A plot summary of this year's Best Documentary Oscar winner "Waiting for Sugarman" sounds too sugary: A young singer-songwriter cuts a couple records in 1969 and 1970 that the critics love and no one in America buys. As his career evaporates, he sets out on his life's work: construction and demolition in Detroit. Unbeknownst to him, his records sell like crazy in South Africa, and his songs become the rallying cry for the young, white anti-apartheid activists. Fast-forward to the Internet days: a web search organized by a fan locates him, and the singer Sixto Rodriguez returns like Elvis rising from the grave for a series of huge concerts in South Africa. Too pat, right? Well, it works wonderfully, thanks to the vivid personalities of the devoted fans, the record producers and, above all, Rodriguez's heroic equanimity at accepting that 40 years of stardom eluded him. He liked his Detroit life fine, and the screaming fans now are great, too. The political context of just how isolated South Africa was during the era of boycotts and sanctions, so remote that news didn't travel there (his fans believed the rumor that he killed himself on stage), is a chilling antidote to the warmth.

- MILTON MOORE