Email Author Melissa Anderson
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, one must have a heart of stone to watch Jacques Audiard's outrageous melodrama Rust and Bone without... More >>
A wan comedy about gambling that takes no risks, Stephen Frears' Lay the Favorite has none of the stinging sordidness of The... More >>
The winner of the Grand Jury Prize for documentary at Sundance, Eugene Jarecki's The House I Live In, an occasionally muddled... More >>
In anticipation of the remake of the 1976 girl-group melodrama Sparkle — Whitney Houston's posthumous film appearance and her return... More >>
In just two feature films, writer/director Joachim Trier has proved to be unparalleled in exposing the foibles and delusions of all the sad... More >>
A zealous gumbo of regionalism, magical realism, post-Katrina allegory, myth, and ecological parable, Beasts of the Southern Wild, the... More >>
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 >>
Beginning with a bilious toast and ending with a group hug, Lynn Shelton's Your Sister's Sister, her fourth film, expertly makes us... More >>
Like Amir Bar-Lev's The Tillman Story (2010), Kirby Dick's The Invisible War scathingly indicts U.S. military culture. Yet the... More >>
With her flame-colored ringlets, Merida, the barely adolescent heroine of Pixar's 13th feature, looks like a wee Rebekah Brooks, maybe a... More >>
Three generations of fine actresses are squandered in Bruce Beresford's Peace, Love & Misunderstanding, an incompetently structured film... More >>
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 >>
"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 is now a buddy comedy. The television show 21 Jump Street, about cops who go... More >>
Recording "Les Filles du Crazy," an anthem that they'll later lip-synch onstage, half a dozen women — performers at the Crazy Horse,... More >>
In the opening scene of Friends With Kids, a conspicuously placed copy of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion on the bedside table... More >>
"You just have to get crazier" were the words of advice that mighty choreographer Pina Bausch once gave to one of her dancers, who fondly... More >>
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 >>
