Email Author Melissa Anderson

2011 Stories by Melissa Anderson

• "Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey": Sweet Documentary Remains Frustratingly Impersonal

  published December 14, 2011

  Constance Marks' documentary on Kevin Clash, the kind, gentle man who created the Muppet beloved by every single child in the world, rushes... More >>

• "Eames: The Architect and the Painter": Detailed Doc Leaves Artist's Personal Life Left Unexamined

  published November 30, 2011

  "The best for the most for the least" was the utopian business credo of Charles Eames, who with his wife, Ray, revolutionized mid-20th-century... More >>

• "The Artist": Silent Film Joyfully Resurrects Hollywood's Past

  published November 30, 2011

  An undeniably charming homage to Hollywood in the late 1920s, The Artist might also be the first silent film many of its viewers have... More >>

• "The Muppets": Reboot Can't Quite Get Its Act Together

  published November 23, 2011

  Desperately trying to appeal to not just the Gen-Xers who grew up with Kermit, but also the tykes who've never heard of Jim Henson, The... More >>

• "Take Shelter": Marriage and Madness Before the Storm.

  published October 5, 2011

  Standing outside his small-town Ohio home, Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon) looks up at the ominous, slate-gray sky. The clouds open, raining... More >>

• "I Don't Know How She Does It": I Don't Know Why They Made This

  published September 14, 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 comic bestseller... More >>

• "The Interrupters": Doc Takes Probing Look at Those Stopping Violence in Chicago

  published August 31, 2011

  Inspired by a 2008 New York Times Magazine article by Alex Kotlowitz, Steve James' commanding documentary The Interrupters, about... More >>

• "Higher Ground": Vera Farmiga's Well-Meaning but Inert Directorial Debut

  published August 31, 2011

  At one point in Higher Ground, Vera Farmiga's decade-spanning directorial debut, the actress, playing Corinne, a woman still soaked with... More >>

• No Shots Fired

  published August 31, 2011

  Inspired by a 2008 New York Times Magazine article by Alex Kotlowitz, Steve James' commanding documentary The Interrupters, about... More >>

• Women's Work

  published August 24, 2011

  Like Joan Braderman's 2009 doc, The Heretics, Lynn Hershman Leeson's !Women Art Revolution is a lionizing chronicle of the... More >>

• "Sarah's Key": Holocaust Movie Wrings Sentimentality from Atrocity

  published August 3, 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 >>

• "Life, Above All": Problematic Drama Delves Into South African AIDS Crisis

  published July 20, 2011

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

• "A Better Life": Illegal Immigrant Melodrama Too Sudsy By Half

  published July 6, 2011

  Pitched to tug at even Jan Brewer's heartstrings, A Better Life takes on the combustible topic of illegal immigration through the soft,... More >>

• "The Art of Getting By": Teen Movies Don't Get More Boring Than This

  published June 15, 2011

  Gavin Wiesen's first film, as passive and vanilla as its title, continues the numbing trendlet begun in 2008 with Nick and Norah's Infinite... More >>

• They're the Topps -- Literally -- Down Under

  published May 25, 2011

  "On paper, they should be commercial death," New Zealand comedy writer Paul Horan says of Jools and Lynda Topp, a yodeling,... More >>

• "The Robber": Taut Austrian Thriller Shows the Thrill of Chase

  published April 27, 2011

  What makes Johann run — and rob? Benjamin Heisenberg's second feature, The Robber, is as taut, lean, and fleet as its title... More >>

• Strength Amid Violent Acts

  published April 6, 2011

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