(no subject)
****
Sideways has it all. It’s hilarious and yet melancholy, thought provoking and subtle. It pokes fun at itself and at its audience. It’s masterfully put together, extremely humanistic, and clever. There’s chemistry, there’s wine, and best of all, there’s Paul Giamatti. Giamatti is excellent in this role, portraying a clinically-depressed, wine-obsessed, middle school English teacher who’s taking his best friend Jack, a washed-up soap opera star now reduced to doing voice-overs for commercials, on a wine-tasting tour before Jack’s wedding. The plot is nothing new; one last whirlwind adventure as bachelors before settling down. And yet Sideways takes that plotline and turns it... Well, sideways.
Enter Virginia Madsen as the waitress Maya whom shares Miles’ love for wines and Sandra Oh as Stephanie as a single mom who pours wine for tourists and has caught Jack’s eye. Jack woos Stephanie (though fails to mention his upcoming wedding, of course), while Miles struggles with moving on from his divorce, which, coincidently, Maya is looking to do also. Miles and Maya's relationship is startlingly realistic with spectacular monologues about wine thrown in, each line hinting at a double meaning about it's speaker.
The film unfolds naturally and the humor is stitched in expertly to the drama. The characters are so well developed and the setting is so gorgeous that the audience can’t help but be allow themselves to be wound around director Alexander Payne’s little finger in a matter of minutes. Poignant and beautiful, Sideways is likely to be one of, if not the, best movies about a mid-life crisis this year.