City Island (***1/4)

Raymond de Felitta continues to give the feel-good film a good name. His earlier Two Family House was set in Staten Island, that least-familiar borough of that most overfamiliar of locations, New York City. City Island is likewise set in a fishing village on Long Island Sound, albeit a posh fishing village that has also featured prominently in movies such as Awakenings, Summer of Sam, and Margot at the Wedding. In any case, the people in both films are meant to be regular folks, not movers and shakers. Vincent, the everyman hero, is a corrections officer (prison guard to everyone else), but dreams of being an actor, although he’s embarrassed to tell his frequently testy wife (Julianna Margulies). When Vince’s acting-class partner winds up being played by Emily Mortimer (who seems to enhance any movie she’s in), it seems like things will proceed along the lines of Two Family House, in which the everyman is married to a shrew and finds love elsewhere.

Fortunately, the wife character is rescued from one-dimensionality, as are the daughter (played by Garcia’s actual daughter) who’s secretly dropped out of college, the son who spends his free time on fat-fetish porn websites, and the ex-con who Vince mysteriously has taken in. That’s not to say these characters are deep, but they’re not stereotypes, and their stories are easy to latch onto, funny without getting silly. And if you didn’t think a storyline about a teen boy’s lust for large ladies can be rendered sort of wholesomely, watch this. The broader theme is the destructiveness of keeping secrets…and how amusing it is when they’re exposed. De Felitta never leaves you doubting that things will sort themselves out in the end, but still keeps you guessing about how.

IMDB link

viewed 2/23/10 at Ritz Bourse [PFS screening] and reviewed 2/23(?)–4/16/10

Sugar (***1/4)

It’s a rare sports film that doesn’t culminate in a big game. This baseball tale doesn’t even have a big game. For a player trying to make it to the major leagues, just getting to play the next game is the point. For a pitcher Miguel “Sugar” Santos (real ballplayer Algenis Perez Soto), playing the next game means being able to send money to his family in the Dominican Republic, and not having to find work in a poor country.

Writing/directing team Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson) follow Sugar’s attempt to beat the odds. For a Dominican it means first “graduating” from a local baseball academy before even getting a shot at the lowest minor league in the United States. Rudimentary English lessons (“home run,” “I got it,” and so on) are part of the package. But the heart of the movie is Sugar’s season in a low minor league team in rural Iowa, where Sugar becomes merely one of several promising newcomers. His character is particular, but is also meant to represent the thousands of Dominicans hoping to make it to the big leagues, most of whom will not succeed. This is also an immigrant story. Boden and Fleck handle the culture clash aspect with subtlety. The language barrier, for example, results in Sugar repeatedly ordering French toast at breakfast because he can’t read the menu. Eventually, he figures things out, but not in the way you expect.

IMDB link

viewed on DVD [Netflix] and reviewed 4/2/10