Friday Film Festival Vol. 3

This weeks edition of F3 deals with Sideways. I had been hearing all sorts of things about this movie for quite a while, but had not had the chance to check it out. Last night I was finally able to see it for myself.

The movie is a comedy, yet the amount of raw human emotion throughout the story is enough for any drama short of a three-hanky tearjerker. As you may or may not know, the story centers on two men (Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church, who I have to fight not to constantly refer to as Lowell from Wings) on a trip through California wine country. While on the trip, Giamatti deals with finally getting back into life two years after his divorce and Former-Lowell looks for one last fling before getting married. The two women who allow them to accomplish these tasks are played fabulously by Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh, respectively.

While wine plays an important role in the film, a knowledge of wine minutiae such as Giamatti's character constantly imparts on his fellow characters is not necessary. One of the best scenes in the film involves Maya (Madsen) and Miles (Giamatti) discussing wine, and through their explanations of why they like wine or like certain types of wine, they open up and reveal their inner selves for the first time. The contrasting images of two people who have been deeply hurt and how they have dealt with it are shown in how each reacts to wine.

The thing that impressed me most about this movie was Paul Giamatti. His ability to convey an amazing range of emotions, including convincingly portraying a man who has just been emotionally devastated but must try to restrain himself from making a scene in public, caught me completely by surprise. He deserves every bit of praise that has been heaped on him for his performance.

My one issue with the movie is that once, just once, I would like to see a movie involving romance where we do not have the typical, late second act realization that one or both of the characters involved in the romance have been lying and therefore the romance is over until we can resolve it in the third act. It worked just fine in this movie, which is more than I can say for 90% of the films in which this happens. I'm just tired of it always being the case. This is a relatively minor issue with Sideways, and certainly does not take away from the excellent film.

The Verdict: 3 Stars. Highly Recommended.

Quickly, my take on this weeks new releases:

Because of Winn-Dixie: First the movie has a couple of marks against it right off the bat, because naming a dog after a grocery store is more than a little strange, but not as odd a a movie that stars Dave Matthews. Yes, the one with the band. More importantly, the American Dental Association has asked for a boycott of this movie until theaters provide toothbrushes to all patrons after ingesting almost two hours of sweetness.

Son of the Mask: This week's entry in the "Least necessary Sequel Ever Sweepstakes" comes eleven years after the original film starring Jim Carrey. I really don't know what I could say about this movie other than .

Constantine: In an attempt to offend comic book fans everywhere, Keanu Reeves was cast as the anti-hero in this film, and just in case that wasn't enough to really anger the 30 year olds dwelling in Mom's basement, they made the main character, John Constantine, American rather than British and changed the name of the film to Constantine from Hellblazer. I'm not sure whether they did that to avoid confusion with the the Hellraiser movies from the late 80's and 90's or to avoid using the "H-E-double hockey sticks" word in the title even though the film involves hell fairly prominently. The bottom line (for me at least), it's a Keanu Reeves film. Until I start hearing from other people about how good it is, I'll pass, thanks anyway.

That does it for this edition of F3. I'll leave with a brief useless bit of trivia. Did you know that actor Paul Giamatti is actually the son of former MLB commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti? Somehow, I have a feeling Pete Rose is probably not a big fan of Sideways.

Until later...