Outside baseball

Sugar doesn’t fall into sports clichés | Meghan Keane

Sundance Film Festival/AP

The writing and directing team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck has been making a name for itself creating New York stories. Half Nelson won an Oscar nod for Ryan Gosling's Harlem high-school teacher battling his students and a drug habit. The similarly themed Gowanus, Brooklyn initially created some buzz.

In light of their other work, a film about a Dominican baseball player trying to break into the major leagues may seem out of place, but Boden and Fleck bring the same intricate, heartfelt approach to the film, which eventually finds its home in New York as well.

Starring newcomer Algenis Perez Soto in the title role, Sugar follows the Dominican pitcher through baseball boot camp, Iowa pro ball, and eventually post-baseball life in Queens. Trained to dream of baseball as his ticket out of childhood poverty, Miguel "Sugar'" Santos arrives in America to find that his dreams stretch much further.