An Inspiring, Delicious, Heart Warming Movie of Wine and Dreams
In 1976 the world of wine had mainly just one country on the map: France.
Quietly Californians had been making pretty good wine that no one, especially the French noticed. Until a British gentleman and oenophile, Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman) made a competition that changed the world of wine forever.
Entertaining, inspiring, shot on location in the Napa Valley and France, this is a delightful movie, with solid acting, beautiful cinematography and all around sparkling goodness.
Although the script has one flaw, it is for the most part very solid and the acting and directing are top notch. Bill Pullman (wine maker), Alan Rickman, and Dennis Farina (delightful American in Paris) deliver solid performances. Relatively new actors Chris Pine (son of wine maker), Rachael Taylor (enchanting love interest) and especially Freddy Rodriguez (accomplished and believable Mexican wine maker) round up this outstanding cast.
Randall Miller, the director. has to be commended not only for creating an endearing and lovingly movie about wine, but doing so with a small budget, and even more taking his creation himself to several cities, after no distributor stepped out, even though the movie had rave reviews in Sundance 2008.
Bottle Shock has opened in several theaters in North America, Toronto has been fortunate enough to get it, and I hope a major studio changes it’s mind and takes this one world wide, but not to worry the director is finding eager movie theaters anyway.
Enjoyable from beginning to end, a true story that deserved a movie, got one!
Go watch it.
