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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

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Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
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Zombie Strippers
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4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
92
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91
Up the Yangtze
90
Persepolis
87
Flight of the Red Balloon, The
85
Savages, The
83
Paranoid Park
83
Alexandra
83
U2 3D
82
Chop Shop
82
Taxi to the Dark Side
80
Band's Visit, The
79
Visitor, The
78
Counterfeiters, The
76
Unforeseen, The
76
Stuff and Dough
75
Young@Heart
75
Shotgun Stories
74
Witnesses, The
73
Duchess of Langeais, The
72
Roman de gare
72
Priceless
72
Tuya's Marriage
72
Life of Reilly, The
71
My Brother Is an Only Child
71
Blindsight
71
Standard Operating Procedure
70
Caramel
69
Redbelt
69
Chicago 10
68
Honeydripper
67
Snow Angels
67
Praying with Lior
67
Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
67
Jellyfish
66
George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
66
Shelter
65
Married Life
64
Surfwise
64
Son of Rambow
64
Water Lilies
63
XXY
63
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
63
Body of War
63
Blind Mountain
62
Planet B-Boy
62
Battle for Haditha
61
Dhamma Brothers, The
61
OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
61
Girls Rock!
59
Under the Same Moon
59
Fugitive Pieces
58
First Saturday in May, The
58
Fall, The
58
Hats Off
58
Bra Boys
57
Flawless
57
Teeth
57
Without the King
57
Grand, The
56
Turn the River
56
Then She Found Me
55
Vice
55
Tracey Fragments, The
55
Pathology
55
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
54
Cashback
54
Mister Lonely
52
Noise
52
My Blueberry Nights
50
Look
48
Run, Fat Boy, Run
48
Dark Matter
48
Penelope
47
Bella
47
Boarding Gate
46
CJ7
46
Previous Engagement, A
45
Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?
45
Zombie Strippers
44
Frontier(s)
44
Chaos Theory
43
Anamorph
43
Favor, The
41
Funny Games
40
Sleepwalking
37
Life Before Her Eyes, The
35
Meet Bill
35
Babysitters, The
35
Deal
32
Backseat
32
Chapter 27
30
Cover
24
Sex and Death 101
20
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
17
Prom Night
xx
Tashan
xx
Unsettled
xx
Plumm Summer, A
xx
Kiss the Bride
xx
Jack and Jill vs. the World
xx
From Within
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 6.2 (out of 10) based on 441 User Votes
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