Word: mayas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor and directed by Payne, is in no way ordinary. Since Miles and Jack moor in the Santa Ynez Valley to sample the local vintages, it's a sedentary road movie. Instead of the usual cantina of eccentrics, just two significant characters cross their path: Maya (Virginia Madsen), a waitress, and Stephanie (Sandra Oh), a wine pourer...
Miles has a habit of missing the moment, even when it grabs him by the hand. One evening, he and Maya talk warmly about wine. He delivers his dark Pinot rhapsody; she speaks of wines as if they were people she wants to meet--people like Miles. It's one of the most poignant falling-in-love duets in movie history, with an ending so faithful to real life, it could break your heart...
...sense of his female characters—God forbid we lose some of the shots of scenery and endless montages of vineyards to make room for character development. So little time is devoted to his female characters that Payne is forced to use the cheap tactic of writing Maya a soliloquy about “the life of wines” in order to give her supposed spiritual depth...
Maya’s incomprehensible interest in Miles is troubling in that Payne simultaneously seems to celebrate ordinary people like Miles and Maya while being condescending towards them—why on earth would the gorgeous and intelligent Maya want to go out with a bum like Miles? Is it because she’s a lowly waitress, so she couldn’t possibly expect something better...
...bummed out by this movie (aside from perhaps unfairly high expectations based on Payne’s other work) is because I’m not part of its intended demographic, which I think is really the middle-aged people it’s about. Proof? When Maya asked Miles which wines he had in his collection, Miles replied, “It’s not really a collection. It’s actually more of a small group”—laughs went through the majority of the middle-aged reviewers. The college kids just...