Saturday, September 13, 2008

Sideways

Dir: Alexander Payne, 2004 (8.7*)
Best Comedy Picture (GG)
Indy Spirit Award, Best Picture
This is a small, unassuming romantic comedy, with a brilliant cast and terrific script by director Alexander Payne. The story involves a soap-actor bachelor, Thomas Haden Church (Oscar nominee, Supp Actor), who decides to finally get married, so his friend, Paul Giamatti, decides a "road trip" is in order, and to keep his overly-romantic buddy safe for marriage, thinks a trip to wine-country for some vineyard sampling is a good bet. However, once there they meet Sandra Oh (Payne’s wife and an Emmy nominee for Gray’s Anatomy) at the winery, and Virginia Madsen in a restaurant, in her best role (Oscar nominated for Supp Actress), so there’s plenty of the opposite gender to go around. What bothers struggling writer Giamatti is that faithful guys like himself get no women, while philandering playboys, like Church, get women wherever they go. The story makes excellent and comedic points about commitment, dating, friendship, and sexual mores, and does it in an entertaining and involving film throughout. Won six Indy Spirit Awards, including Picture and Director. Oscar nominations also for director Payne and the movie for Best Picture. One Oscar (Screenplay)

0 comments:

About Me

My photo
Artist, photographer, composer, author, blogger, metaphysician, herbalist

About This Blog

This is our new template: ProBlogger.



These are the individual film reviews of what I'm considering the best 1000 dvds available, whether they are films, miniseries, or live concerts. Rather than rush out all 1000 at once, I'm doing them over time to allow inclusion of new releases - in fact, 2008 has the most of any year so far, 30 titles in all; that was a very good year for films, one of the best ever.



Author at EZines

  © Blogger templates ProBlogger Template by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP