Watch this. Forget _Sideways_—though I suspect that one isn’t actually about wine. Of course, I suppose this one isn’t either.

Anyway, the characters in this are more likeable. Or, if dislikeable, funnier in their dislikeability. It is also based on a true story, though I don’t know that I consider that to be much of a reason to prefer it.

The main reason, in my mind anyway, is that the movie is beautifully filmed in beautiful country. The director allows the camera to luxuriate on California’s wine country. So much so that the land itself almost is a character in the movie.

Bottom line: Fun story, beautiful photography. Skip Sideways and watch Bottle Shock.

A beautifully shot movie. Wonderful cast.

It was a sprawling epic of a western, though set in Australia. And once I finished that movie, I got a coda on the story. Then it gave me a World War II movie as lagniappe.

Everything movies should be, but twice as much.

The Rock, Seann William Scott, a gun, burning stuff.

You need know no more. Movie delivers on these counts.

Until you remember how spoiled we are by digital effects. Given when the film was made—in World War II Britain—they are great. I might even say that they were trying to push technical limits, but I really don’t know enough about that sort of thing to say for sure.

You know, the cast looked pretty good.

But it seems like they were just making it up as they went along. I cannot believe that this movie had been written in advance with a screenplay and all. It felt more like, a let’s-go-to-Tahoe-and-make-a-gangster-movie-and-wouldn’t-it-be-cool-to-have-a-bunch-of-stuff-happen-that-dares-people-to-think-its-stupid movie.

xXx with Vin Diesel was better, and it wasn’t very good.

This movie rocks the chaos theory.

The special effects wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good had the special effects team not had an intuitive grasp of chaos theory. Their magic insight? Crashing water looks the same in miniature as on a large scale. Rock on miniature builders!

Wow. This is amazing. I kept hearing about the Battle of Algiers now and again over the course of my movie watching career (and it is a career), but I had never seen it.

It’s amazing. The movie plays itself out almost like a documentary. Though filmed a few years after the events depicted, it seems far more vivid. I suspect part of it is the black and white, which I love more and more. The filming and action make the movie feel like it was made more recently than it actually was.

If you even sort of like spy-genre movies, this is an amazing trip that takes off for two hours and doesn’t let go. Best part: based on actual events.

Despite being quite old in a genre that ages about as well as a computer, this novel reads like it was written yesterday. It’s fast and sucks you in.

It made me want to be able to jaunte.

I thought the filming done in all hand-held, faux-home-video style was awful. If you want to see how hand-held camera can make a movie more exciting, see the Bourne Ultimatum. If you want to see how hand-held camera can make you motion sick, watch this.

The rest of the movie was ok. Not good, not bad, but ok. I can’t wait for the remake in twenty years (haha). The director was betting that the fake-documentary style would make it more exciting. It didn’t. I can’t believe that the Academy of SF and Horror picked this as their SF movie of the year. Surely I am Legend was better, the popcorn-movie Transformers certainly was.

I enjoyed this movie. It was a mix of documentary and costume drama. I was really enjoying some of the fake story about the witches, but then the director shifted to his time (1922). It seemed weird.

But then, this is a very early documentary. Interesting in its own right.