Movies: Sweet Sip of a Dark Vintage

The two heroes may be losers, but Sideways is not. It finds hilarity in life's large and little disasters

If we are what we love, then Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti) is exactly like the wine he most treasures: Pinot. He loves that the grape is quirky and vulnerable--that it grows only in certain climates, that it tests the nurturing patience of its growers. And the flavor! For the connoisseur: haunting and thrilling. Which is just what his friends might say of the divorced, depressed, chronically romantic Miles.

His actor pal Jack (Thomas Haden Church) is a less learned oenophile. "Pinot Noir?" he asks, guzzling it as if it were Gatorade. "Then how come it's white?"

Sideways sends Miles, a schoolteacher and...

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