Sideways offers a middle ground between Election and About Schmidt
Sideways (2004)
Sideways offers a middle ground between Election and About Schmidt
Alexander Payne’s previous films, Election and Citizen Ruth, are biting satires that ruthlessly mocked their problematic characters.
After Apostle – an offbeat, ambitious stab at a folk horror movie from a writer-director working in his own country and language for the first time in over a decade – released on Netflix in 2018 to solid-but-not-stellar reception, it wasn’t at all clear what Gareth Evans would do next.
In the spring of 2020, in the early days of the COVID pandemic and following the wet thud that was the ending of Game of Thrones, audiences were craving something to fill that niche in the landscape of Peak TV.
Election often appears on lists of the greatest teen movies ever made, but I wonder whether Alexander Payne’s 1999 film can even be called a teen film.
Maestro is an excellent piece of biopic pageantry, which I very much mean as a backhanded compliment.
As someone who loves both It’s a Wonderful Life and high-concept slashers, there was no way I was not going to watch It’s a Wonderful Knife.
Anyone But You is a bit phoned in, which is simultaneously disappointing and also beside the point.
(FULL SPOILERS FOLLOW)
The Nightmare Before Christmas is the ultimate melancholy holiday vibes movie, and frankly one of cinema’s great vibes movies, period.