Email Author Melissa Anderson

2009 Stories by Melissa Anderson

• A Buried Tennessee Williams Screenplay, The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond

  published December 29, 2009

  Consider: If Tennessee Williams's script for Joseph Losey's 1968 turkey Boom! (an adaptation of his play The Milk Train Doesn't Stop... More >>

• Where Are They Now: Winners of Past Film Polls

  published December 22, 2009

  "It'll be just like in the movies: We'll pretend to be someone else." So says Betty to Rita in Mulholland Drive, an invitation to an... More >>

• The Trial of Joan of Arc at Anthology

  published December 15, 2009

  Big-screen interpretations of Joan of Arc are often ridiculous (Jean Seberg in Saint Joan, Milla Jovovich in The Messenger), can be epically... More >>

• Magical Realism and Maternalism in François Ozon's Ricky

  published December 15, 2009

  The titular infant on the poster for Ricky bears a striking resemblance to the cherub on the cover of Van Halen's 1984 (minus the... More >>

• 'Madcap Manhattan' Series at Film Forum

  published December 8, 2009

  The 39 comedies—screwball, black, musical, and otherwise—in Film Forum's "Madcap Manhattan" series span the Jimmy Walker through... More >>

• Broken Lizard's Likably Stoopid Slammin' Salmon

  published December 8, 2009

  Likably stoopid, the latest from comedy troupe Broken Lizard (Super Troopers, Beerfest) mines plenty of jokes from eating out and... More >>

• 'The Next Director: So  Yong Kim and Bradley Rust Gray' at BAMcinématek

  published December 1, 2009

  The Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne of Brooklyn-based independent filmmakers, So Yong Kim and Bradley Rust Gray are partners in work and... More >>

• Jim Sheridan's Brothers Aims For Tragedy, Hits PTSD Melodrama

  published December 1, 2009

  Jim Sheridan's remake of Danish director Susanne Bier's 2005 original on the familial and psychic trauma caused by Operation Enduring Freedom... More >>

• Timothy Hutton and Meg Ryan in Serious Moonlight

  published December 1, 2009

  Timothy Hutton is duct-taped to the potty, and Meg Ryan is just plain potty in this posthumously produced Adrienne Shelly script directed by... More >>

• Pippa Lee, Desperate Housewife

  published November 24, 2009

  Rebecca Miller's fourth feature may be the only film you'll ever see with both Cornel West and Monica Bellucci in minor roles. But it is also... More >>

• Get Pummeled by Global Guilt-Tripping with Mammoth

  published November 17, 2009

  English, Tagalog, and Thai are spoken in Swedish writer-director Lukas Moodysson's Mammoth, but he communicates only in the idiom of... More >>

• Saintly White People Do the Saving in The Blind Side

  published November 17, 2009

  Another poor, massive, uneducated African-American teenager lumbers onto screens this month, two weeks after Precious and obviously... More >>

• 'New French Films' at BAM Not Unmissable

  published November 10, 2009

  This year, BAM's annual pentad from France features a filmmaker with shingles, Swedish rock, a stubborn zipper, Catherine Deneuve buying a... More >>

• Women in Trouble Awkwardly Mixes Blue Material with Sob Stories

  published November 10, 2009

  With more references to vaginas than Our Bodies, Ourselves, Sebastian Gutierrez's Almodóvar-in-the-'80s accented comedy isn't... More >>

• La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet and The Red Shoes

  published November 3, 2009

  By pure serendipity, two magnificent movies about ballet—one fiction, one fact; one a restored classic, one a brand-new work making its... More >>

• Endgame Documents Death of Apartheid

  published November 3, 2009

  Since it already premiered on PBS as part of "Masterpiece Contemporary" on October 25 (and on British TV in May), the theatrical release of... More >>

• (Untitled) Aims Wide and Misses

  published October 20, 2009

  A film only Hilton Kramer could love, (Untitled) aims wide and misses, its satire of the contemporary-art scene seemingly lifted from... More >>

• A Fetishist's Devotion Marks Black Dynamite

  published October 13, 2009

  He's a sex machine, righteous brother, and one bad mother: Who cares if the title character in Scott Sanders's blaxploitation spoof looks more... More >>

• Second-Wave Feminists Define an Era in The Heretics

  published October 6, 2009

  "Democracy is messy and nasty and sensational" recalls one of the talking heads in Joan Braderman's spirited doc about the Heresies, the... More >>

• Chris Rock's Affable Good Hair Skips the Tough Questions

  published October 6, 2009

  Don Imus's 2007 remarks about "nappy-headed hos" underscored the immense fear of and fascination with the hair follicles of African-American... More >>

• A Beautiful Life: Misery Pile-Up About An Abused Teenage Runaway

  published September 29, 2009

  "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing," Oscar Wilde quipped about the virtuous, beleaguered heroine... More >>

• Chanel Hagiography Is So Last Season in Coco Before Chanel

  published September 22, 2009

  Anne Fontaine's Coco Before Chanel gives us Belle Époque Coco, opening in 1893 with a grim scene of the 10-year-old waif and her... More >>

• 

  COVER STORY

  With Antichrist, Charlotte Gainsbourg Rises

  published September 22, 2009

  Seconds after the world... More >>

• The New Fame: Sanitized Moppets Sing the Body Generic

  published September 22, 2009

  Baby, look at me. Gone are Leroy’s cornrows, short-shorts, and leg warmers: The anodyne adolescents in 25-year-old Kevin... More >>

• Family Drama, Sans Screaming, in Claire Denis's 35 Shots of Rum

  published September 15, 2009

  Recent American films about families, like last year's Rachel Getting Married and Revolutionary Road, all too often pierce... More >>