This is one of the two Oscar nominated best films I will be seeing this year (Finding Neverland is the other). I almost didn't see this one, as I had difficulty with the extremity of Payne's adaptation of the novel About Schmidt. I'm glad I didn't let that sway me, as I loved this movie. Yes, its slight and doesn't have any of the "big" characters involved in the other nominees or any stars - in fact, the only actor from this movie I recall ever seeing before is Thomas Hayden Church, as one of the two brothers running the little off-shore airline in Wings. D'oh! It has just been revealed to me that Giamatti was Harvey in American Splendour - it must be the beard that made him unrecognizable. All four of the central actors have been in a bunch of movies, most of them low-key - I see that Madsen played Princess Irulan way back in the original Dune movie, but if that was at all truthful to the book, she'd have been onscreen for a whole 5 minutes.

Anyway: Sideways. Its very slightness turned out to be a virtue - those who go in expecting something really big will be bound to come out disappointed, but treat it as an unusually small but perfectly formed movie and it will be fine - it is both tender and truthful. It also actually requires something of the audience, rather than letting them just sit there and have the story wash over them. There are some beautiful in-jokes here - one involved a bottle of wine from the 1961 vintage, which was said to have finally hit its peak and had to be drunk now, before it started to fade. This focus on the date made me wonder about the male leads, as they both seemed to be about that age: sure enough, Church was born in 1961 and has finally made it into the big league - this film, Spanglish and Spiderman 3. Jack was in a sit-com 20 years earlier and has been marking time ever since, doing voice-overs for commercials so there's a bit of sly commentary on his actor's life there, I suspect.

The story is quite simple: Jack is about to get married. Miles thinks it would be great if just the two of them could get away for the last week of freedom, to follow Miles' plan for a great time: being a wine geek in the Northern California vineyards and playing golf. Miles isn't doing so well with his life either: he's a Middle School English teacher, was divorced two years ago and has just submitted his third monster of a novel for publication; after the last two were rejected, it is not looking good. So, he's a bit depressive but he has standards. Jack, on the other hand, has other plans for their week: he wants to get laid and thinks that that will solve all of Miles' problems as well. So when they go to the Hitching Post for dinner, Jack is all keen for Miles to have a go at picking up Maya, because she's "hot" and "up for it" - not the way that Miles thinks at all.