![]() Baron Cohen delivers, with the expected repertoire of shock gags and deadpanned verbal enormities, and he manages to land some punches at the expense of bigots too. Even the coronavirus pandemic, which struck as the film was being shot, is subverted as a comedic plot point. In classic Borat fashion, the mockumentary follows the wacky duo on a cavalcade across Trump’s America, filming candid performances by unsuspecting characters ranging from QAnon believers to Republican activists to prim debutantes, all the way to Giuliani himself. This time Baron Cohen has brought his (Bulgarian-speaking) teenage daughter along, with the mission of giving her “as a gift” to some powerful American politician-initially Mike Pence, then Rudy Giuliani. ![]() Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Kazakh” TV reporter travels back to the US, 14 years after his latest feature-long escapade. ![]() In an age of franchises and endless blockbusters, Air is the sort of character-focused film that rarely gets made anymore, and is all the more enjoyable for it. Alex Convery’s script keeps the drama on the people and personalities involved, rather than the boardroom. Damon, Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker, and director Ben Affleck all deliver strong performances-only to be utterly eclipsed by Viola Davis in a magnetic and powerful, if somewhat underutilized, turn as matriarch Deloris Jordan. We all know how that panned out, so thankfully Air is more than a two-hour ad for shoes. Enter Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), a talent scout who’s spotted a rising star in North Carolina he believes could turn everything around-he just needs to convince everyone that Jordan is worth betting the company on. Jordan was a rookie, and Nike was about to close down its basketball footwear division. ![]() Sure, nowadays Michael Jordan is a bona fide sports god, and Nike’s Air Jordan sneakers are still arguably the court shoe-but that wasn’t the case back in 1984.
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