MOVIE TIP

Air

“Air” should have made more of a splash than it did when it was released last year. It’s a smart, entertaining flick that is packed with tremendous actors saying lines from a dialogue-happy script by Alex Convery, and it’s all under the savvy direction of Ben Affleck. What “The Big Short” was to the 2007-08 financial crisis, “Air” is to sneakers and athlete endorsements. The story follows Nike as it entices then-NBA rookie Michael Jordan to partner with them. Matt Damon, who is so good at underplaying a role, is perfect as Nike talent scout Sonny Vaccaro. He sees that Jordan is a superstar waiting to happen and that Jordan and Nike could be a dream team. Affleck plays Nike CEO — and Buddhist businessman — Phil Knight. Jordan doesn’t appear in the film (a body double makes brief appearances) but Viola Davis is imposing and protective as Jordan’s mother. The cast is superb, from Chris Tucker to Jason Bateman to Chris Messina, the latter of whom makes an impression as a slick, fast-talking sports agent (is that redundant?) Oh, and the 1980s costumes, hair and set design are all a throwback hoot. I saw “Air” during a recent network TV screening, but it’s an Amazon Prime Video production.

— Kristina Dorsey

TV TIP

Bad Monkey

Apple +

It’s almost asinine to try to assign a “funniest” tag on a Carl Hiaasen crime novel. The dude’s written over two dozen, and they’re all almost eerily witty. No one should be this funny. “Bad Monkey” is certainly at the top of this heap, and this 10-episode and devotedly accurate miniseries of the book stars the perfectly cast Vince Vaughn as former Key West detective-turned-restaurant-inspector Andrew Yancey. Episode 4 debuted earlier this week, so it’s a perfect time to hop on the laugh-wagon. The plot explodes from an incidental discovery of a severed human arm on a charter fishing gig, and the action pinballs across Miami, the Keys and the Bahamas. The ensemble cast is consistently superb and includes Natalie Martinez as a medical examiner/possible love interest, Ronald Peet as a well-meaning Bahamian fisherman who owns the titular primate and is suddenly homeless thanks to greedy developers, and Jodie Turner-Smith as a calculated voodoo priestess. The script stays faithful and all involved nimbly nuance Hiaasen’s multi-tentacled murder story. Highly recommended.

— Rick Koster

BOOK TIP

James

Percival Everett

Percival Everett’s reimagining of Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” through the eyes of the character of Jim is inspired. It makes a reader reconsider everything in “Finn,” in a mind-opening way. Here, the character is James, and he and his fellow enslaved Black people speak differently when they are only around each other (they talk in what used to be called Standard English) and when they are around white people (who like to feel superior to Black folks). James can read but has to hide that ability. He engages in imagined conversations with philosophers John Locke and Voltaire. There are new scenarios during the time Huck and James are separated; in one sequence, James becomes a member of a minstrel show. But the relationship between James and Huck is still one of the story’s emotional centers. And familiar characters like the Duke and the Dauphin still appear, although they are embodied in very different ways. Everett, whose novel “Erasure” was made into the fabulous film “American Fiction,” is a superb writer. He also viscerally conveys how James, as a slave and then as a slave on the run, lives in constant danger. “James” is a must-read.

— Kristina Dorsey