Movie Reviews

I like wine, but I'm really not very skilled in distinguishing its various flavours, and a wine-tasting trip through California's wine country -- of the sort that Miles and Jack take in Sideways -- wouldn't likely be at the top of my vacation-destination list. However, I loved these characters and I was very content to go along with them in this movie, which is one of the best I've seen this past year.

Miles (Paul Giamatti) and Jack (Thomas Hayden Church) are long-time friends from college, though you wonder why, considering how different they've become as middle-aged adults. Jack is a charismatic, if occasionally child-like, semi-famous actor who is naturally gifted at meeting and talking to people, while Miles is a bit of a sad-sack high school teacher, who generally morose, quiet, and unmotivated (especially since the divorce he went through a couple years earlier). Just prior to Jack's wedding, Miles decides to take Jack on a week-long wine-tasting tour (we get the impression that, at the beginning of the film, wine is the only thing about which Miles feels any passion or excitement). Jack is keen on the idea too, but he's got an additional item on his itinerary: "get himself laid" once more before he becomes a married man, and get Miles laid because, well, he probably needs it. It's not long before the two of them meet a couple of women in a bar: Jack very successfully puts the moves on Stephanie (Sandra Oh) and Miles very reluctantly tries to impress Stephanie's friend Maya (Virginia Madsen).

Sideways is very much a character-driven film, similar in that way to About Schmidt, the previous film from director Alexander Payne. With both of these films, Payne shows that character is often much more interesting than plot, and he gives his characters many opportunities to develop and express themselves. Consequently, they're allowed to become a lot more real than is usually the case, and their mannerisms, their conversations, their current relationships, and their attempts at future relationships sound very authentic and true.

Of course it helps that the main characters in Sideways are genuinely likeable and interesting, both in spite of and because of their various faults and glaring rough spots. I was almost disappointed when the credits began to roll because I had so enjoyed spending time with them.