Sugar

[Ezee E]

Trailer (http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809922998/video/11751183)

From the director-writers of Half Nelson which was pretty good. I'll be curious to see where they'll take this.

And no, the song "Sugar, Sugar" is not in the trailer.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Why do I get the impression they're making that look a lot happier than it really is?

[ledfloyd]

as a huge fan of baseball and half nelson, i've been looking forward to this since i first heard about it.

[Ezee E]

Why do I get the impression they're making that look a lot happier than it really is?
Perhaps. Nonetheless, it's been a while since a good baseball movie. Hopefully this is one.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Why do I get the impression they're making that look a lot happier than it really is?

Boy, I couldn't have been more right. A very good film. Not just for fans of baseball either. It does a fantastic job of establishing the feelings of alienation and displacement that so many of these players from Central America must feel. Algenis Perez Soto is quite good, as are many of the supporting characters, and it's another film whose ending couldn't have been better. A HUGE mix of emotions as the credits start to roll. This has settled really well overnight.

[chrisnu]

This hits DVD on September 1. Awesome.

[ledfloyd]

i need to watch this again. i think it has the potential to be my favorite baseball movie. that said, i'm not too fond of most existing baseball movies.

[baby doll]

i need to watch this again. i think it has the potential to be my favorite baseball movie. that said, i'm not too fond of most existing baseball movies.I strongly recommend you check out

http://www.letsjapan.markmode.com/wp-content/uploads/mr_baseball.jpg

[number8]

I liked this one a lot, too. It's not on DVD yet?

[Ezee E]

Two weeks. I missed it in theaters and have been waiting for it since.

[Pop Trash]

Favorite baseball movies:

1. Field of Dreams
2. Bull Durham
3. Major League
4. Bad News Bears (original)

Haven't seen:
Sugar, Eight Men Out, or Bang the Drum Slowly

[Sycophant]

This is one of the more recent entries in the series of films I was supposed to see with a couple friends, which just never happened.

After Fleck/Boden's Half Nelson, I can think of few films I'd like to see more than this one.

[baby doll]

After Fleck/Boden's Half Nelson, I can think of few films I'd like to see more than this one.It's quite good, but not as compelling or as accomplished stylistically as Half Nelson.

[Robby P]

http://images.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/2008/01/23/sugar/story.jpg

A movie that is neither an appraisal nor condemnation of the fabled 'American Dream', Sugar is quite refreshing in its ambivalence and uncertainty, its honesty and its irony. Anchored by a remarkable performance from its amateur lead actor, Sugar follows the story of Miguel Santos, a teenager from the Dominican Republic with Major League aspirations. The movie follows Miguel on his Quixotic journey from the impoverished beauty of the Caribbean shores to the Rockwellian serenity of the rural Midwest to the humbling high rises of the unforgiving inner cities. The further Miguel travels from home, the more apparent his confusion and loneliness becomes. Equipped with almost no functional English beyond meaningless catch phrases and sports-talk idioms, Miguel finds himself to be quite literally lost in translation. Faced with the daunting task of ascending to the highest ranks of professional competency, Miguel is placed at an immediate competitive disadvantage as he must battle against language barriers, cultural dissimilarities and transparent racial disparities. The combination of these limitations eventually brings Miguel to his breaking point, as he finds that he can no longer strive to maintain the illusions of grandeur that he was promised as a child.

As Miguel finds himself incapable of living up to his own unreasonable expectations, he seeks refuge in the comfort of his one remaining childhood fantasy. With his performance dwindling in the twilight hours of the disappointing baseball season, Miguel quietly departs for New York City in pursuit of the hallowed hopes of Yankee stadium. Representative of the ultimate destination for the most promising adolescents of Central America, Miguel's bittersweet pilgrimage merely reinforces what he already secretly knew: that his ultimate destiny would be as spectator, not as participant. Forced to work menial jobs at unreasonable hours for inadequate pay, Miguel's dreams of unfathomable riches and rewards under the warming lights of Yankee Stadium begin to slowly wither away into the background of a much darker, colder reality. But all hope is not lost. Given no choice to return to his team and begin a second chance at fame and fortune, Miguel simply does what he was instructed to do from the first moment he could carry a baseball: persevere. Far from finished, Miguel takes pride in his work, hones his carpentry skills, improves his English, adapts to new technologies and makes new friends and family in his latest stage of life and learning. Given every reason to abandon all hope and return home to a cyclical future of poverty, crime and destitution, Miguel refuses to cater to the luring forces of stereotypical expectations. Instead, he creates his own niche. He adapts to his new environment. He makes his own future.

Far from a simple minded polemical about immigration reform and worlds without borders, Sugar never stoops to heavy handed politicizing and self righteous finger wagging. Rather, it allows the audience to form its own judgments and draw their own conclusions. The concluding shot of the movie perfectly encapsulates this spirit of unapologetic ambiguity. Miguel confidently sits on the sidelines during a makeshift city-league game, heroically returning from a dazzling strikeout performance against another former Major League prospect whose fate had met a similar end. Miguel is briefly congratulated by his teammates and he seems comforted by the knowledge that he can still bring the heat, that he can still be the man. But his excitement quickly gives way to incredulity, as his dispassionate prolonged stare seems to denote his recognition that his natural talents, however fruitful, have been essentially wasted. He is not sitting in the dugout of Yankee stadium, he is sitting along the tattered streets of Queensbridge, trying to figure out where it all went wrong. But this self reflection lasts only momentarily, as Miguel's smile quickly returns with the knowledge that there is still a game left to be played. There are still twenty four outs to go and nobody yet knows how the outcome will be decided. The ball is in their hands.

A positively brilliant movie that deserves a much wider audience, Sugar is yet another emotionally devastating and thought-provoking contribution from the writer/director tandem that produced the equally enticing Half-Nelson. If you dismiss this movie out of hand as just another sports movie, you'll be doing yourself a great disservice. I doubt I'll see a better movie - sports-related or otherwise - either this year or any other in the near future. This is refreshingly masterful filmmaking.

[chrisnu]

Great review. I rented it this weekend, and enjoyed it very much as well. Its unpredictability and uncertainty made it feel truer to real life.

[balmakboor]

Favorite baseball movies:

1. Field of Dreams
2. Bull Durham
3. Major League
4. Bad News Bears (original)

Haven't seen:
Sugar, Eight Men Out, or Bang the Drum Slowly

My very sentimental favorite is still Pride of the Yankees.

[Gabe L]

I was a big fan of this, though it certainly helps that the story is right up my alley. My review:

http://filmandfelt.com/musings/?p=206

Typed out:

A penetrating exploration of the hardships that Dominican baseball recruits (and other Hispanic cultures as well) face in making it to the major leagues, Ryan Fleck’s SUGAR has highs, lows, and plenty of emotions in between. It’s easy for casual and die-hard fans alike to assume that José Reyes or Johan Santana are the norm, but reality paints a different picture; the vast majority of signees flame out early, succumb to injuries, find themselves overmatched, or get lost in the shuffle. In SUGAR, we follow the journey of Miguel Santos (better known as Sugar; natch), a flame-throwing righty for the fictional Kansas City Knights. From the start, Fleck zeroes in on the weight that these kids, often no older than 15 or 16, carry on their right arms or bat speed. Parents sacrifice their scant pesos for a glove or spikes, and when a whiff of success is in the air, the blood-thirsty sharks emerge from the woodworks, pretending they’ve been there along. Sugar pokes fun at a pot-bellied ex-farmhand who claims he used to touch 98 MPH, convinced it’s little more than bullshit, but he soon learns first-hand why so many balleyhooed prospects crash and burn. The peaks and valleys of the lifestyle are staggering; after receiving the exciting news that he’s been selected to join the Knights’ A-Ball affiliate in rural Iowa, Sugar is placed in the hands of a baseball-obsessed Evangelical family with firm instructions to watch over him and keep his mind focused on baseball and off alcohol, women, and other such tomfoolery. Extreme culture shock ensues, as Sugar finds himself surrounded by a host family that doesn’t speak Spanish (their rare attempts to communicate in his native tongue are comically bad) and few teammates whom he connects with. Despite all of this, he starts off with a bang, consistently mowing down opposing batters, but after spraining his ankle, he loses his mechanics, subsequently overcompensates, and finds himself getting pounded with regularity until he’s demoted to the bullpen. Unaccustomed to failure, Sugar loses control of his emotions time and again until, ashamed and mentally exhausted, he gets on a bus to New York City, leaving a rough year in the rearview mirror.

In many ways, the story—which begins with such optimism, such energy—is universal and tragic. The moment a ligament pops or velocity dips, the players are treated like replaceable parts. And when they’re sent back home, what can they do with themselves? Since a young age, these kids have been viewed through the prism of baseball. If they fail at that, they’re considered to have failed in a much more general sense…even by those closest to them. The aforementioned beer-bellied washout is unfortunately all too common, and Fleck does an outstanding job of illustrating both the mountains these prospects need to climb and ways to emerge from disappointment with a large portion of their pride intact. If the first 2/3’s of the film are about Dominican baseball, the final third is about self-discovery beyond the game; after arriving in New York, Sugar heads to the Bronx (Yankee Stadium, after all), where he begins working at a diner. He meets a beautiful girl. He reconnects with another former baseball hotshot, now with a pot-belly of his own but a big, relaxed grin to match. And he takes up the equivalent of an unpaid internship in woodworking under the kindly Osvaldo. Raised without a father and with sky-high expectations—burdened upon him because of nothing more than a lethal-but-unrefined fastball/knuckle-curve combination—the 20-year old Sugar can finally unwind and be himself. The wide smile that we see in the early sequences in the Dominican Republic returns in New York, and a poignant final sequence at a community baseball league finds Sugar enjoying the game in a way he clearly hasn’t in years. He may never fulfill his dream of pitching on the mound in Yankee stadium (or perhaps he will; comebacks are plentiful in the world of baseball), but for the first time, he has new dreams, dreams of his own that aren’t weighed down by extraordinary pressure.

SUGAR would be nowhere near as compelling without Algenis Perez Soto’s first-rate lead performance, which should certainly earn him some nice future paychecks. He disappears into Sugar, from lonely, small-town Iowa to the bubbling New York, and at times, it’s easy to forget that we’re not watching a documentary. The supporting performances are all strong as well, and the pacing and editing are superb, with very few wasted moments in the entire script. SUGAR ends on a wistful-but-happy note, and that’s fitting for the turbulent journey the title character has been (and still is) on. It’s a journey that’s well worth taking with him.

75/100

[origami_mustache]

Another great effort from Boden and Fleck. I look forward to more from them.

[ledfloyd]

i watched this again, i prefer half nelson, but it's really good. i think it drags in the middle a bit, and can we plays lay off the gratuitous katrina references in film? it's getting out of hand.

[Robby P]

can we plays lay off the gratuitous katrina references in film? it's getting out of hand.

My memory is failing me. What scene are you referring to?

[ledfloyd]

My memory is failing me. What scene are you referring to?
he's watching tv at his host families house and there is a woman on there talking about marching through the superdome singing songs. to be fair, it's far less explicit than the references in the soloist and benjamin button.

[number8]

I forgot about that. He was watching Spike Lee's doc, I believe.

[Ezee E]

Wow, the last half hour really took me by surprise. It's fitting, but it didn't engage me nearly as much as when he was aspiring to play baseball. Strangely, he's simply trying to survive, which should be interesting, but the progression in the minor league system was so much more interesting. I can't really think of another movie that has nailed that as well.

Not the best baseball movie per se, but very good still.

[ledfloyd]

Wow, the last half hour really took me by surprise. It's fitting, but it didn't engage me nearly as much as when he was aspiring to play baseball. Strangely, he's simply trying to survive, which should be interesting, but the progression in the minor league system was so much more interesting. I can't really think of another movie that has nailed that as well.

Not the best baseball movie per se, but very good still.
hmm, i got a bit tired towards the end of the baseball thing. and welcomed the last half hour. this coming from someone who loves baseball. and yeah, they nail the minor leagues. bull durham? pfft.

[Kurosawa Fan]

hmm, i got a bit tired towards the end of the baseball thing. and welcomed the last half hour. this coming from someone who loves baseball. and yeah, they nail the minor leagues. bull durham? pfft.

Well, I completely disagree with your dismissal of Bull Durham (but agree that it's not an accurate portrayal of the minors, though I don't think that's what they were attempting), but I also think the last half hour was the strongest part of the film. I'm stunned that E found it tiresome. Without that last half hour, it's just another baseball movie.

[Ezee E]

Well, I completely disagree with your dismissal of Bull Durham (but agree that it's not an accurate portrayal of the minors, though I don't think that's what they were attempting), but I also think the last half hour was the strongest part of the film. I'm stunned that E found it tiresome. Without that last half hour, it's just another baseball movie.
I was shocked, and the movie works for going in that direction, but after he gets another job, I didn't see what more had to be said. I figured it was done.

[ledfloyd]

Well, I completely disagree with your dismissal of Bull Durham (but agree that it's not an accurate portrayal of the minors, though I don't think that's what they were attempting), but I also think the last half hour was the strongest part of the film. I'm stunned that E found it tiresome. Without that last half hour, it's just another baseball movie.
yeah, a bit of a cheapshot, but i was referring to everyone that says bull durham is a great portrayal of the minors, moreso than critiquing the film itself.

i totally agree the last half hour elevates the film to another level. i love the bittersweet note it ends on.

[NickGlass]

I saw this back in April, but I still believe it's one of the genuine pleasures of the year. I'm still highly impressed with the authenticity of this portrait of pressure, the "American-immigrant" dream, and--most importantly--Dominican assimilation.

[number8]

Their next movie will star Zack Galifianakis. Awesome?

[Ezee E]

Their next movie will star Zack Galifianakis. Awesome?
I would love if they took that approach with stand up comedians. That's where Funny People succeeded the most, but abandoned it far too quickly.

[dreamdead]

Quite enjoyed this one. Others have commented on how quickly and effectively the sense of dislocation seeps in here for Miguel. The film demonstrates his attempts to follow others' leads, such as his mentor in the minor leagues and even his attendance at church. Yet he never really gains a full sense of his own individuality, and there's a sense that he's at his happiest when he's actually doing carpenter work even at the film's opening. He seems most content and realized in those moments. And his impression that all women would desire him, especially given his sensuality in his Dominican home, is given nice counterpoint in the rejection by the Higgins girl.

Here is a film where the small moments hit most powerfully--the scene where the waitress shows Miguel egg styles, a wordless focus on the Dominican player who has had to return back to his native country and get ribbed by those who've not yet experienced the trials in the minor leagues, the montage of players who've been used and spit out by the farm systems.

I think I too find this film most enveloping during the third act. It seems obvious that he won't make the majors, so how he survives after his flight (and his ingenuity for survival) are where the film succeeds most for me.