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Sugar

Rated: R for language, some sexuality and brief drug use.
Release Date: 2009-04-03
Starring: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck
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Country:USA
Official Website: http://www.sonyclassics.com/sugar/

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Sugar is about being a stranger in a strange land, when the strange land is America. It’s about the point where ambition falters and reality kicks in. And it’s about baseball – in that order. The established fantasy of the sports movie is confronted with some pretty harsh facts here, about the tiny minority of players both good enough and lucky enough to make it professionally. That customary certainty that all will come good, that the crowd will roar and the music will swell at the bottom of the ninth inning, is anything but a given.

 

Writer-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck pulled off something similar with their first film, the teacher-student drama Half Nelson, by loading it with a subtler freight than that particular genre is usually asked to carry.

 

They are becoming a distinctive team and a valuable one – their stories have clout, their style is lean and forceful. They borrow a formula and adapt it into something real.

 

We have certainly seen the journey of “Sugar” Santos (Algenis Perez Soto) before, or journeys like it: he is a star pitcher in the Dominican Republic, given the chance to join an American training academy for a shot at major-league success. He sends money back home to his family, while impressing the selectors enough to be installed as a fixture in minor-league Kansas City. Sugar’s time there has its ups and downs – a knee injury at the worst possible time, a flirtation with performance-enhancing drugs. As he’s told at the start, there are hundreds of players above him who have already proved themselves, and hundreds below – many of them Dominicans – jostling for a chance to take his place.

 

There are clichés strewn in this this film’s path like unexploded landmines, but weaving their way past them isn’t Boden and Fleck’s only achievement. They dig away honestly at the relationship between effort and success, one that most movies distort in one direction or the other. To try, to fail, to try some more: this never feels like a pre-determined tract about the struggles of a homesick immigrant, and Sugar, winningly played by the complete newcomer Soto, isn’t a cut-out ingenu but a testy, competitive, driven but fallible person. The road he follows is modest, but the film is beautiful and searching in letting him find it for himself.

Rudo y Cursi

Rated: R for pervasive language, sexual content and brief drug use.
Release Date: 2009-05-08
Starring: Carlos Cuarón
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Country:Mexico
Official Website: http://www.rudoycursilapelicula.com/

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“Rudo y Cursi” is a lively and engaging comedy that highlights some drama in its storyline. Regrettably, in the end, feels a little thin, largely because it is unsure of how earnestly to treat its own lessons about fate, ambition and brotherly love. There is a lot of velocity in this ultimately familiar tale of rising and falling, but not much gravity. “Rudo y Cursi” is partly about the consequences of taking a game much too seriously, but at the same time it treats everything else — life, death, love, money — like a game.

 

Beto (Diego Luna) and Tato Verdusco (Gael Garcia Bernal) are half brothers who work together at a banana plantation and live with their extended family in a village in southern Mexico. When the two of them are suddenly (and somewhat improbably) plucked from rural proletarian obscurity and turned into professional soccer players in Mexico City, they achieve fame as Rudo and Cursi, nicknames that can be translated more or less as tough and corny.

 

But Mr. Cuarón also has trouble managing the tone of the film as it swerves from light-hearted absurdity toward a darker, more cynical view of its characters and their fate. Too often he allows “Rudo y Cursi” to coast on the likeability of its stars, who seem at times to be enjoying themselves more than their characters are able to.

Tyson

Rated: R for language including sexual references.
Release Date: 2009-04-24
Starring: James Toback
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Country:USA
Official Website: http://www.sonyclassics.com/tyson/

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‘Tyson’ is an insightful biopic on arguably the greatest heavyweight boxer who ever lived. If you were a witness to his tumultuous personal and professional boxing career, this documentary clears up all, if not many of the rumors and debauchery he became notorious for: the biting of Evander Holyfield’s ear, the rape charges and the Don King attack to mention a few.

Indie director James Toback directs this portrait of ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson where he manages to extract, without inhibition, information about his womanizing, alcohol and drug addiction, bouts of mental instability, and criminal activity in great detail. Through a mixture of original interviews and archival footage and photographs, the film ranges from Tyson’s earliest memories of growing up on the mean streets of Brooklyn through his entry into the world of boxing, to his rollercoaster ride of worldwide fame and fortunes won and lost.

You might be surprised with the Tyson who narrates this movie. He is different from the monster built up and torn down by the media during the ’80s and ’90s. Age often brings perspective, and that would seem to be the case here. His explanations and views of the mischievous events of his dark days might not satisfy you, but what you have to appreciate is the sincerity and surrendering that Toback manages to withdraw from a man known to have a volatile and fractured mind. In terms of visual stylistics, there is a film quality that Toback directs with in contrast to the sensationalistic and over-dramatized VH-1 show ‘Behind the Music’ or Barbara Walters’ special interviews where the questions are crafted to draw tears from the interviewees. Here it is just you and him.

There are some scenes with heavy language so I wouldn’t suggest bringing children to see it. If in fact ‘Tyson’ is a spin free of publicist intervention documentary, it is a remarkable look inside the mind of a ‘killing machine’ who became a docile beast ready to welcome peace within himself. If you are a fan, you’ll enjoy it and if you’re not, it’s one informative retrospective at a living boxing legend.

The Last House on the Left

Rated: R for sadistic brutal violence including a rape and disturbing images, language, nudity and some drug use.
Release Date: 2009-03-13
Starring: Adam Alleca, Carl Ellsworth
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Country:USA
Official Website: http://www.thelasthouseontheleft.com/

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‘The Last House on the Left’ is as uncomfortable a film as I have ever seen. Uncomfortable because the movie possesses elements that blur the lines between violence, abuse and entertainment. Cinematically, the film is arresting through and through due the high caliber of the production, the reliable and convincing acting performances and its engrossing premise to boot. But how can one recommend a movie that possesses a barbaric rape scene, as a good cinematic selection? It is a complex response, but ultimately, you need to be the judge.

This is the third remake of ‘The Last House on the Left’. In 1972, the first feature effort of Wes Craven, was a reworking of Ingmar Bergman’s 1960 picture, The Virgin Spring, which won the 1961 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. This third version, is more reminiscent to the 1972 edition. The story takes place after the kidnapping and butchering of two female teenagers. The guilty gang unknowingly finds refuge with the parents of one of the victims, hosts who devise a gruesome revenge.

Women be forewarned. If you have never been privy to scenes of sexual abuse, this is not the film to get acquainted with it. The rape scene images seen here are some of the most gruesome, disturbing and down right reprehensible ever committed to a Hollywood film. I’m not sure many will be able to withstand it and walking out of the theater just might be your best option. But if you can cover your eyes and get through it, there is a redeeming third act that will quench your thirst for revenge. 

After seeing the entire film, I must say, Greek director Dennis Illiadis was a fantastic director who maintained a level of dread, suspense and retribution throughout the whole film. This is not a horror movie but a highly intense thriller that works the mind to feel contempt in its first half then vindication in its denouement.

‘The Last House on the Left’ is not a “pretty” movie, but it does challenge the boundaries of entertainment, and hopefully with an open mind, you’ll be the one entertained.