Sugar is worth seeing not because it invalidates baseball's meritocracy, or because it makes us feel guilty for enjoying the national pastime, but because it shows us with empathy and insight how baseball players are more than what they do on the field.

| Sep 18, 2017

Sugar's personal achievement is uplifting-and it's also cause for celebration when artists create just for the love of the game.

| Oct 20, 2014

This captures many moving moments and atmospheres in the diverse settings, bu the narrative arc isn't quite as engaging as it could be.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 9, 2014

Just as Hoop Dreams had the urgency of great storytelling, Sugar exhibits the patience of the most penetrating documentary.

| May 9, 2014

Sugar, a baseball movie, an immigrant parable and a thoroughly entertaining drama that accomplishes the seemingly impossible task of putting a fresh face on the fractured American Dream.

| Mar 20, 2013

Not only have director-writers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck crafted a poignant immigrant tale, they've made a sports saga rife with rare truths.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 20, 2013

The camera is on Sugar the whole time, but the faux-documentary approach keeps him out of reach in all the ways that really matter.

| Mar 20, 2013

To tell you what happens to him from here would be a tremendous disservice. We'll just say that, refreshingly, nothing about it is sickly sweet.

Full Review | Mar 20, 2013

A rich and moving reminder of the way professional sports aspirations can shape someone's destiny in the real world.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 20, 2013

This is a tragic sports movie that shies away from every element of tragedy.

Full Review | Mar 20, 2013

As the film plays out its melancholy story, we realize that what we are watching is far rarer than the usual sports flick.

| Original Score: A | Mar 20, 2013

In 'Sugar', the pair skilfully dismantle the timeworn themes, characters and story patterns of the conventional sports movie and then reassemble them as a rich, socially astute realist drama.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 5, 2009

As a sports movie the film perhaps lacks the pace and punch to capture the genre's traditional audience. But Sugar is much more than a sports movie. It is a picture of integrity, intelligence and empathy that studiously avoids cliché.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 5, 2009

Sugar is a revelation, not least in the way it ducks an onrush of cliche to expose the whole rags-to-riches mantra as a bright and shining lie.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 5, 2009

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.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 5, 2009

Poignant and beautifully written, directed and performed, Sugar confirms Boden and Fleck as eloquent chroniclers of the underbelly of the American dream.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 5, 2009

Sugar is dazzlingly free of message creep. We are perplexed, yet fully persuaded.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 5, 2009

The story's slow-burn never quite flares into dramatic wildfire.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 5, 2009

This masterfully pitched exercise in sombre revelation may frustrate sports fans looking for an easy hit.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 5, 2009

While it's interesting, it's never truly absorbing.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 14, 2009