Sideways

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Hysterically funny yet melancholy comedy.

Newsweek David Ansen

In Sideways, Payne has created four of the most lived-in, indelible characters in recent American movies. This deliciously bittersweet movie makes magic out of the quotidian.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Sweetest, funniest, most humane movie I've seen all year.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

It's an intoxicating feeling when a movie excites and enlivens us like this -- and there's a particular giddiness to be had in thinking about what movies can (but don't often) do for one's soul after imbibing such a fine vintage.

USA Today Mike Clark

This is a building-block movie: Its stand-out excellence becomes apparent only gradually.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

A sublime variation on the buddy road movie, infusing the midlife crises of the two main protagonists with hope and poetry.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The best comedy of 2004. In fact, it's so far the best movie of the year.

Time Richard Corliss

Sideways is by far the year's best American movie.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A boisterous, brilliant, heart-warming comedy--strikes me as just about perfect.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Exhilarating, edgy and wryly comic.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

One of the most pleasurable movies of the year.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Not a masterpiece, but definitely one of the year's most entertaining movies.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Every performance here is wonderful, and the movie abounds in moments so true as to be cringe-worthy.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Pure movie bliss.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Sideways makes you glad about America, about movies, about life.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Exactly written, directed with a surgeon's precision and transcendently acted, Sideways brings emotional reality to a consistently amusing character comedy, making it something to be cherished like the delicate Santa Ynez Valley wines that are the story's vivid backdrop.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The characters are played not by the first actors you would think of casting, but by actors who will prevent you from ever being able to imagine anyone else in their roles.

Washington Post Teresa Wiltz

There's not a false note here, and the entire supporting cast -- is uniformly excellent.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

It's a performance (Giamatti's) so nuanced and so real in its everyday pain that it doesn't stand a chance of winning an Oscar. But it should.

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

Payne's little marvel.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

A film that celebrates the intricacies of life in ways both splendid and mundane, revealing it all with unflinching honesty.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

What makes it the best movie of the year -- is its insight into human behavior.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

U.S. geography doesn't matter to Payne. He always charts the terrain of the human heart, and he's among the wisest of mapmakers.

Empire Dan Jolin

Brilliantly observed characters are becoming second nature to Payne and Taylor, and the performances here are uniformly terrific. This is wonderful, original stuff.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Gets under your skin without you quite being able to say when or how. It has the tact to let you draw yourself in to it.

Film Threat Michael Ferraro

Alexander Payne is becoming one of the greatest American directors of modern cinema and again, Sideways is on its way to being one of the best films of the year.

Dallas Observer Melissa Levine

For the most part, Sideways is a great movie--impeccably written, directed and acted--that takes its characters on a journey toward something new.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A beautifully observed, small-scale study of personal foibles, romantic uncertainty and two sides of the sadly predictable male animal.

LA Weekly Kim Morgan

A trenchant American satirist in his previous films, Payne moves in a different direction with Sideways -- one less mordant but just as pointedly observant.

Slate David Edelstein

A warm, ingratiating, and fitfully hilarious epicurean road movie with a steady ache-an ache like a red-wine hangover.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Good comedies are rare, but rarer still are those that conflate laughter with intimacy.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Jack and Miles are male archetypes, as well as the two most fully realized comic creations in recent American movies.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Like the film itself, the performance (Giamatti's) is deeply controlled, played with restraint and with microscopic attention to detail.

The New Yorker David Denby

In this role Giamatti gives his bravest, most generously humane performance yet. Women may be repelled, but men will know this man, because, at one time or another, many of us have been this man.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

It's likely that 2004 won't offer a better movie about a mid-life crisis.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Wise, entertaining and often very funny.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Payne's directing is alert, warm, patient. He knows that the surface must keep us interested until we go below it, and his confidence holds us.

TV Guide Ethan Alter

This is easily Payne's funniest film to date, yet the comedy never undercuts the difficult emotions with which the characters are dealing.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

A smart and delightful romantic comedy, yet in the course of creating his new charmer Alexander Payne has sheared off some of the rambunctious edges that made his previous films, About Schmidt, Election, and Citizen Ruth, such marvelous studies in social parody.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

There's fun to be had in watching these losers drift without a compass.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Payne's entertaining but familiar comedy lacks the insolence of his "Election" and the freshness of his work with Kathy Bates in "About Schmidt."

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Alexander Payne's new movie, Sideways, makes you feel like you're trapped at dinner with a wiseass who's trying to convince you what a sensitive guy he is.