Alexander Payne has created his finest work to date with Sideways. Featuring characters more subtle than Citizen Ruth, more believable than About Schmidt, and just as funny as Election, Sideways is a comedy for educated adults, a road picture that more or less stays in one place, the wine country of southern California.

Our protagonist is sad sack Miles Raymond (Paul Giammatti), middle school English teacher, would-be novelist, and wine connoisseur—often an insufferable one. Miles is to stand up for his friend Jack at his wedding at the end of the week, and the plot spins from their golf-and-wine tour of Santa Barbara County. Always in-the-moment Jack's objective for the trip is simpler: to get the both of them laid, early and often.

Payne and his DP Phedon Papamichael are working with a more daring camera this time out. An inebriated Miles who calls his ex-wife from a pay phone weaves in and out of focus. An unconsummated seduction scene between Miles and Maya (journeywoman Virginia Madsen) moves Maya closer and closer to Miles without her visible movement, only with cuts and changes of focal length.

The two characters continue the scene in another part of the house, and now exchange well-built monologues about the appeal of wine culture. And again, Maya makes a gentle move to establish a more human, physical connection, and is rebuffed by Miles.

Payne brazenly allows the wine experience to carry a lot of this movie. Giamatti is crystal clear in all dimensions, whether he is sticking a finger in his ear to better sense a wine's bouquet, or explaining to Jack that he doesn't like the way vintners "manipulate" the characteristics of a chardonnay, or cradling a bunch of pinot grapes in his hand, remembering a lost love.

The quality of literary allusions in this flick is likewise high, from the mundane— John Steinbeck (via a movie clip with Henry Fonda), posthumous discovery John Kennedy Toole, and schoolroom perennial John Knowles—to the avant garde—barfly poet Charles Bukowski and French nouveau romancier Alain Robbe-Grillet.

No-fear Church as horndog Jack is a pleasant surprise. He's not afraid to push into the realm of the stupid, be it growling at a sexual conquest or flailing with a driver at a pair of impatient golf cart-bound coursemates.

Minor characters, like Miles' neglected and co-dependent mother (played by Marylouise Burke), do not get short shrift, but rather take charge of their scenes.

posted: 7:49:08 PM