I write about movies here and maybe sometimes some other stuff but mostly just movies. If you are looking for the old Cineblog postings because you are compiling a book or whatever, you can find them here.
So what you've got is two assholes (one raging, one enabling) going on a road trip and being assholes, and maybe at the end one of them has learned something about himself. Will someone please tell me why this is a big deal? kthxbye
posted by Greg Dunlap at 4:16 PM
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4 Comments:
The main characters are assholes, but I thought Giamatti was a somewhat sympathetic asshole. I thought it was pretty well-written and a lot of the humor worked for me. I wasn't going around raving about it afterwards, but it was entertaining enough and had a few really good moments (one of which Steve mentioned in his blog).
5:13 PM
You know what would have made me feel some sympathy for Giametti's character, if after THC smashed his car (SPOILER!) Giametti had kicked him in the balls and left him on the side of the road in the wine country to rot. I can't deny that the film had some lovely passages. The scene between Mya and Miles is the obvious highlight, although I was also really into the scene wherein Miles opens his bottle of '61. "The day you open that bottle is the special event." Indeed. However, none of this matters because all the through the entire thing I felt like I wanted to punch something because THC is the biggest asshole the world has ever known, and not once given many opportunities did Miles the self-pitying horror show ever call him on it in any meaningful way. Even after telling Mya the truth (by accident!) he refused to admit to THC that yes, god forbid, he did the manly thing and protected some poor girl from THC's self-destructive male menopause (thanks to J-Ro for that one.) Sure, by the end Miles has probably learned a few things, and if the whole trip happened then it would turn out differently. But we don't get to see that, we just get to see them both being dicks, and both enabling each other to continue being dicks. No amount of graceful performance or poignant screenwriting is going to get me past that. The only time I really felt good was when Stephanie turned Jack's face into hamburger (SPOILER!) Oh, also that "Are you chewing gum?" line cracked me the fuck up.
6:48 PM
Since my last comment I have pondered things a bit, and really my problem with the film is less about the movie as it is about me. I think everyone has a blind spot, and the behavior of these characters falls into mine. It is very difficult for me to get into a movie without feeling any sympathy for its characters at all, and usually I can manage it but this time it failed me for whatever reason.
Also as a topic for disucssion I recently saw a reading of the scene where Miles drinks the '61 as it being him contemplating suicide which I thought was pretty interesting. My personal take was that it was kind of a "this is the first day in the rest of your life" gesture. He saw his wife and was finally ready to move past it, he got through the wedding and probably at that point was through with his "friend." The day you open this bottle is the special event, nothing else has to be special to make that special so he goes and drinks it with his cheeseburger because this is the day. It makes less sense now that I write it down but that is where I was at the time.
10:31 PM
Dread Pirate Steve has been working like a dog this week, so Dread Pirate Steve can only say that he loves "Sideways" for reasons which are probably unhealthy and thus would have no bearing on Greg's distaste of it. Dread Pirate Steve is in fact amazed that so many people love "Sideways", as it should be a film that appeals to only Dread Pirate Steve. You know, like "Human Nature".
Dread Pirate Steve would like to say, though, that he thinks Greg's interpretation of the '61 Cheval Blanc scene is pretty awesome.
8:38 PM
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