Email Author Melissa Anderson

2012 Stories by Melissa Anderson

• Boxing Cotillard

  published December 27, 2012

  To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, one must have a heart of stone to watch Jacques Audiard's outrageous melodrama Rust and Bone without... More >>

• Ten Movies to Watch in 2013

  published December 27, 2012

  Most of the blathering this year about the death of film and film culture has already evaporated from the mind, like so much inert gas. But one... More >>

• Doctor With Borders

  published December 20, 2012

  Set in East Germany in 1980, Christian Petzold's superb Barbara is a transfixing Cold War thriller made even more vivid by its... More >>

• In Any Day Now, a Real-Life Travesty Becomes a Cinematic One

  published December 13, 2012

  Gay-male weepies have left a long trail of tears, stretching back to the sobbing, self-loathing queens of The Boys in the Band and... More >>

• Holy Motors Creates the Cinema History It Laments

  published November 15, 2012

  Unclassifiable, expansive and breathtaking, Holy Motors, the first feature-length film from Leos Carax since Pola X (1999)... More >>

• How to Survive a Plague Recounts a Stirring History of ACT UP

  published October 4, 2012

  In his filmmaking debut, journalist David France assembles a thoroughly reported chronicle of ACT UP's most vital era, from the direct-action... More >>

• In 10 Years, Channing Tatum and Company Stake Out Adulthood.

  published September 20, 2012

  An amiable, seriocomic high-school-reunion movie, 10 Years succeeds in pulling off a fine varsity talent show. Although some... More >>

• Whitney Houston, Actress

  published August 16, 2012

  In anticipation of the remake of the 1976 girl-group melodrama Sparkle (which didn't screen in time for our deadline), Whitney... More >>

• In Take This Waltz, What Happens in Nova Scotia...

  published July 12, 2012

  Take This Waltz, director Sarah Polley's second feature, is much like her first, 2006's superb Away From Her, in that it... More >>

• In Beasts of the Southern Wild, a Child - and Child Performer - Thrive Despite Adverse Conditions

  published July 5, 2012

  A zealous gumbo of regionalism, magical realism, post-Katrina allegory, myth and ecological parable, Beasts of the Southern Wild,... More >>

• Seth McFarlane's Ted is Unbearable Stuff

  published June 28, 2012

  Fans of Seth MacFarlane's Fox mainstay Family Guy who wish he would run afoul of FCC regulations every week might be pleased with... More >>

• Your Sister's Sister: Sometimes, Broken if Better

  published June 21, 2012

  Beginning with a bilious toast and ending with a group hug, Lynn Shelton's Your Sister's Sister, her fourth film, expertly makes... More >>

• Nothing's So Funny in Peace, Love & Misunderstanding

  published June 7, 2012

  Three generations of fine actresses are squandered in Bruce Beresford's Peace, Love & Misunderstanding, an incompetently... More >>

• The Five-Year Engagement's Humor Won't Crack You Up

  published April 26, 2012

  There is exactly one unexpected moment in the otherwise drearily predictable The Five-Year Engagement that, though little more... More >>

• Marley Stirs It Up

  published April 19, 2012

  I spotted a bottle of something called Marley's Mellow Mood, "a new line of 100 percent natural relaxation beverages," in my neighborhood deli... More >>

• The Hunger Games Rages Against Our Stupid Culture and Becomes Part of the Problem

  published March 22, 2012

  "If no one watches, then they don't have a game," a teenager says in this faithful if cautious adaptation of the first volume of Suzanne... More >>

• Bro, How Times Have Changed: 21 Jump Street Now a Buddy Comedy

  published March 15, 2012

  The television show 21 Jump Street, about cops who go undercover as high schoolers, debuted on Fox in 1987 and ran until 1991,... More >>

• Life is an Erotic Cabaret in Frederick Wiseman's Crazy Horse

  published March 8, 2012

  Recording "Les Filles du Crazy," an anthem that they'll later lip-synch onstage, half a dozen women — performers at the Crazy Horse,... More >>

• Friends With Kids Gives Unconventional Parenting the Conventional Rom-Com Treatment.

  published March 8, 2012

  In the opening scene of Friends With Kids, a conspicuously placed copy of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion on the bedside... More >>

• Joyful Noise: Nothing Is Sacred

  published January 12, 2012

  A holy hot mess of the sacred and the inane, Joyful Noise, about a small-town Southern gospel choir, lifts from Usher's "Yeah!"... More >>

• Pariah: Out and Up

  published January 5, 2012

  The first 10 minutes of Dee Rees' funny, moving, nuanced and impeccably acted first feature, in which coming of age and coming out are... More >>