Sugar (2008)

If anything Sugar succeeds on the most basic level of making baseball, one of the most boring sports watchable. 

I just wish they had gone with my name for Baseball- Steroid Rounders. Anywho, I knew this was just a good movie from the start.

The photography was just so crisp and so picturesque, that it was impressionist-painting-esque and I was watching this on my phone via BBC Iplayer. That good. I had been attracted to watching this because the film-makers, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck had made It’s Kind Of A Funny Story,which I featured on here at the start of last month. I didn’t mention then that I was kinda non-plussed about their debut, Half-Nelson but Sugar is kinda leaps ahead of both of them.

Sugar is a beautifully told rags to riches story of a young baseball hopeful trying to improve his life for his family in the Dominican Republic. Metaphorically... aren't we all?
Sports movies are a strange beast; They're like a music biopic without the music, though I think Sugar has a great recorded music soundtrack featuring TV On The Radio, most prominently.

Not that Sugar is about baseball really. It's more about a guy trying to succeed in spite of his upbringing; trying to use his gift before it’s too late and it leaves him. Like said- very similar to music-biopic country.

The greatest strength of this movie is that of the characters and writing. There aren’t many scenes of the kid being put to breaking point under pressure and there is no final showdown against the ‘big team’, thank god. It’s more about the way you rise up in professional sports these days. Miguel or Sugar as everyone calls him has gotten this far because he has a gift in his pitching throw and that’s gotten him on a training camp, where they seem to be, not just training but conditioning these athletes almost like a factory for the America baseball leagues, where don’t learn English, just the baseball terms.

His success in the camp takes him to America, his true goal all along- to play and send money home to his family but he realise how lonely and desolate professional sports can be especially when you’re in a strange place, you have small contact to your home and you don’t speak the language. He’s not even as high up the ladder as I thought he was. This all sound very dour but this film is so watchable because its characters are charming even though none of them, apart from Miguel are in it that long.

I watched Sugar (2008) online via BBC I-Player.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Drive Angry 3D (2011)...

It's Kind Of A Funny Story (2010)

There are a lot of reasons for me to like It's Kind Of A Funny Story.
Keir Gilchrist, who's really great in Diablo Cody's tv show, United States of Tara. 
Emma Roberts, who's... Julia Roberts' niece. (I'm sorry Emma Roberts, you're gonna have to win an Oscar before people cut that shit out. Could be worse- People could call you, 'Eric Roberts' daughter'.) Seriously, she was very good in 4,3,2,1. 
And Zach Galifianakis, the Milk Tray man of movies. He'll break in but he'll only steal your heart.
But mainly, who doesn't want to watch a comedy drama about mentally depressed people. Of the sub-genres of the 'mental depressed people' movies, comedy-drama is my favs...


Gosh. I'm telling you i would have loved this film when i was 15. maybe not- I was pretty self-aware at 15. Um. 12. I would have loved It's Kind Of A Funny Story when i was 12.
That's an arsey back-handed compliment- It's a really good film and i'm a sucker for this sort of story- where a teenage boy has girl trouble and he's sensitive and stuff. That would be my 'joint'. Like (in an astounding generalisation-) girls seem to like movies with dancing and romance- the 'sensitive teen boy' genre would be my equivalent. 
If you had to draw poorly thought-out comparisons, you could say this film is like Fisher-Price - My First 'Cookoo's Nest'. Or if you found 'One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest' too lurid and violent, this might be for you. 
It's a about a 15yo boy who suffering from feeling suicidal (read-being a 15years old) and inadvertently checks himself in for a week's observation at a psych ward, with real people with psychiatric issues.
That said there's no one on that ward who's truly crippled by their illness; there's no one 'tripping balls' on Diazepam so they stop chewing their itchy skin off but i'm missing the point, the psych ward is merely the setting for this tale.
Keir Gilchrist is really great in his role as the precocious every-teen. Emma Roberts is perfect as his cute fragile foil.
Galifianakis is great in his role as... Zach Galifianakis. I'm not under the impression he can play anyone else, I don't really want him to but here it's a more muted motivational character like a chubby white Bagger Vance.
I'd like to highlight that i love that the film doesn't ever become maudlin- I mean here, Galifianakis is playing someone actually suicidal but he's not acting like he's aching for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar by laying on the dramatics with a spade- he's good at putting on just enough emotion that it's never syrupy. The other thing I liked was nothing really changes in the end 'cept Gilchrist appreciates his life a bit more. Watching this, i realised that male puberty is starting to checking out girls boobs you like platonically or aren't even remotely attracted to. Getting old is realising you're condemned to do that with 99% of woman you come in contact with.
Which is strange, cos nothing like that happens in this film. 
I don't question where enlightenment comes from.
It's a pleasant Sunday afternoon of a film- perfect for that. It’s probably like a blokey version of My So Called Life but I’ve never seen that.
...
This is good, though...


I watched It's Kind Of A Funny Story (2010) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with The Night of The Hunter (1955)...