A Second Look- A Different Perspective
Watched the Academy Award nominated movie, Sideways again on Saturday. I had seen it in the theater back when it was nominated and wasn't all that impressed with it. It seemed to be a light-weight movie about drinking a great deal of wine and being unfaithful, depressed, or much too sexually overcharged. I didn't think it was of Best Picture quality.

Well, it actually holds up very well to a second viewing. It is not a movie of a great deal of action, but it is a movie with a lot of human frailty and trouble. It is very clearly a movie about alcoholism and alcoholic behavior. It is quite a powerful vision of such behavior, in fact. One of the interesting things, though, is that when we think of the big and powerful movies about addiction and alcoholism we tend to go to the often very depressing scenes whether it be Days of Wine and Roses, Leaving Las Vegas, Blow, or When A Man Loves A Woman.

This one is slightly more human and on a much less epic scale. While there is the slightly larger than life that you have to develop to make a movie work, there is also the down-to-earth actions of some normal people caught up in more than they care to be involved in. Two years I said that it is "a powerful meditation on alcoholism, lost dreams, and just plain meanness." Very few picked up on the alcoholism level. But if it is simply a story about wine-tasting and acting out, it would not be a best picture nominee. But it sneaks up on you, especially when you watch again. It is worth that second look.