Email Author Melissa Anderson

2009 Stories by Melissa Anderson

• La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet

  published December 30, 2009

  Frederick Wiseman’s magnificent La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet offers a portrait of suppleness and agility—not just that of the... More >>

• Desperate Housewife: The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

  published December 9, 2009

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

• Father-Daughter Dance

  published December 9, 2009

  Recent American films about families, like Rachel Getting Married, all too often pierce eardrums with shrieks of dysfunction. Amid the din,... More >>

• The Blind Side: Whitey comes to the rescue

  published November 18, 2009

  Another poor, massive, uneducated African-American teenager lumbers onto screens shortly after Precious, obviously timed as a... More >>

• Good Hair

  published October 21, 2009

  Don Imus’s hateful, racist 2007 remarks about “nappy-headed hos” underscored the immense fear of and fascination with the hair... More >>

• On Coco Before Chanel: Chanel hagiography is so last season

  published September 30, 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 >>

• The September Issue captures Vogue's lioness at her peak

  published September 9, 2009

  When, in the early '00s, I worked as a freelancer for a publication two floors below Vogue — this was pre–Devil Wears... More >>

• Earth Days

  published September 9, 2009

  Veteran doc maker Robert Stone (Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst, Oswald’s Ghost) assembles nine talking, graying heads to... More >>

• Taking Woodstock does nothing more than recycle the same late-'60s tropes

  published August 26, 2009

  "If you remember Woodstock, you probably weren't there," the expression goes. And if you were, can you please stop gassing on about it?... More >>

• Jerichow

  published July 22, 2009

  Retooled noir with less pulp than its original source, Christian Petzold’s Jerichow wryly riffs on The Postman Always Rings Twice for... More >>

• Love is a battlefield in the powerful Postman rethink, Jerichow

  published July 15, 2009

  Retooled noir with less pulp than its original source, Christian Petzold's Jerichow wryly riffs on The Postman Always Rings Twice... More >>

• Eldorado

  published July 1, 2009

  The title of Bouli Lanners’s modest yet surprisingly affecting road-trip/buddy movie, which refers to an imaginary place of great wealth and... More >>

• Sex Positive

  published July 1, 2009

  First-time filmmaker Daryl Wein wasn’t even born when AIDS was first recognized by the CDC in 1981, but his documentary on Richard Berkowitz,... More >>

• Jennifer Lynch returns triumphant, bringing Julia Ormond along for the ride in Surveillance

  published July 1, 2009

  Jennifer Lynch — like Sofia Coppola, on occasion — has been tarred with the unfounded claim that her films get made only because of... More >>

• The Offspring

  published June 24, 2009

  Jennifer Lynch has been tarred with the unfounded claim that her films get made only because of who her father is. David Lynch serves as executive... More >>

• Matthew McConaughey is scary bad in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

  published April 29, 2009

  Two weeks after jowly Matthew Perry transformed into pretty Zac Efron to relive his adolescence in 17 Again, Warner Bros. releases... More >>

• Sidestepping sports movie clichés, Sugar finds the sweet spot

  published April 8, 2009

  Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have transformed some of the saggiest, most clichéd genres with smarts, nonscreechy politics, superb acting,... More >>

• Sugar

  published April 8, 2009

  Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have transformed some of the most clichéd genres with smarts, non-screechy politics, superb acting, and visual... More >>

• Bush and Confessions agree: Go shopping! (Wait, don't.)

  published February 11, 2009

  The Confessions of a Shopaholic we need right now would be a handheld doc featuring former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain sobbing into the... More >>