Black, born in a shack in segregated Georgia, with no daddy on the scene, Ray Charles Robinson had gone blind by the age of seven, and was orphaned shortly after.

But he still had his sight when he witnessed, dumbstruck and frozen, the accidental drowning of his little brother in his mother’s laundry tub — a death which haunted Ray for the rest of his life, made this blind man afraid of the dark, and caused him to constantly question why he hadn’t stepped in to save the boy.

And how poor were they?

“Nothing below us except the ground,” mused Charles in a memoir.

However, until we get that blues opera, we do have this film and, thankfully, it’s a hugely entertaining piece of work, chronicling the tragic, triumphant, rags-to-riches rise of one of 20th century America’s main men of popular music.

And what makes it doubly magnificent is the quite incredible performance of Jamie Foxx in the starring role.

It took director Taylor Hackford nearly 20 years to get this story onto the big screen (he first acquired the rights in 1987), but Foxx’s performance is so towering that one can only be thankful to all those people who delayed Hackford along the way, so that cometh the hour, cometh the man. If the director had managed to start filming in 1990, we might have had Eddie Murphy hunched over the piano, and that would have made for a different film altogether.

Apart from snapshot flashbacks to the aforementioned childhood incidents, Ray spans the years from the late 40s to the late 60s. It begins with Ray, in his late teens when fresh out of a school for the blind, he gets on a bus to the big city to try to make something of his piano- playing ability. Soon the film is rushing off through a succession of bands, growing popular success, record contracts and radical changes in musical style (a melding of gospel and R’n’B the most controversial) as Charles rises like a meteor in the musical firmament.

Along the way he takes blindness pretty much in his stride, getting far more grief from his career-threatening heroin addiction and his love-hate relationships with a string of women.

And the film is not without its political side, with his refusal to perform in the still-segregated South in the 60s helping to hasten the work of the Civil Rights movement.

This is a life bursting with rich detail already set to a soundtrack of great music, so it was prime material for a movie, but I’ve still got to come back to Foxx’s performance as being its salient feature. An accomplished pianist himself, and wearing prosthetics over his eyes to artificially blind himself during filming, the actor really has captured Ray Charles to perfection.

This isn’t like watching Will Smith playing Ali (2001). No matter how much he floated like a butterfly, or stung like a bee, it was always Will Smith on screen.

Foxx IS Charles. How’s he done it? I’d guess possession, reincarnation and resurrection all rolled into one, plus a borrowed set of sunglasses.

Verdict: With a Golden Globe under his belt already for Ray, and doubly Oscar nominated (Ray and Collateral), Foxx is on a run.

Four stars

Lots of wine-tasting is on the cards. Some good food. A little golf. Instead, the guys end up exploring the outer limits of their different mid-life crises, with funny and sometimes sad results.

Balding, bearded Miles is an English teacher and struggling writer, who spends his spare time juggling his depressions. He can’t find a publisher for his difficult first novel and his ex-wife, who he is still obsessed with, has just remarried.

However, the one thing he knows inside out and loves without reserve for being a friend that never lets him down, is fine wine. So he is determined to show his chum a good time in the wine country and also teach him many of the mysteries of the grape.

But handsome Jack has other plans. The former B-list daytime TV soap star is a free spirit who goes where his loins lead him, and despite his impending nuptials — in fact because of them — he’s interesting in pouring himself a woman or two on their jaunt. Miles is horrified and just prays he can keep a lid on the Lothario.

The holiday starts off well enough. Miles drags his buddy around a number of wineries, and their noses get buried in many large goblets containing dribbles of red, as the vino buff goes bouquet crazy, enthusing about hints of berry this and whiffs of peppermint that. But at one of the tastings, Jack sniffs out winery assistant Stephanie (Sandra Oh) and gets himself all in a ferment.

Luckily, she too has a pal. In something of a double miracle, waitress Maya (Virginia Madsen) also knows her vintages and genuinely likes introvert Miles.

Soon the quartet are quaffing together and getting acquainted as they tour the neighbourhood — dining in nice restaurants in mock-Bavaria towns, cruising the country roads in Miles’ open-top Saab and taking picnics on lush hillsides at sunset.

Trouble is, neither woman knows there is a wedding only days away, and when that particular cat gets out the bag there’s hell to pay for Jack and his unwilling accomplice, Miles.

With Sideways, writer/ director Alexander Payne, an expert at mildly chiding but deeply affectionate studies of ordinary American types, continues the roll that saw him attract Oscar nominations for his last two productions, Election (1999) and About Schmidt (2002) — the new film is up for selection in five categories.

At first glance, though, Sideways is not an obvious choice for multiple gongs. It has no star actors, nothing remarkable happens, and a lot of the chit-chat revolves around the merits and drawbacks of various grape types.

Yet the film creeps up on you just like a fine wine. It tastes pleasant from the start, then it kicks in by giving you a rapidly intensifying, warm glow. And before you can say Baron Philippe de Rothschilde’s your uncle, full-scale intoxication has set in.

But don’t worry about a hangover. It’ll be a happy one. All you’ll be left with is a long-lasting memory of a very good film.

VERDICT: An absolute uncorker! The Academy Award for Most Enjoyable Movie goes to . . . Sideways.

Five stars

Relatively unremarkable for much of its running time, this sedately-paced tale’s increasingly fable-like plot targets the heart and head and ultimately bleeds right into one’s subconscious. Result? When you leave this low-key belter of a film, it will not leave you. You’ll be pondering upon it long after you’re back in your corner, been sat on your stool, and had your swollen brain cooled off with a wet sponge.

Elderly boxing trainer Frankie Dunn (Eastwood, also directing) owns a rundown gym with a light membership of has-beens and wannabes. He is assisted by the equally antique Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris (Morgan Freeman), a one-eyed former fighter, who also narrates this yarn. The pair of pals have a history. Half a century ago, in a big title fight, Frankie was Scrap’s ‘cut-man’ (a cotton-bud and sticking-plaster wizard, to you and I). Against his better judgment, Frankie let Scrap battle on in the prestige bout, despite him suffering an eye injury. Wrong decision, Frankie. Scrap ended up losing the fight, the eye, and his career.

Now, every time potential champs come Frankie’s way, he trains them up a dream, but, plagued by the past, the flawed coach faulters when putting them forward for title matches.

Then white-trash waitress-cum-amateur boxer Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank, looking unnervingly like Lara Croft on the posters) starts to pester Frankie to be her trainer. She has a burning desire to turn professional.

At first the grizzled old fella, who draws a big fat line at teaching cissy girls, turns her down flat. But she is persistent, has great spirit, and is not untalented, so he finally takes up the challenge — with unexpected results.

Sorry, I can’t reveal more, guv’nor, but two-thirds of the way through the story, a pivotal incident takes the movie off into very different, emotionally profound territory and that occurrence must remains secret for maximum audience clout.

And it’s this long, closing act which puts Million Dollar Baby in the Oscar ring — as do the movie’s three central performances.

Swank, whose career has been fairly lacklustre since she got the golden statuette back in 2000 for her role in Boys Don’t Cry, is finally awesome again, in another foray into a man’s world. As Maggie, she’s pretty and polite, but as lean and mean as they come when in the ring, and sweating and swinging and doling out one-way tickets to the canvas. I haven’t seen such authentic boxing strokes pulled at the cinema since Raging Bull. Swank shouldn’t just get an Oscar — she should also be allowed to change her name to Roberta De Niro.

As for the two old blokes, Eastwood and Freeman (re-teamed, 13 years on from Clint’s Unforgiven), this is a renewed sparring partnership made in screen-script heaven, involving repartee in which every caring old-comrade remark is heavily disguised as a barbed, sarcastic insult. In fact, the hardboiled wit is of such a quality that it had me wondering whether they’d dug up Raymond Chandler and forced him to start writing for the movies again.

VERDICT: An Oscar champ? Maybe. A strong contender? Definitely.

Four stars

THE latest in the never-ending DVD re-releases comes in the form of Get Shorty, set to hit the shelves on March 21. Timed to coincide with the release of sequel Be Cool, which looks like it will live up to its name, the Elmore Leonard adaptation boasts a commentary, two making-of documentaries, new interviews, and a deleted scene which features Ben Stiller. The MGM DVD is priced £19.99.