When first we meet Miles, our hero in Sideways, he seems more wanker than writer or wine-lover. We hear him before we see him, a series of sleep-sodden grunts in an apartment as dark as a cellar. Roused from bed by a persistent knock at his door, he staggers to answer it, and daylight reveals him to us squinting and unkempt. He's overslept, and his car is blocking the driveway of his apartment complex. He's also late to meet someone. He doesn't seem too worried about it, though-after making his excuses by phone, he settles onto the toilet for a good read.

Following a shower, an espresso and a crossword puzzle, Miles (Paul Giamatti) picks up Jack (Thomas Haden Church) for a weeklong tour of wine country. Jack's an old college roommate, as different from Miles as Coors Lite is from chardonnay. Jack has the looks of the pair (supposing you like horsy teeth and orange tans) and success as a soap star and voice-over actor. ("If you have a history of kidney or heart disease...you're dead, asshole!" he demonstrates at one point).

Miles is the introvert, the aesthete, and his character begins to develop, like wine in a glass, at their first stop on the tour. He's planned this trip as a bachelor getaway before Jack's wedding at week's end, and once he's in his element he warms up, eager to educate his friend's palate, to share his love of the vine. Passionately Miles parses the complex bouquet and flavor of the wine he's tasting--strawberries, he identifies, sniffing, savoring, almost listening, and asparagus and "a flutter" of Edam cheese. (Turning to Jack to get his response, he asks, aghast, "Are you chewing gum?")

Jack's not disinterested, he just has his own agenda for their trip, and that's to get laid. Furthermore, he's determined that Miles, depressed for the last two years over his divorce, should see some action as well. ("Fuck therapy. You need to get your joint worked on.") Enter two beautiful women, a wine server and single mom named Stephanie (Sandra Oh) and a waitress and horticulture student named Maya (Virginia Madsen), each woman more than a match for the man she pairs off with.

The preoccupation with folly demonstrated by director Alexander Payne in Election is evidenced again in this film. Miles, disappointed over news of a failed book deal, eschews a glass at a tasting and slurps straight from the carafe. Jack, who neglects to tell Stephanie of his impending marriage, ends up in a nose cast and decides to crash Miles' car by way of explaining the injury to his fianc?e. There's an embarrassing drunken phone call, a fracas on a golf course and a pell-mell naked shortcut through an ostrich farm.

Sideways is one of the best-written, best-directed and, especially, best-cast films I've seen in a long time. Giamatti, whose gift for awkwardness and dissatisfaction lent itself so well to the part of Harvey Pekar in American Splendor, here plays an equally awkward but far more nuanced role. Miles is not, like Pekar, a crank. He's not, despite appearances, a loser. When questioned by Maya about his special fondness for pinot noir, Miles explains that compared with other varietals, it's thin-skinned and sensitive, in need of special care and attention to flourish. Unwittingly, he's describing himself.