Tickets to this special outdoor screening include 15 wine tastings, cheese, and chocolate. This mellow comedic celebration of the California wine country features some handsome young talent (including Rachel Taylor, Eliza Dushku, and Freddie Rodriguez). Bottle Shock is based on true events in 1976, when upstart American labels got their chance against the haughty French in a blind tasting that allperhaps including the events sponsor, here played by Alan Rickmanexpected the French to win. The movie couldve done more with his arch, gourmand-out-of-water character. Any flick that features Rickmanon a road trip in dusty, uncouth, unfamiliar Americadisdainfully eating KFC in a yellow AMC Gremlin is a nice rebuttal to wine snobs and movie snobs alike. (Or car snobs, for that matter.) If youre not an oenophile who knows the famous outcome to the tasting, you can guess it anyway. Bill Pullman plays the struggling owner of Napas Chateau Montelena (just recently sold to the French, in fact). If you have a few bottles of its chardonnay from that bicentennial year in your cellar, theyve probably appreciated quite nicely. As for the movie, its scenic, pleasant, full of gorgeous aerial vistas sure to inspire a Napa Valley driving-tasting tour. Movie begins at dusk. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER
Sun., Aug. 16, 5:30 p.m., 2009
