Sideways is perhaps my favorite American film of the year. Alexander Payne is so good at walking the line between the humorous and the supremely dark, and it feels like the right mix for depicting the current American landscape.

Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh are all well cast and give excellent performances. Church is a suprise as I hadn't seen him since his days on Wings, where he played a mechanic in a mildly funny comedy about a small town airstrip.

Payne seems to be out there on his own stylistically and themeatically and that's what makes this one feel so good. He's doing his own thing, and he's honest and unafraid of tough subject matter - in this case, the struggles of 40-somethings to piece together a semblance of a life in the face of rejection and alcoholism. That's not a light undertaking...
P