Email Author Melissa Anderson

2011 Stories by Melissa Anderson

• "The Artist" Pays Joyful Homage to Hollywood's Silent Era

  published December 22, 2011

  An undeniably charming homage to Hollywood in the late 1920s, The Artist will probably be the most successful silent movie since the days... More >>

• "Sleeping Beauty" Fails to Stir

  published December 22, 2011

  Frustratingly opaque, Australian novelist-turned-filmmaker Julia Leigh's debut feature opens with an unforgettable image: A young woman,... More >>

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  “The Sitter” Review: Jonah Hill As a Charming, Self-Aware Loafer

  published December 8, 2011

  Big, soft, squishy: These words describe Jonah Hill’s heart as well as his body in The Sitter, the mixed-bag last record of its... More >>

• "A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas" Review: The Grass Isn't Always Greener

  published November 3, 2011

  The doobie brothers are back, though wildly diverging lifestyle choices have left the best bud-loving buds all but estranged. Harold (John... More >>

• "3" Tells the Tale of a Bed-Dead Relationship That Finds New Life

  published October 20, 2011

  After 20 years together, 40-ish arts professionals Hanna (Sophie Rois) and Simon (Sebastian Schipper) have succumbed to bed death. Other... More >>

• The "Machine Gun Preacher" Gets Right With the Lord and Helps Orphaned Sudanese Refugees

  published October 6, 2011

  Based on the true story of Sam Childers — an ex-con, druggie, gun nut, and self-described "hillbilly from Pennsylvania" who got right... More >>

• When Not Sobbing or Sleeping, "The Tree" Helps the Dead Speak

  published September 29, 2011

  No one grieves onscreen quite like Charlotte Gainsbourg, here playing Dawn, made a widow within the first ten minutes of The Tree. When... More >>

• "My Afternoons With Marguerite" Is a Syrupy Tale of Intergenerational Friendship

  published September 22, 2011

  Celebrity airplane wizzer Gérard Depardieu, playing massive dimwit Germain in this syrupy tale of intergenerational friendship, looks... More >>

• In "I Don't Know How She Does It," Sarah Jessica Parker Does It All

  published September 15, 2011

  What I don't know: why these movies keep getting made. I Don't Know How She Does It is based on Allison Pearson's 2002 diaristic, comic... More >>

• Silence Equals Death in "Life Above All"

  published September 15, 2011

  "AIDS" isn't uttered until well past the halfway mark of Oliver Schmitz's problematic South Africa-based tale about the fear, gossip, and... More >>

• Vera Farmiga Tries to Create a Better Role in "Higher Ground"

  published September 8, 2011

  As reported in a New York Times Magazine cover story on the actress in 2006 (three years before her Oscar-nominated performance in Up... More >>

• "The Names of Love" Is a Mawkish, French Crossover Comedy of Manners

  published August 18, 2011

  Nothing screams "French crossover comedy" like jokes about Auschwitz and childhood sexual abuse, the main rib-ticklers of Michel Leclerc's... More >>

• "Sarah's Key" Mawkishly Exposes a Little-Known Piece of Holocaust History

  published July 28, 2011

  Exposing a little-known piece of Holocaust history — the Vel' d'Hiv roundup, in which French police arrested thousands of Jews in Paris... More >>

• A Big Hand for Paprika Steen in "Applause"

  published April 21, 2011

  Appearing in every frame of Applause, Thea Barfoed (Paprika Steen), an aging actress and recovering alcoholic trying to get her life... More >>

• "Madea’s Big Happy Family" Too Preachy and Cynical, Even for Tyler Perry

  published April 21, 2011

  Tyler Perry returns to transferring his own stage work to the screen, donning once again the Lane Bryant floral prints that have made his... More >>

• "Poetry": A Perfectly Performed Ode to a Senescent Woman

  published March 24, 2011

  As in his equally exceptional last film, Secret Sunshine (2007), Lee Chang-dong's Poetry is a perfectly paced and performed... More >>

• "Vidal Sassoon: The Movie" in Desperate Need of Shaping and Trimming

  published March 10, 2011

  More accurately titled Vidal Sassoon: The Slavering Advertorial, Craig Teper's obsequious documentary on the stylist who popularized... More >>

• In "Every Day," Acting Triumphs Over Indie Cliche

  published February 24, 2011

  Ned (Liev Schreiber), the beleaguered patriarch in writer/director Richard Levine's middling first feature, slogs through slowly simmering... More >>

• "My Dog Tulip" on Man's Best Friend

  published February 3, 2011

  J.R. Ackerley's 1956 memoir about his recalcitrant German shepherd, My Dog Tulip, is one of the finest, most insightful chronicles of... More >>

• "Biutiful" More Bloated Than Babel, Even with Bardem

  published January 27, 2011

  Biutiful stays in one place (Barcelona) and follows one main character (Javier Bardem's Uxbal) in a linear story line. Though its... More >>

• Celebrity Living Has Its Downside in "Somewhere"

  published January 20, 2011

  Dissolute action-movie star Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff), first seen doing laps in his black Ferrari, has no destination in Somewhere,... More >>