I'd like to draw your attention to a couple of films I've recently seen that are worth a look. Sam and I went the other night and saw Sideways - a film about two men rapidly approaching mid-life crises. (Neither she nor I were fond of our front row seats, but that's the price you pay for tardiness.) One fancies himself to be a wine connoisseur, but really, he's just an alcoholic. This becomes evident early on when, at a wine tasting, he delivers the memorable line, "Hmm...very nice...yes...it's got a lot of citrus...mmm...strawberries...yes...and just the faintest touch of asparagus. Oh, wait, there it is...it's sort of like a nutty cheese." The two men, Jack and Miles, are going for a week of bonding time and golf in the wine country of California before Jack gets married the following Saturday. They have many (mis)adventures, get very little actual golf in, and drink a lot of wine. Hilarity ensues as well as one of the single most unpleasantly memorable scenes in movie history. I suggest you check it out - it was a really good movie.

Then, I also recently watched on DVD the film Dummy, starring Adrian Brody and Milla Jovovich. Brody plays a 20-something unemployed social, well, for lack of a better word, loser, who lives at home with his crackpot parents, high-strung sister, and mentally deteriorating grandmother. Jovovich is his high school friend who has devoted her life to the pursuit of becoming a hard-core punk rocker. Meaning is found is meaninglessness, friendship is discovered in awkward places, and ventriloquism wins the day in this warming movie that delivers hope in the midst of dysfunction with a rare, subtle humor.

-R