Here is a very weird take for someone who loves physical media: not everything needs an upgrade. And, certainly, some things are more deserving (or better served) than others. I love everything I’ve seen of Alexander Payne (there are some blind spots) and a lot of his movies really don’t need 4K. Having never seen Election (1999) in any format, including the 4K, yet, that’s one that I can safely assume doesn’t need it, but here we are. Same with About Schmidt (2002). I can’t imagine that is going to look different or add value with a 4K restoration, it doesn’t need it. Will it maybe look a little brighter and pop more? Sure. Is it necessary? Absolutely not. So, here we are, a bottle of anything except the goddamn merlot in-hand, watching his 2004 Oscar-winning Sideways in glorious 4K UHD.
L-R: Paul Giamatti as Miles and Thomas Haden Church as Jack in SIDEWAYS. Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
If you haven’t seen Sideways before now (like me), it feels like the perfect nearly-spiritual prequel to The Holdovers (2023) in the way that Paul Giamatti’s character of Miles in Sideways feels deeply like the life before his character of Hunham in Holdovers. But the movie really just focuses Miles and Jack (Thomas Haden Church) going around California’s wine country before Jack takes the marital plunge. Throughout their journey, we realize that Miles is very much a character who takes a lot of getting used to, and Jack is kind of a jerk (to put it nicely), and they somehow work out together. Along their journey, they meet up with Maya (Virginia Madsen) and Stephanie (Sandra Oh), and there is a lot of turbulence along the way.
L-R: Actors Paul Giamatti, Virginia Madsen, Thomas Haden Church, and Sandra Oh with director Alexander Payne (center) on the set of SIDEWAYS. Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
While the characters of Miles and Jack have all of zero chemistry to make sense of them working together, the performances both Church (Wings; Tombstone) and Giamatti deliver are why they do, and both earned respective nominations. They’re polar opposite personalities that juxtapose one another, destined to butt heads but simultaneously hold each other up on a journey that pushes them both to their truly worst selves. Payne excels in and his work thrives on “broken” characters who get lifted by the ones around them.
L-R: Paul Giamatti as Miles and Virginia Madsen as Maya in SIDEWAYS. Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
While 4K is arguably the best format out there, it is only when it doesn’t use motion smoothing and/or remove grain entirely. I am not against a cleaner picture, but if something looks like it has a matte gloss over it, I’d rather watch a more distorted picture than something feeling like motion smoothing is set on my television. With Sideways coming on digital 4K, I was pleasantly surprised that this movie still has the look and feel of a 2004 film. It didn’t get that dreaded smoothing process done to it and the colors were not blown out of proportion. This just, again, begs the question of why Sideways from Payne and not something like Nebraska (2013), where the black and white would look incredible on 4K if done right. There is nothing in Sideways that uses effects, nor should there be, and nothing got a color grade “improvement,” so it still has the look and aesthetic of a 20-year-old movie. This isn’t a bad thing, it just feels like the 4K doesn’t add much other than replacing an old HD copy of the film. Typically, a digital 4K release is a precursor for an inevitable home release, but without anything popping and the color grading looking dull, there isn’t much magnificence brought to the picture quality that wasn’t already present. Moreover, maybe some extra special features would be worth the upgrade to your digital library, but, alas, there is nothing new about the features either. It’s just a 4K UHD digital upgrade without any bells, whistles, or anything special about it. At the end of the day, if you like/love Sideways and don’t own it on Blu-ray (as this seems like it is OOP), it may be worth a sale price to add to the digital collection, but it’s certainly not something worth the immediate plunge into checking out or acquiring unfortunately.
L-R: Sandra Oh as Stephanie and Thomas Haden Church as Jack in SIDEWAYS. Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
At the end of the day, a new 4K upgrade is great for the hobbyists and collectors out there, especially when it’s from a studio that got purchased by another (Disney acquiring Fox). While a physical release would be ideal, we cannot completely ignore the digital entity itself. Bringing a great movie to a new format is always exciting, but the upgrade does not seem that impressive and doesn’t include anything new for features. Regardless, with more of Payne’s work getting the UHD upgrades, hopefully this means for collectors more of his work is in the pipeline and we’ll continue to receive upgrades of his other works making OOP titles less difficult to come by.
Available on 4K UHD digital October 8th, 2024.
For more information, head to the official Searchlight Pictures Sideways webpage.
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Categories: Home Release, Recommendation
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