Sideways

What a refreshing adventure great writing really is. Through the mind, heart and soul of a filmmaker like Alexander Payne you can enter forbidden territory and dive into experiences that, at first glance, seem so far removed from our own. Little tales with enormous, universal implications. Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church and Virginia Madsen jump out of the screen and as soon as the movie ends we find them sitting next to us. We get home and find them waiting for us there, we even find them on the mirror looking back at us. This is the sort of movie going experience that will never get old. Its strength is in its truth. You may not like it, you may even resent it. Good, that's what art is all about. It provokes you. It motivates and inspires you. And as if all that wasn't enough, it entertains you it amuses you, it gives you one hell of a great time. I want another Payne soon in a theater near me.

I had known of Sideways for a long time now. Being the huge film fan that I am, I remember always seeing it get mentioned in many message boards, or websites, or critics' best-of-the-decade lists. It wasn't until now that I saw it, and the reason is because I recently saw Payne's new film The Descendants and I fell in love with it. It wasn't just his simple writing, but his direction, the feel that he gave it. Sideways was another gem, and an even better one.

This could be called a dramedy in many ways, a comedy/drama. There are many films these days getting released that could be labeled in those two genres, and yet Sideways makes it look easier than The Descendants even. What we have here is a brilliant script all around, fully fleshing out these characters. And the investment I had with Giamatti... enormous. I was on this ride with him, I felt his pain, his anger, his awkwardness when confronted with aggravating or tense situations. I found myself telling him things on the screen, and even staying at the edge of my seat in a funny situation he is put in by his friend near the end. Whereas The Descendants lived on it's script through a lot of quiet moments, Sideways blends in simple, subtle moments with really incredible dialogue. The dialogue between the two was the main difference, and yet Sideways is very much of the feeling one is put in.

I want to say the ensemble cast is fantastic. Church really made me question just how much of a friend he was, and yet still made him completely sympathetic and be able to be understood. As for Virginia Madsen... I felt like I was also falling for her like the lead. Some of her scenes, especially the conversations between her and Giammatti, she plays incredibly. She makes you feel the likability of her character, and yet also feel the sensuality and the vulnerability that she is pushing through with her shared desire. She was fantastic. Giamatti is fantastic as the disappointing lead, and although he always seems to play these sort of characters, he knows what to do to make them completely work.

Overall, extremely satisfied with this, and still here is the unique touch of real feeling for the characters that I witnessed in the Descendants. How could I not love this? Payne's film pushes through the screen what can only be described as an incredibly real connection, a connection that I honestly don't witness very often with comedies.

SIDEWAYS (2004) **** Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, Sandra Oh. (DIR: Alexander Payne)

A truly vintage comedy. Paul Giamatti is one of our finest character actors who seems to be neck-and-neck with William H. Macy on cornering the market of portraying losers as a cottage industry and in the latest endeavor of hapless misanthropes he may have found Oscar gold.

Giamatti stars as Miles Raymond, a miserable mope of a man who realizes he is never going to amount to anything especially given the fact that he is his own worst enemy in his highly critical outlook on life particularly on two things he holds dear: his struggling attempts to become a writer of notice and his taste in wine. The latter leads him to a certain road trip to salvation when he embarks upon a few days of r&r away from his stagnant day job as a middle school English teacher with his best friend and former college roomie Jack (Church in easily the career defining role of his life since his hey day on the TV sitcom 'Wings') whose impending nuptials is Miles' wedding gift as the best man. Jack, a long-in-the tooth second-rate soap actor whose 15 minutes are at a close 14:59 is adamant about getting laid for one last time before his commitment to a younger woman who clearly deserves better (and Jack shrewdly knows this).

As the duo drive through the sun-dappled wine country of Northern California in a road trip not unlike two virginal, horny teens looking to pop their respective cherries, they come across two unlikely conquests. One is the shapely and surprisingly-down-to-earth waitress Maya (Madsen in a career comeback of epic proportions shines through the Giamatti gloom) who strikes a fancy to the depressed Miles while Jack has his sights on the sexy wine pourer Stephanie (the sublimely, reassuringly funny Oh, and real – life wife to director Payne) who also is charmed by the blithely feckless Jack. What unfolds is a sweet yet too-good-to-be true few days of bliss and unbridled emotional rescue for the foursome as they take to one another like ducks to water although Miles' hesitancy is deeply reasoned since he is still licking the open wounds of his two-year old divorce.

Payne, one of my favorite filmmakers, doesn't disappoint as he dollops evenly the tragic-comic proceedings with his frequent long-time collaborator Jim Taylor in adapting an unpublished novel by Rex Pickett that has many layers to it and doesn't betray its four intriguing and ultimately human characters with all their flaws and neuroses on full display. Each actor shines with a few moments of soliloquies and dialogue that ring true that will have you laughing til you cry and vice versa (and that my friend is no easy trick)!

The four actors give supremely wonderfully acted turns and all are Oscar worthy as well as the screenplay which mixes misery with hope and some truly funny moments including an anger management golf sequence that feels like an outtake from 'Caddyshack' and Giamatti's drunken phone call to his ex is on par with Jon Favreau's car-accident-in-slow-motion answering machine mishap in 'Swingers' – one for the archives. Church makes his borderline jerk a quasi-pathetic lothario who finally sees the forest for the trees in a surprisingly moving moment of realization in a teary confessional; Oh unleashes the old chestnut of a woman's scorn with no-holds-barred and Madsen is a true welcome back from a seemingly endless string of nothing vehicles into this warm and welcome turn as comforting as a blanket on a wintry night in front of a cozy fire.

While it is so easy to resort to the wine as metaphor – as the film amply does with smart, sharp and pungent dialogue – the film is a full-bodied, never precocious vintage that needs to be savored in a desirable bouquet of cinematic finesse.

My girlfriend is lucky enough to be on the Screen Actor Guild Awards nominating committee this year, so the promotional DVDs are flowing in, and SIDEWAYS is absolutely the best film we've seen so far. (Kinsey is a close second.) Paul Giamatti should get a nomination for this, and I want people on IMDb to start understanding that when you critique a film, it's not ALL about liking the character-- one IMDBer commenting on this film trashed Sideways because she thought the characters were morally bankrupt, and I challenge all of you to show me a good movie where the main characters aren't! That's how the necessary element of conflict is created in a story!

Can you really only enjoy films where the characters in them are people you'd have over for dinner? OPEN YOUR MINDS! Feature Films are not popularity contests, and as far as I'm concerned, neither are awards competitions. Giamatti steals cash from his mother's bedroom dresser drawer near the beginning of the film. Morally reprehensible? Absolutely! But my heart broke for him when he did it. You could see how much he hated himself in that moment!!! Giamatti's ability to have intensely personal thoughts flash through his eyes like flickering film through a projector, all the while maintaining such beautiful stillness, was for me breathtaking. Giamatti makes you completely suspend your disbelief...he makes you feel like you have ESP!!!

Thomas Hayden Church was hilarious as his ex-college roommate/infantile thirtysomething playboy buddy who can't let go of "his plight." He's a stitch. And I agree with everyone, Virgina Madsen makes you melt in this film. She is scrumptuous. Remember, IMDb moralists,...people who live in glass movie-houses, shouldn't throw popcorn! ~peace

I first saw this movie almost 20 years ago when I was in my early-mid twenties. I remember liking the movie, but not really connecting with the characters in a meaningful.

I just watched it again, almost 20 years later and it's like a totally different movie. I think you have to have real life experiences to really understand what the characters are going through.

The movie isn't really about "anything" in particular. It's just a couple guys going through things we all actually go through in life.

If you try watching it and don't really care for it, don't sweat it. Just let it breath for 20 years and come back. I guarantee it will have aged well.