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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
67
$9.99
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62
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58
Easy Virtue
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Every Little Step
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Gigantic
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Girl from Monaco, The
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89
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60
Under Our Skin
69
Unmistaken Child
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Valentino: The Last Emperor
22
What Goes Up
45
Whatever Works
57
Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
91
Hurt Locker, The
89
Goodbye Solo
88
Tulpan
87
Gomorrah
86
Seraphine
84
Summer Hours
83
U2 3D
83
Revanche
83
Tyson
82
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
82
Sugar
82
Hunger
82
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
81
Il Divo
81
Beaches of Agnes, The
80
Food, Inc.
80
Tokyo Sonata
79
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
78
Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
78
O'Horten
77
Every Little Step
77
Sin Nombre
75
24 City
74
Treeless Mountain
74
Afghan Star
74
Two Lovers
74
Song of Sparrows, The
74
Lemon Tree
71
Pressure Cooker
71
Jerichow
70
Shall We Kiss?
70
Tony Manero
70
End of the Line, The
69
Valentino: The Last Emperor
69
Unmistaken Child
67
$9.99
67
Rudo y Cursi
67
Girlfriend Experience, The
66
Adoration
66
Moon
65
Sex Positive
65
Departures
64
Outrage
64
Examined Life
64
Throw Down Your Heart
64
Lymelife
63
Tokyo!
63
Cheri
63
Dead Snow
63
Tetro
63
Great Buck Howard, The
62
Cherry Blossoms
62
Big Man Japan
62
Not Forgotten
61
Sunshine Cleaning
60
Under Our Skin
59
Sleep Dealer
58
Julia
58
Easy Virtue
57
Away We Go
57
Merry Gentleman, The
57
Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
56
Girl from Monaco, The
56
American Violet
55
Brothers Bloom, The
54
Is Anybody There?
54
Pontypool
54
Stoning of Soraya M., The
52
Quiet Chaos
50
Management
48
Alien Trespass
45
Whatever Works
42
Little Ashes
42
Tennessee
40
Limits of Control, The
40
Paris 36
38
Gigantic
36
Life is Hot in Cracktown
35
New York
28
Big Shot-Caller, The
28
Surveillance
22
What Goes Up
18
Downloading Nancy
16
I Hate Valentine's Day
xx
Call of the Wild
xx
Home
xx
Offshore
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Sideways
Fox Searchlight Pictures
 |
|
FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for language, some strong sexual content and nudity
Starring
Paul Giamatti,
Thomas Haden Church,
Virginia Madsen,
Sandra Oh,
M.C. Gainey,
Alysia Reiner,
Alex Kalognomos,
and
Patrick Gallagher
Two old friends setting off on a wine-tasting road trip...only to veer dizzily sideways into a wry, comedic exploration of the crazy vicissitudes of love and friendship, the damnable persistence of loneliness and dreams and the enduring war between Pinot and Cabernet. (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
| GENRE(S): |
Adventure
|
Comedy
|
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Alexander Payne
Jim Taylor
Rex Pickett (novel)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Alexander Payne
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: April 5, 2005
Video: April 5, 2005
Theatrical: October 22, 2004
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
123 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |
Nominated for Best Picture at the 77th Annual Academy Awards. It also received Oscar nominations for Adapted Screenplay (which Payne and Taylor won) and Director, and supporting actor nominations for Church and Madsen. Named Best Picture (Musical or Comedy) at the 62nd Annual Golden Globe Awards.
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
Hysterically funny yet melancholy comedy.
100
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.
100
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
Sweetest, funniest, most humane movie I've seen all year.
100
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.
100
USA Today
Mike Clark
This is a building-block movie: Its stand-out excellence becomes apparent only gradually.
100
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.
100
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
The best comedy of 2004. In fact, it's so far the best movie of the year.
100
Time
Richard Corliss
Sideways is by far the year's best American movie.
100
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
A boisterous, brilliant, heart-warming comedy--strikes me as just about perfect.
100
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
Exhilarating, edgy and wryly comic.
100
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
One of the most pleasurable movies of the year.
100
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Not a masterpiece, but definitely one of the year's most entertaining movies.
100
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
Every performance here is wonderful, and the movie abounds in moments so true as to be cringe-worthy.
100
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Pure movie bliss.
100
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
Sideways makes you glad about America, about movies, about life.
100
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.
100
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.
100
Washington Post
Teresa Wiltz
There's not a false note here, and the entire supporting cast -- is uniformly excellent.
100
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.
100
San Francisco Chronicle
Carla Meyer
Payne's little marvel.
100
Baltimore Sun
Chris Kaltenbach
A film that celebrates the intricacies of life in ways both splendid and mundane, revealing it all with unflinching honesty.
100
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
What makes it the best movie of the year -- is its insight into human behavior.
100
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.
100
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.
91
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.
90
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.
90
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.
90
Variety
Todd McCarthy
A beautifully observed, small-scale study of personal foibles, romantic uncertainty and two sides of the sadly predictable male animal.
90
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.
90
Slate
David Edelstein
A warm, ingratiating, and fitfully hilarious epicurean road movie with a steady ache-an ache like a red-wine hangover.
90
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
Good comedies are rare, but rarer still are those that conflate laughter with intimacy.
90
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
Jack and Miles are male archetypes, as well as the two most fully realized comic creations in recent American movies.
90
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.
90
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.
88
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
It's likely that 2004 won't offer a better movie about a mid-life crisis.
83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
William Arnold
Wise, entertaining and often very funny.
80
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.
80
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.
78
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.
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
There's fun to be had in watching these losers drift without a compass.
70
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."
60
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.
 The average user rating for this movie is 6.1 (out of 10) based on 460 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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