Entre copas

'Sideways' might be this year's acid test of whether you like good movies or not. It will be exciting over the next few weeks to see if the justifiably positive buzz surrounding this film and a good audience turnout (in San Francisco it was well attended, at least) will entice viewers. Without a teen audience it cannot be real blockbuster, but 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' drew out the 50-somethings and it wasn't even a very good movie!

The premise: two friends (Paul Giamatti as Miles, Thomas Haden Church as Jack) set off on a road-trip before Jack's wedding a week hence. Miles, a teacher with aspirations of publishing a novel and Jack, a veteran actor (but not exactly prospering) are resolved – well, Jack is anyway – to have some fun as they sample wine and play golf while heading up the California coast.

What ensues is that Jack, committed at a bachelor-party level ( Miles is still reeling from his divorce two years previous) has to prod his less-than-enthusiastic accomplice to lighten up. Meeting a likely pair of attractive female matches, things get more complex. What comes of Jack's misadventures and Miles' reluctant accompaniment is not only borderline hysterical but painfully closer to our own experience than might be comfortable.

Director Alexander Payne (he of the fabulous'Election') has really assembled all the necessities here. A great cast working with solid material rarely misses; here is proof. Paul Giamatti – showing us his everyman acting chops in last year's 'American Splendor', is our James Gandolfino for 2004. Thomas Haden Church (his resume sports a long string of small screen and TV parts) is such a scene stealer that it will be a film-crime if we don't see him in some lead role in the near future.

The girls. Virginia Madsen (Miles' love interest Maya) and Sandra Oh (as Jack's fling thing Stephanie) turn in striking performances, with Ms. Oh showing us charming and vicious in equal measure; but in particular she epitomizes the date every man always wanted to have, showing an intangible sexuality not easily conveyed in film.

In an interview (http://www.darkhorizons.com/news04/sideways3.php) with Director Alexander Payne we hear an interesting comment about how typical 'art-house' fare might shake the industry:

'I want Sideways which has no movie stars in it, and a movie for which I had final cut, to make money, not just for my own career but for other film makers so that film makers and studios can point, if I didn't have stars to make money, Sideways didn't have a gun or a chase even though that made money, we have to be changing our cinema, little by little and have more human films. But the only way it's going to happen is there are examples they can point to, where they made money. It was just like that in the late 60's and 70's. Look, Easy Rider made money, The Graduate made money, Midnight Cowboy made money, and we should make more movies like those. That's what we need.'

It is indeed.

Rating: Four Stars.

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.

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.

A woman's take on this is probably not the same as a man's. Initially I was put off by Charles Hayden's Church's character crudeness and Giamatti's character's repulsiveness but that changed was I was able to look below the surface. By the end of the movie, I felt very sorry for Church as he was not only dumb and shallow, he was actually so empty that whatever female was before him became a mirror of his need to connect with anything that felt like caring. Church did a fabulous job and was incredibly believable as a has-been wannabe, desperate to hold on to his dream of the kind of good life that is bought by charm and good looks. He is just on the edge or realizing his time is running out and that is a whole lot for this character to absorb as he has never given much to the concept of "thought."

Giammeti is a pitiful, self-absorbed, destructive, depressed alcoholic whose in possession of two "things." He knows a great deal about wine and he has written a book. Nothing else informs him. Yet his performance is so nuanced that we are able to fill in his depth of character and decency primarily through his huge, limpid eyes. What a performance. He should have been nominated for an academy award. This is a role that comes along once-in-a-lifetime for this type of character actor, like Liza in Cabaret.

The women are really nothing more than backdrops or props for the men to expose themselves. Madsen is lovely but you do wonder what on earth she really sees in this man. While he may be redeemable, he is really pretty much a self-absorbed jerk. It is most interesting that this film has been released at the same time as Closer, as they are similar in their exploration of self-absorption. Though Closer explores how destructive its characters are to each other, in the end, Closer is not as intimate and seems more artificial than the sweetly revealing 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.