I decided to start watching my stockpile of purchased, but unwatched DVDs in lieu of playing more Warcraft. For a while, way back when; whenever I went to Chinese malls, I had this desire to buy the cheap DVDs they had on sale because it was easier than downloading them off the net. In time however, I realized I would just buy them and leave them in my book case, while they depreciated in value from 3/$20 to 6/$20 and so forth. So I decided to stop buying DVDs, but there still remained the problem of my unwatched, but interesting-to-me DVDs.

Furthermore, these DVDs seem to be burnt on the newfangled DVD+Rs, which the aging DVD-ROM on my desktop cannot read properly (reason #42343245 to get a new computer). So I am reduced to watching these DVDs on my 12″ laptop (although I suppose I could watch it on my 15″ work laptop, but then I would have to take it out and plug it in — ahh so much work). This long and irrelevant introduction leads into my review of Sideways, which follows a middle-aged, divorced, middle-school english teacher as he accompanies his freshman-year roommate on his bachelor party/vacation before he gets married at the end of the week.

I bought Sideways when it was nominated for an Oscar in 2005 (two years ago!) mainly because it had a lot of hipster hype. It was billed as a comedy which follows Jack, who has second thoughts about his impeding wedding, and Miles’ journey to get laid one last time. The first thing that struck me when I watched this movie was that both Jack and Miles were old — this wasn’t the 20-something American Pie, it was about two 35 y/o going on 40! The second thing that I realized was that the focus, which was what all the buzz seemed to talk about (that is aside from the wine), was not on the actor Jack, but on the depressed Miles. Miles was a tragic character. He was the guy that took a wrong turn in life, and sees the dead end in front of him. He’s recently divorced. He’s trying, very hard, to write a book which can’t get published. He’s stuck in a lifeless job and has to steal money from his mother. He’s depressed and on medication. He can’t bed a women, yet his best friend Jack keeps egging him on and trying to hook him up. I thought the character of Miles was a much more realistic and relatable story; he could easily be someone you know (or will know).

Then there was the wine. I’m not a wine connaisseur so I probably missed all the in-jokes. In fact, for a lot of the parts, I felt like a girl watching a Star Trek Transformers movie. I had heard that people avoided Merlot after watching this movie, but really, there was only one scene about it! Why the hate?? In addition to the wine, this felt like a southern California commercial. A lot of time was spent driving around wine country, and seeing the sights. Perhaps it feels odd because I have recently seen a lot of summer blockbusters which requires that scenes be cut in a way where there is always stuff happening. Sideways is a low-key movie that tells a story. I didn’t think it was as great as reviewers felt it was, and give this three out of five stars.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: DVDs, moviereview