Sugar

So here's another movie recommendation. Remember, I'm not inclined to recommend movies that everyone has heard of anyway. I see those too, but it's smaller, independent or foreign films that I'm inclined to spotlight. This one is from 2009. It's called, simply, Sugar. Seen it? If not, consider doing so.

You could say it's a baseball movie, but... well, it's not really that. Baseball is the catalyst for the story, but it's about a lot more than that, and it's certainly not about some ninth inning victory. It's about the minor league training camps in the Dominican Republic and elsewhere that farm local talent with an eye toward sending them through to the states, where they then hope to play their way up toward the major leagues. It's about the tension between the dream all these young guys feel and the reality that the vast majority of them aren't going to achieve that dream. It's about the cultural turmoil of feeling out of place in the US, longing for home while also striving to take advantage of the opportunities here. It's a quiet movie in some ways, but it also moves in unexpected directions. It's the type of film that I didn't know how much I like it until it was over, and even at that point I can't quite explain why it worked for me. But it did, and that's why I'm mentioning it.

I got good reviews. Check out The New York Times or The Los Angeles Times, for example.

Oh, it's mostly in Spanish, by the way. You're not afraid of that though...