Email Author Melissa Anderson

2005 Stories by Melissa Anderson

• 'Blackmail Boy'

  published November 8, 2005

  The House of Atreus meets Honcho in this overcooked tale of greed, violence, deception, and Greek love. In a small town outside... More >>

• This Is the Girl: Tired Hollywood Spoof in Watts's Other L.A. Movie

  published November 1, 2005

  Mere months before her breakout role as Betty Elms/Diane Selwyn in Mulholland Drive, Naomi Watts played another L.A. actress in fellow... More >>

• New French Connection at BAM

  published October 18, 2005

  With one of its strongest lineups, this year's Gallic mini-cinefest at BAM features a breezy rom-com, a solemn redemption song, a quiet... More >>

• 'The Aggressives'

  published September 27, 2005

  "My sexuality has nothing to with my gender," says Rjai, one of the six lesbians profiled in Daniel Peddle's doc, succinctly summing up the last... More >>

• 'The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio'

  published September 20, 2005

  Based on Terry Ryan's bestselling memoir about her mother, Evelyn, Prize Winner is shameless Eisenhower-era corn. In her third 1950s... More >>

• Summer Camp: Miranda and Montez's Technicolor Freak-Outs

  published August 2, 2005

  A luscious, lysergic double bill of summer camp, Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here and Robert Siodmak's Cobra Woman pair the... More >>

• 'A New World: Shirley Clarke'

  published July 19, 2005

  "Which comes first—the movie or reality?" wonders Shirley Clarke, playing a fictionalized version of herself in Agnés Varda's trippy... More >>

• My Man Gregory: A Class-Conscious Screwball Master

  published July 12, 2005

  "I guess rich people are just poor people with money," Ginger Rogers, playing a homeless NYC gal hired by a millionaire to masquerade as his... More >>

• 'Making Grace'

  published July 12, 2005

  Card-carrying members of Focus on the Family, take note: Lesbian mothers are nice ladies with normal lives. Gund's doc follows Ann and Leslie... More >>

• 'The Seven Year Itch'

  published July 12, 2005

  By 1955, when Billy Wilder's NYC-set midsummer night's sex comedy was released, Marilyn Monroe was so famous that her character no longer needed a... More >>

• The Uncertainty Principle

  published May 17, 2005

  CANNES, FRANCE—You don't need to be a legend," sings a choir of waifs in Kornél Mundruczó's Johanna, a trippy... More >>

• Short and Suite

  published April 12, 2005

  "Acting is very easy for me because I'm very open and I know that I can do everything," Isild Le Besco says with demure confidence. The... More >>

• Stockholm Syndrome: Sweden's Big-City Dreams

  published March 22, 2005

  Madcap romps and the tedium of Swedish hamlets abound in Walter Reade's annual svenska film roundup. "The whole train's going straight to... More >>

• Film

  published February 15, 2005

  Golden Girls meets Workers' Daily, Laura Gabbert's compassionate, thoughtful doc captures a lively senescent friendship. A former... More >>

• Ways of Seeing

  published February 15, 2005

  Cinévardaphoto, Agnès Varda's elegant troika of documentaries (at Film Forum), could be called In Search of Lost Time.... More >>

• Film

  published February 8, 2005

  A nutso look into brotherly love blurring into boyband buggery, Harry and Max plays like an episode of Behind the Music as scripted... More >>

• Beans From a Marriage: Swede Film Doesn't Amount to a Hill

  published January 25, 2005

  "Don't you ever get the peculiar feeling of 'Is this all?' " serially unfaithful surgeon Rickard (Jakob Eklund) asks his wife, Agnes (Pernilla... More >>

• In Bad Company

  published January 11, 2005

  Along with such recent Gallic offerings as Jacques Audiard's Read My Lips, Marina de Van's In My Skin, and Jean-Claude Brisseau's... More >>