Sugar
Written and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. With Algenis Perez Soto, Rayniel Rufino, Andre Holland, Ann Whitney, and Ellary Porterfield. (R)
Though baseball is at the heart of Sugar, a new film from the talented writing/directing team behind Half Nelson, to call it a baseball movie would do it a huge disservice. This is a baseball movie like Hoop Dreams was a basketball movie—the sport is simply the vessel into which the film's subjects pour their dreams.
Miguel "Sugar" Santos (Algenis Perez Soto) is a young Dominican with dreams of playing in the big leagues. He attends one of the country's "baseball academies," where U.S. teams host local teams in order to groom new talent; in addition to learning how to be better players, they're taught the rudimentary English every ball player needs, parroting back "fly ball," "home run," and the lyrics to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."
When Sugar's pitching attracts the attention of scouts, he gets called up to play rookie ball in the States. Stuck with a farm team in rural Iowa, he eats French toast every day because it's the only thing he knows how to pronounce on the menu at the local diner. When his friend Jorge is released, Sugar is alone, hemmed in by the language barrier even when the granddaughter of his host family seems to offer a chance at friendship.
Meanwhile, his pitching starts to deteriorate as he questions the choices he's made. His entire life has been structured to let him do this one thing, but his future is in the hands of men who often seem to believe that everyone can understand English if only it's spoken slowly and loudly enough. It's a critique—that professional baseball's recruiting practices are at best often insensitive, and at worst, approach a kind of indentured servitude—that directors Boden and Fleck make firmly felt without seeming preachy.
Perez Soto, who makes his debut here, is excellent as the conflicted pitcher, especially in the way he gives Sugar's disillusionment several shades of sadness—from his initial bewilderment at American lifestyles to his fear of being seen as a failure, and to his final decision to take control of his own story, sacrificing his own dream for the sake of something more.
*
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Directed by Gavin Hood. Written by David Benioff and Skip Woods. With Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Will.i.am, Lynn Collins, Dominic Monaghan, and Ryan Reynolds. (PG-13)
The ungainly title of X-Men Origins: Wolverine seems to promise that this is only the first in a series of films focusing on the personal histories of the comic book group of mutant do-gooders. It's doubtful that such a series will amount to much, if it happens at all. While there are currently plans for a spin-off for Ian McKellen's Magneto character—whose history as a Holocaust survivor presumably has the studio drooling over a mutant vs. Nazi slugfest—the majority of the X-Men seem to follow the hoary origin story of comics everywhere: a misunderstood teenager discovers that he has special talents. How many times can that movie be made? Would anyone in 2015 rush out to see X-Men Origins: Kid Omega?
In the end, it doesn't much matter. Wolverine, it turns out, is all they need. When the film begins in 1845, he's still a boy, and as he and his half-brother and fellow mutant Victor age, we see them fighting (over the course of the extended opening credits) in every war in our country's history. This is an origin story that could fill four more blockbusters with room to spare.
The pair part ways post-Vietnam, with the increasingly feral Victor signing on with a secret military unit, while Logan (a.k.a. Wolverine) retreats to a quiet life in the Rockies. Of course, a quiet life is no origin story, and before long he's been tracked down by his old Army boss William Stryker (Danny Huston), his girlfriend has been killed, and he vows a bloody revenge on the man he thinks responsible.
The pace for the first half of the film is surprisingly—even refreshingly—restrained. Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber share a rapport that makes the long and lonely intimacy of their characters believably fraternal, at once loving and filled with petty rivalries. (That sense of competition spilled over into the real world, when Schreiber was "humiliated" by the suggestion he wear a prosthetic muscle suit to better match Jackman's rock-solid physique. It's easy to understand: the image of Jackman, with his beard and stogie, his torso barely contained by a tank top, seemed to suggest that I think about turning in my Man Card. Schreiber chose to work out.)
Sadly, any thought of drama goes out the door once Logan signs on for the secret project that will turn him into Wolverine. Instead, the movie shifts into overdrive, trying to fit in too much (a number of characters are set up for sequels with quick cameos), and losing the essential thread of the story to become just another action flick. And not a very good one, at that, but the kind where the climactic battle includes someone typing "decapitate" into a remote control unit.
*
Also this week: Amherst Cinema plays host to two special events. First up is director Louis Malle's (My Dinner with Andre, Vanya on 42nd Street) 1957 genre exploration Elevator to the Gallows. Made when Malle was still in his early 20s, the film—the director's debut feature—stars French film icon Jeanne Moreau as Florence Carala, an adulteress scheming to murder her husband with the help of her lover Julien (Maurice Ronet). But what seems like the perfect crime quickly unravels after Julien overlooks a single detail, leading to a long Paris night of murder, mistaken identities and lies.
Fans of the discursive nature of Malle's more mature works may be surprised by the rigor with which the younger Malle approached what is essentially a film-noir thriller; the feeling is one of confident exploration, as if the young director was purposefully operating within an established form simply to show what he could do with it, the way a master musician might rework a 12-bar blues. It's an idea that would seem familiar to Miles Davis, who composed the film's sad, haunting score.
On Tuesday, the cinema opens its doors to Valleywood II: Kids Stuff for the Kids Market, a multi-part program featuring world-renowned authors and illustrators of children's books, work from three regionally-based animation studios and insight from a former Hollywood studio executive. The program consists of an hour-long networking session where participants will speak about their fields, followed by an animation showcase featuring the 1965 Academy Award-winner The Dot and the Line, a tender and witty tale about a sensible straight line that falls in love with a frivolous dot. Co-directed by Chuck Jones of Looney Tunes fame, the cartoon is a reminder of how even the simplest story can become something magical in the right hands. (The film is also available online, and worth hunting down if you don't plan to attend the event.)
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
