Thursday, April 28, 2005
What Can I Say?..I Don't Like Wine...
When I was younger, I used to see a whole Hell of a lot of movies. Seriously, when my sister and I were growing up, my dad was the manager of the Cinema 70 here in town, which gave us access to (literally) a metric assload of movies over the course of however many years it was. After retiring from Westland Theatres, my dad became a pro golfer, which meant that, while we could no longer see free movies, we COULD play "golf" for free. Now, I'm better at watching movies than I am at playing golf, but free is free, right? Damn right...The golf thing stuck around for a while and, at one point, dad ran a restaurant. Guess what? We ate for free...See a theme developing here?
I'm a cheap frickin' bastard...I don't like to pay for things...
As such, I just haven't seen near the amount of movies that I've wanted to in the past 10 years (or so) MOSTLY due to my being
Anyhow...ON WITH THE REVIEWING!
the first film that I watched out of the four was this:
Sideways (2004)
So, as is normal for me, I had waffled back and forth about wanting to see this film. The commercials that I had seen for it kind of made it look funny, but kind of didn't. When I read (somewhere, probably on the DVD box) that it was "the best American comedy of the year," or some such bullshit, I figured that I could at least give it a whack. So's I did...
In retrospect, it would have been better to "give it a whack" with a large stick and send it to bed without supper. This movie is, at best, a redheaded sstepchild. I might even go so far as to call it "one of the worst films that I have ever witnessed." Sideways is so bad that I actually had to QUIT WATCHING because of it's eminent lameness. I decided to come back to it a couple days later after I had cooled down, so to speak, but (to my dismay) the last half was just as crappy as the first, especially since I kept expecting (after all of that jibber-jabber about it being a frickin' COMEDY) that it would get "funny" at some point. Sadly, the only truly humorous scene is when Jack, the self-absorbed actor character (played by Thomas Haden Church), has the living piss beaten out of him by Stephanie (played lovingly by Sandra Oh). That's it, kids...A guy gets the snot beaten out of him in a parking lot, there's some wine, some golf, some other crap, some other stuff and that's the movie...
Ok, fine. It's not as simple as THAT, but it's pretty damn simple (and not in a good way). The movie REALLY centers around the all-too-predictable neurosis of the recently divorced, hating life, struggling writer trapped in the body of a middle school teacher, I drink too Goddamned much pinot "Miles" character played by that Giamatti bastard. The fact that this wanker enjoys his (prized) '61 Chevaut Blanc (or whatever, I don't drink frickin' wine) near the end of the movie alone in a fast food joint instead of having the sack to drive up to "wherever the Hell in California" and share this piece of bottled heaven with the chick that he's obsessed with speaks to the fact that this movie is neither "ironic" or "witty" or (dare I say) "intelligent," but it just plain "sucks ass." I warn you now, if you watch Sideways, you WILL NOT be able to have those 123 precious minutes of your life back. They will, in fact, be dashed in front of you and then stomped on repeatedly as this slow chunk of shit plods along, never really delivering anything but heartbreak and reminding you that that you just totally wasted the few bucks that you spent on it...
Sideways grade: D- (Avoid it if you can).
Labels: cinematic chatter, lame stories, misguided rantings
