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4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
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93
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54
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66
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54
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Young People F**king
45
Zombie Strippers
97
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
93
WALL-E
86
Flight of the Red Balloon, The
85
Edge of Heaven, The
83
Paranoid Park
80
Encounters at the End of the World
79
Visitor, The
78
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
75
Boy A
74
Mongol
73
Kung Fu Panda
73
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
72
Priceless
72
Transsiberian
71
To the Limit
71
Tropic Thunder
70
Standard Operating Procedure
66
When Did You Last See Your Father?
65
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
63
Planet B-Boy
63
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, The
63
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
63
This Christmas
62
Mister Foe
61
Stuck
61
On the Rumba River
61
Incredible Hulk, The
57
Stone Angel, The
57
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
55
Sukiyaki Western Django
54
You Don't Mess with the Zohan
54
Get Smart
54
What We Do Is Secret
53
Mister Lonely
52
Milarepa
49
Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie, The
48
Death Defying Acts
47
Strangers, The
46
Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer
45
Zombie Strippers
44
Henry Poole is Here
39
Young People F**king
37
War, Inc.
35
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
34
Happening, The
33
Elite Squad
32
Perfect Holiday, The
25
Hell Ride
20
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
xx
Whaledreamers
xx
Christmas on Mars: A Fantastical Film Freakout Featuring the Flaming Lips
xx
Kiss the Bride
xx
Beer for My Horses
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 452 User Votes
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