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Sideways (2004)

Submitted by Staff on Wed, 2005-04-13 12:00.

In vino veritas

Sideways (2004)
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Director: Alexander Payne
Fox Searchlight Pictures

Reviewed by Popcorn - 4/13/05

In this funny and quirky drama, two friends—Miles (Paul Giamatti) and Jack (Thomas Haden Church)—set out on a week's vacation before Jack's upcoming marriage to a rich woman and a well-connected conventional family.  On the surface, the two couldn't be more different: Miles an out-of-shape oenophile (wine-lover) trying to get a book published and Jack a southern-California actor who once had his breakthrough doing commercial voice-overs.

The idea of the trip for Miles is to spend some quality time with his friend to get his mind off a) his recent divorce, b) his dead-end job teaching highschool English, and c) anxieties about the book being published.  And to drink a lot of wine.  Jack, on the other hand, wants to a) get his friend Miles laid and b) get himself laid before tying the knot—not necessarily in that order.  The chosen peripheral activities are wine tasting and golf.

Mostly wine tasting.  After an uncustomary visit to Miles' mother's place, where Miles sneaks some cash from her dresser drawer, the pair wanders up from the San Diego area into California wine country, wining and (Miles) whining all the way.  Miles, ever the haughty connoisseur instigates a couple of comic tasting incidents, while Jack amiably goes along with the alcoholic cover, chasing his own addiction to tail.

Stephanie (Sandra Oh), a clerk at a wine sampling booth, appears to want to reciprocate Jack's carnal enthusiasm.  She has a friend, Maya (Virginia Madsen), who works as a waitress in a local diner, near the motel Miles and Jack are staying.  Miles has stayed here before, and in fact knows Maya and has yearned for her from an emotionally safe distance.  That Stephanie knows Maya proves fortuitous, and the hotter couple initiates a double date.

During the dinner portion of the date, Miles becomes inebriated and depressed, then decides to call his ex to whimper.  Jack is upset that Miles seems intent on "messing up a free lunch," and chastises him with the classic line, "Oh, no.  Tell me you didn't drink and dial!"  Despite Miles' every attempt to sabotage the evening, the four wind up back at Stephanie's, where Jack and Steph quickly head for the horizontal-mamba chamber.

Miles and Maya are left in the breezeway, talking about themselves and wine as if they are the same thing.  Maya is becoming fond of Miles, in spite of his negativity; she is impressed he has written a book, and tries to be encouraging.  During their soul-sharing session on the veranda, Maya delivers a paean to wine and to love and to life.  This soliloquy is exquisite, just as is she, and why she was nominated for best supporting actress.

The remainder of the movie for me becomes anticlimactic, though it resolves the issue of love for Miles and the issue of lust for Jack, with an equal measure of humor and pathos.  The men find out the meaning of friendship, and life goes on.  If the movie has a moral beyond that, it's probably that there's nary a kettle that some lid won't fit, i.e. somewhere out there is a someone for everyone.

I like the upbeat sensitivity that resolves the rivers of Miles' depressive banter.  If you can gather the humor and love through Miles' whiny haze, you'll like the movie.

Popcorn

from the Popcorn Gallery

Intergalactic Hyperchick-Kernels Starlight, Sunshine, and Moonbeam

 Commentary: Starlight 

....Yeah, Sunshine and I seemed to think both these guys were non-admirable 'small' people:  a gainfully employed adult who steals from his mother, and the other one ...  While this is supposedly a yuk-yuk- 'guyz' movie, I can understand characters like this being loveable when they're younger and can be forgiven more easily... Anyway, I left the movie wondering what the hullaballoo's all about.


 Commentary: Sunshine 

Yes, Virginia Madsen deserved to win Best Supporting Actress as Maya.  And she deserved it this year.  Cate Blanchett's fine performance as Katherine Hepburn notwithstanding, I feel the Academy's scales may have tipped in favor of sentimental tribute to the late screen legend.

About Miles:

At first, I assumed he was simply a low-key kind of guy with a dry sense of humor.  Miles' flaws, his lack of initiative and absence of enthusiasm seemed to emerge gradually and subtly.  He just drifted along with the tide, reacting and brooding rather than daring to make things better for himself.  The movie was well afoot before I realized my growing antipathy toward him.  He was irkingly passive, irkingly superficial, irkingly ordinary!  And not too honest either.  The pilfering-from-momma scene was more than a quiet act of desperation.  It was his surreptitious easy-fix way of dealing with problems that required a full-blown overhaul rather than mere band-aids or crutches.  So I remained unmoved by Miles and his deceptive helplessness.  Until the film's end.  Its final segment beautifully redeems its main character and catapults this thought-provoking indie into the big leagues.

Good question whether Miles is an alcoholic, but he seemed more a whino-o than a wino…

I don't think he was really an alcoholic.  But, contrary to Mitch Albom's exasperated view of the whole wine-tasting thing as being overdone and over-the-top, I think it was a fitting movie theme.

I think both characters served to enhance the other's "route to happiness."  Each was gladly willing to use, and be used by, the other.  They were so glaringly different that they somehow complemented each other.  In a wacky way, it was a perfectly balanced friendship and, even wackier, a surprisingly successful week.  Jack got what he wanted, and Miles got much more.  Four fluffy ones.


 Commentary: Moonbeam 

I LIKED Sideways.  I didn't love it; but I walked away from it gratified that I had witnessed the growth of character.  Not as much (growth) as I wanted during the time I sat in the movie theatre; still, it seemed to be heading in the right direction and I felt confident that Miles, with his new outlook on life and especially on real friendship would continue to mature.  Beyond the ending credits I envisioned Miles gaining confidence in himself, sparked of course by Maya's forgiveness and interest in him.  I saw Miles distancing himself from Jack as he realizes that his "friend" was only using him, and I even saw Miles visiting his mother and secretly returning the cash he stole from her drawer to impress a very unworthy buddy.  And that glimmer of maturation in Miles is what made Sideways a socially redeeming movie for me.  A loser becomes a winner because he finally opens his eyes.

I never saw Jack as part of the friendship.  He was lost in himself right from the opening scenes at his future in-laws' home and only sank deeper into sleazehood as the friends' misadventures into whine country [pun intended] continued.  In fact I had so much loathing for Jack that days and weeks later I found myself disgusted in retrospect with Lowell Mathersof all people!  (Lowell was the hapless but irresistibly loveable aviation mechanic on the popular comedy series, "Wings" that Haden-Church played for many seasons.  How much sense does THAT make?  None, except maybe it speaks to Haden-Church's wonderful ability to play quirky characters one loves to hate.

Though Virginia Madsen's character was the softer and more endearing of the two women involved, I thought Sandra Oh's Stephanie showed much more range of emotions.  She went from a competent and convincing wine connoisseur to a slutty come-on girl, to a caring mother, to a betrayed lover, to an outraged woman who took care of things in her own swift way.

Popcorn's question about Jack's womanizing being the catalyst for Myles's route to happiness is asking if the end justifies the means.  Would Miles have found the courage to pursue Maya without Jack's aggressive timetable to get them both laid?  Possibly.  We do know that Miles knew Maya long before Jack met her, so he could eventually have found the voice to ask her out, but probably not the way he was going about it.  But in the end, maybe that IS what Jack did for Miles.

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sidesways

Submitted by M.Susanne (not verified) on Wed, 2006-08-02 15:05.

I have viewed the movie Sideways several times. I believe the concept and story line to be strong with well developed characters.
I truely enjoyed this movie and beleive that Paul Giamatti should have earned an OSCAR for his performance. He captured the essence that is Miles like no other actor could have. It was his break through performance and he was over looked as the OSCAR went to Jamie Fox for Ray.

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: Sideways (Widescreen Edition)

List Price: $14.98
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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: TCFHE
EAN: 0024543175780
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Item Dimensions: 30
Label: 20th Century Fox
Languages: EnglishSubtitledSpanishSubtitledFrenchSubtitledArmenianOriginal LanguageDolby Digital 5.1EnglishOriginal LanguageDolby Digital 5.1
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
MPN: FOXD2227579D
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: 20th Century Fox
Region Code: 1
Release Date: April 05, 2005
Running Time: 126 minutes
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Theatrical Release Date: January 21, 2005



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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
A WINE-TASTING ROAD TRIP THROUGH CALIFORNIA'S FAMED CENTRAL COAST TAKES AN UNEXPECTED DETOUR AS MILES & JACK HIT THE GAS EN ROUTE TO THEIR MID-LIFE CRISIS. THE COMICALLY MISMATCHED PAIR SOON FINDS THEMSELVES DROWNING IN WINE, WOMEN & LAUGHTER.

Amazon.com:
With Sideways, Paul Giamatti (American Splendor, Storytelling) has become an unlikely but engaging romantic lead. Struggling novelist and wine connoisseur Miles (Giamatti) takes his best friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church, Wings) on a wine-tasting tour of California vineyards for a kind of extended bachelor party. Almost immediately, Jack's insatiable need to sow some wild oats before his marriage leads them in into double-dates with a rambunctious wine pourer (Sandra Oh, Under the Tuscan Sun) and a recently divorce waitress (Virginia Madsen, The Hot Spot)--and Miles discovers a little hope that he hasn't let himself feel in a long time. Sideways is a modest but finely tuned film; with gentle compassion, it explores the failures, struggles, and lowered expectations of mid-life. Giamatti makes regret and self-loathing sympathetic, almost sweet. From the director of Election and About Schmidt. --Bret Fetzer

On the DVD
Stars Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church have an absolute blast on their commentary track, gleefully ripping themselves, fawning over "La Madsen," and recalling "that bad fake wine we had to drink a lot of." Director Alexander Payne dismisses the seven deleted scenes (about 17 minutes total) as "meager offerings," and it's true that there are no gems. But even better than the scenes themselves might be Payne's text introductions, which offer insight into his editing process. Each scene is surrounded by brief bits from the finished film to provide context, which should be done more often. The 6-minute making-of featurette is better than most because it spends less time on self-promotion and plot summary. --David Horiuchi










Stills from Sideways (Click for larger image)








































Customer Reviews
Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Ok
The video came in wrong viewing version, Widescreen versus full screen but was given a credit so the customer service was good. video plays well


Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - excellent
What is so excellent about Sideways is not the plot, although the plot could not be much better. It is not the acting, though this cast does some of the best work I have seen in ages, nor is it the writing, though if I could write like this, I certainly would not be here talking to you about Sideways at 2am on a Monday morning.

But this film has an amazing way of making you sympathize, and care for, two deeply flawed characters. Miles, (Paul Giamatti) who broke up with his previous girlfriend, ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Sadly, an atypical American film...
Why can't mainstream Hollywood make films like this anymore? A wonderful film about real people and real places. A real breath of fresh air in an polluted ocean of tween bread and circuses crap. At once a buddy film, a road movie, a romance, a drama, and an intelligent comedy,


Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - A delightful comedy
I just loved this movie. Some of the scenes will stay with me for a long time. The acting was great and the script was faithful to Rex Pickett's novel. Also, I live in Los Angeles and travel to the Santa Ynez Valley wine country where this movie was filmed at least 4 or 5 times a year, so this movie was special for me in that regard.


Rating: 2 out of 5 stars - UUUURRRGH...burp.
There were exactly 2 laughs for me during this movie (hence 2 stars). One was the panoramic view of the clone-houses of Oxnard, California, and the other was the pained, confused expression on the bridegroom's face as he's married in an ancient Christian ceremony. My Orthodox friend's comment on that one was, "There's no way he could have converted...."
The whole movie is based on the shallow actions and verbalizations of two ghastly males. Now I like to watch a movie about ghastly males now and then, ... Read More