Impromptu Movie Review: Sugar

I'd been meaning to see Sugar for a long time. I don't usually go to movies in theaters but I had heard good things about this one via Rob Neyer and others, so it piqued my interest. I was still living on the Upper West Side at the time and on my walk home from work I noticed the title listed on the black and white board outside of the Lincoln Plaza Theaters (not the huge Lincoln Center complex with the IMAX a few blocks north, the one that shows more independent stuff closer to Columbus Circle). After a few more nights, I convinced a girl I was dating to go see it with me. We walked by to see what time it was playing, but it wasn't up on the board as we approached. When we asked the woman at the box office, it turned out they pulled it the night before.

Just before Christmas, I was browsing for gifts on Amazon and the movie showed up in my recommended items. I saw there was a used copy for about $5 and figured it was well worth that plus shipping. But I ended up buying the presents elsewhere and it sat in my cart for a couple of weeks before I thought of it again. By the time I checked back, the only used copies were fairly expensive and I lost the ambition to make the purchase.

Then, two weeks ago, Bryan Smith put up a post on FanGraphs about the movie and I made it a point to go back to Amazon to get a copy. With shipping it was something like $13. Over the weekend, I finally got around to watching it.

My favorite thing about Sugar is that it vividly captures a reality in baseball that we don't think of of willfully choose to disregard. We see someone like Robinson Cano arrive in the Bronx with the ability to play in the Majors, but take for granted that he had to come up through the minors and learn countless lessons in order to pick up on the nuances of American culture. What we almost never consider at all are the prospects from other countries that never pan out and what happens to them after they've given up their dream to make it to the Majors.

The main character, Miguel "Sugar" Santos, starts in the fictional Kansas City Knights training camp in the Domincan Republic, where players not only improve their skills but learn simple baseball terms like "I got it" and "fly ball" in English. When he gets invited to come to the States and begin his ascent through the minors, he's throw into a completely unfamiliar situation.

While playing baseball in the United States does represent a great opportunity for the lucky prospects that make it here, coming from the Dominican Republic (or Venezuela, or Mexico, or especially Cuba) being thrust into America has to be extremely disorienting.

One of the best scenes of the movie comes in a restaurant when he first comes to Spring Training. One of the Dominicans, Jorge, had been in camp before and takes a few of the new recruits out to a diner. With their eyes glazing over looking at the unfamiliar menu, Jorge orders French toast. Reluctant to try pick or pronounce any of the foreign items on the menu, they all get French toast.

Sugar continues with his routine until one night, sitting in the booth alone, he works up the courage to order eggs. The waitress asks how he'd like them, and unable to to understand what "scrambled" or "over easy" means, he reverts to French toast once again. The waitress brings him what he ordered, but in addition, drops off a plate with three different kinds off eggs for him to try and explains which is which.

Sugar gets called up to Kansas City's minor league team in Bridgeport, Iowa and is given a host family. They seem to be genuinely kind and generous, but their Spanish is just as bad as his English. During a tour of the house, the mother uses the Spanish word for "soup" when referring to "soap".

Unlike so many baseball movies, Sugar is subtle and understated. Sure, for baseball geeks like us, some of the technical baseball stuff seems a bit hokey, but the movie isn't as much about baseball as it is experiencing America from the outside with the game serving as a conduit.

In stark contrast to films like The Natural, the Major League series, and Rookie of the Year, Sugar doesn't require you to suspend disbelief in order to enjoy it. As opposed to Mr. Baseball, it doesn't need a superstar to drive it's plot. Unlike Field of Dreams, it didn't even require a trained actor to play the lead role.

It's hard to make a good baseball movie. Take a look through this list and that fact will become even more apparent. Directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck struck a perfect balance between being over the top and being boring which, given the history of the genre, is extremely hard to do. Highly recommended.

Impromptu Movie Review: It Might Get Loud

It Might Get Loud is the kind of ambitious project that needed a name brand director. I can't imagine how else they would have convinced Jack White, the Edge and Jimmy Page to do it. Each of the three represents a different musical generation and distinct background, giving the film three dissonant storylines. It's subjects are three guitarists, but it's more about music in general than guitar.

It begins with a scene showing Jack White building a one string guitar from some scraps of wood and a coke bottle and later documents the Edge's never-ending quest to find the perfect sound through hundreds of knobs, switches and sliders. The antithesis of the overproduced sounds of the Edge, White tends towards the organic: hence the minimalist opening. At one point the Edge, sitting in his studio packed with amps and computers, demonstrates that the riff he's playing is unsurprisingly only a cavalcade of effects. Later on, White listens to a record featuring a man with no instruments - only his voice and some manual percussion - in what appears to be his attic. Somewhere in between, are Page and his ever-present smile, at times playing a double necked guitar and others strumming a mandolin.

As the film weaves together the formative years of each guitarist, revisiting scenes of their youth, backdrops roam from a farmhouse in Tennessee to an English manor to the bleak grayness of Dublin, culminating on a well-lit soundstage in Los Angeles.

It's on this soundstage that the film comes together (and gets loud). It attempts to unite the musicians with a summit and jam session featuring a song from each of them. What that meeting lacks in synergy it makes up for in authenticity. Being that these are guitarists and not lead singers, it shouldn't be surprising that each comes across as genuine.

The film doles out pieces of that jam session in tiny bits and it's clear that the different styles blend about as seamlessly together as the movie does - which is to say not very well. But it's still enjoyable to see happening. If you've got some free time and want to check it out, you can watch the entire thing in ten minute sections on YouTube or obviously, buy it since it was just released on DVD shortly before Christmas.

It's The Rule Of The Iron Mike

Next week, a documentary is coming out about the life and times of Mike Tyson. I had the opportunity to see a preview screening last night and I have to say it was excellent. I will tell you that I have always been and still am a fan of Mike Tyson. He trained in Upstate New York and was frequently around the Albany area (5 Fack Youk contributors are from the Capital District) during the beginning and the height of his career.

I even met him in the mall when I was like 7, I don't remember this but my parents told me I did. Another nice story of Mike in Albany was when he was arrest for going 120 mph down Central Ave (that is the exact location and the speed limit is 30 mph) in his Lamborghini. What I am getting at is that a lot of people here like Tyson and even though he has done some shit in his day, we selectively remember the times when he was great.

I won't get too into it for those of you who want to see it, but it does a great job of capturing Mike's unique insight into his own life. I know Tyson is viewed as crazy by most of the world, and rightfully so, but this movie gave me a better understanding of why. It also makes you feel sorry for him because he got a raw deal in many respects and overcame a lot of shit to get to the top of the boxing world.

For those of you that don't really give a shit about Mike Tyson I would still recommend watching it. It's a good documentary from a cinematography standpoint and there is enough unintentional humor in him making up his own words (I think I caught a "sluggentry" in there) and contradicting his own statements in consecutive sentences for everyones' enjoyment.

Impromptu Movie Review: The Wrestler

No spoiler alert needed, I'm gonna keep this as non-specific as possible.

The first time I heard (read) of The Wrestler was in Bill Simmons' column in ESPN The Magazine, which I was reading in my apartment, the bathroom.

Supposed to be a joke. Give it a second. Okay.

I haven't cared about professional wrestling since I was about seven years old, but found this movie to be throughly enjoyable. The reason they can call the movie something generic like "The Wrestler" is that the shadowy world of professional wrestling has never been cinematically delved into with so much as a mini series. It achieved a level of realness and believability rarely attained outside of The Wire, and as Simmons says, Rourke was exquisitely cast:

To be honest, I still can't figure out how we didn't get Nicolas Cage in this movie. For $15 million, he gladly would have bleached his Con Air hairdo, bulked up to Kiss of Death proportions, made a few Nic Cage faces—and given us a thoroughly mediocre film. Director Darren Aronofsky should be applauded for avoiding the big-budget route, instead scaling down to an indie and rolling the dice with Rourke. Because Rourke carries this movie. Every frame.

I'm not a movie guy, and aside from some pretty grizzly, bloody scenes, it was awesome. Highly recommended.

And wow... two of my last five posts on a blog called "Fack Youk" praised the Red Sox and agreed with Bill Simmons. Fuck me.