Two new films spotlight American highs and lows from hope to horror

David Byrne and Sacha Baron Cohen see different things when they look at us

Spike Lee’s film version of David Byrne’s American Utopia is a big fat punch in the face of pure joy, and I needed it more than I knew.

At first glance, Lee and Byrne might seem like an odd combination. They have very different sensibilities overall, and when I think of Byrne’s defining aesthetic, New Wave-at-a-world-music-buffet, Lee isn’t the name that…