Sideways

When you watch an old movie from the era when you were not really watching movies yet it is one thing, you have an excuse for missing it the first time around. When you are my age and watch a movie from eight years ago, sometimes you wonder where you were.

This 2004 movie was released to almost universally positive reviews. The film won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay and all the actors and actresses were lauded for their performances.

For all that the movie is small and self contained. Paul Giamatti plays Miles Raymond, a writer who cannot get published, a self professed wine aficionado, and a middle school English teacher. In the course of the movie he comes to the realization that his ex wife is not coming back to him. How he comes to realize this is more painful than most of the ways in which one could.

Thomas Haden Church plays Jack Cole. Jack was the college roommate of Miles and is now an actor who is about to be married. The two men take a week together in the wine country of California. They, however, have different reasons for the trip. For Miles it is a chance to get away, enjoy some wine, and spend time with his friend. Jack wants only to have some last sexual fling before his impending marriage.

Their trip, the people they meet, and the conflicts that develop show lonely people trying to make the best of a world that continually disappoints.

Giamatti might well be incapable of a bad acting performance, Church, who I last saw in Wings ,is much stronger than one would expect and Virginia Madsen playing a love interest of Miles is as always perfect.

Another of the nothing movies as in " What happens in the movie?" with the usual response being Nothing really this movie shines. Proving again that things do not need to blow up, we don't need models we just need a good story we can relate to and good acting. This movie serves that up in big servings.