey as it tries to get to the center of human dynamics. Charlie, Rachel, and Mike have starkly different reactions to Emma’s story, and the way those play out over the course of the film provides, well, the drama. The harder Charlie tries to justify Emma’s past, the more his underlying feelings start to eat at him, causing friction not just between him and Emma, but in other parts of his life, as well.

Strangely, especially for a character played by Zendaya, Emma recedes more than expected. Her explanations for her previous actions are timid at best, and she mostly seems to be waiting for Charlie to forgive her instead of questioning why she needs forgiveness. Borgli favors the male side of the equation, and in so doing he doesn’t dig as deep into the root of the issue as he could have.

Still, the downward spiral at the center of the story has a propulsive nature to it, and each successive step proves to be both hard to watch and impossible to turn away from. It also helps that Borgli manages the tone well, keeping interactions between characters relatively light so that the film doesn’t turn into one like Marriage Story.

Pattinson, who gets to use his own British accent for once, put on an interesting performance that is much better than his last two roles in Mickey 17 and Die My Love. He has good chemistry with Zendaya, who manages to shine despite being laden with a role that doesn’t play entirely to her strengths. Haim and Athie do good work in small roles, while Hailey Grace and Hannah Gross make an impact in brief appearances.

The situation in which Emma and Charlie find themselves in The Drama is not one to be wished on anyone, but it’s presented well by Borgli, keeping tensions high for the bulk of the film. Despite the two main characters not given completely equal footing, the story finds a way to get to a satisfactory ending.

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The Drama opens in theaters on April 3.

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