I LOVED THIS MOVIE!!
I hadn't even heard about Sideways until about a week before I saw it. If it wasn't for seeing a trailer on television late one night, I might not have heard of it at all. The trailer got me to look it up on the internet, and the reviews convinced me to see it. I'm glad I did.
Here's the setup... Paul Giamatti and Thomas Hayden Church play Miles and Jack, best friends out for a week-long road trip prior to Jack's impending marriage. Miles is a dumpy, depressed wine aficionado and wannabe writer still reeling from a divorce two years earlier. Jack is the classic scared smarmy groom-to-be, afraid to give up his ladies man live-for-the-moment lifestyle. The movie follows their trip to wine country and the adventures, and misadventures that follow. Along the way they encounter a couple of very interesting women that eventually force each of them to confront a variety of issues in their lives. The female characters are played brilliantly by Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh respectively.
Paul Giamatti plays Miles, the central character and the one most deeply affected during the course of their encounters. Approaching middle-age with little to show in terms of accomplishments, Miles is a middle school English teacher coping with deep depression, while desperately clinging to the hope of reuniting with his ex-wife, and jump starting his fading writing hopes. Giamatti does a wonderful job portraying a man barely able to contain the emotions boiling up within himself. Throughout the course of the film you find yourself rooting for Miles one minute, and wanting to slap him the next. The film has moments of sadness, happiness, introspection, spontaneity, surprise, and all-out hilarity. What more can you want from a movie? (Oh... sorry, no nudity)
The night I saw this film, it happened to be the last showing of the day, and I only ended up sharing the theater with about two dozen other people. A shame really. It's too bad this film isn't getting the publicity it deserves. There's enough in it to give nearly anyone at least one moment to pause -- it certainly hit a little too close to home for me.
If you like good movies, check out Sideways. It may not be perfect, but it's damn close.
Rotten Tomatoes: 96%