Email Author Melissa Levine

2004 Stories by Melissa Levine

• Love Letter to Alexander Payne

  published December 30, 2004

  Dear Alexander Payne: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways: 1. You made Election and About Schmidt, two hilarious,... More >>

• Wake Up, Spike Lee

  published December 30, 2004

  Dear Spike Lee: The opening words of Do the Right Thing, your 1989 breakout film, were these: "Wake up!" You wanted the world to... More >>

• Disengaged

  published December 16, 2004

  A Very Long Engagement, the new film by French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (most famously of Amélie), will have its fans. For... More >>

• Enduring Creepiness

  published November 11, 2004

  There is something very important to know about Enduring Love that is not apparent from the title: It's a thriller. More specifically, it's... More >>

• Secrets and Lies

  published November 4, 2004

  How does Mike Leigh do it? The years pass; film fashions come and go; Hollywood churns its commercial pap. Careers sparkle; others fizz; whom the... More >>

• Sour Grapes

  published November 4, 2004

  When was the last time you saw Paul Giamatti? And when the film ended, did you realize how much you would miss him? It was just last year that... More >>

• Mother Courage

  published October 14, 2004

  The first exceptional drama of 2004 is here, and it only took, what, six months? Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Mother comes from British... More >>

• The Power of Yes

  published October 7, 2004

  Imagine it's a weekday morning, and you're at a trade conference in Finland. You're sleepy, maybe a little jet-lagged, as you prepare for the next... More >>

• Empty Sex

  published September 23, 2004

  The very best thing about A Dirty Shame, a giddy sex farce from John Waters, is the credits. What's not to love about a list of characters... More >>

• Reese's Piece

  published September 2, 2004

  In Victorian England, 40,000 novels were published every year. Of the few that have endured, perhaps none is more worthy of a film adaptation than... More >>

• The Agony of Adultery

  published September 2, 2004

  In We Don't Live Here Anymore, an overwrought domestic drama about a pair of entangled couples, Peter Krause plays philandering writer Hank... More >>

• Party Train

  published September 2, 2004

  Oh, Janis. Oh, gorgeous, outrageous, soul-ripping, rockin' bluesy mama Janis Joplin. She's a volcano. She's a tsunami. She's a fearless, reckless,... More >>

• Kill Bill

  published September 2, 2004

  Whatever is worthwhile about The Hunting of the President -- a new documentary on the right-wing attack dogs that conspired to bring down... More >>

• Lost in Translation

  published August 26, 2004

  Those of us who have grown up in the United States may be weary of our country's claims of freedom and opportunity. Faced with a wobbly quote from... More >>

• A Royal Shame

  published August 12, 2004

  Garry Marshall is at it again. The director of Pretty Woman, Beaches and the original Princess Diaries has returned to peddle... More >>

• A Gift to Grief

  published July 22, 2004

  The opening moments of The Door in the Floor are not promising. A little girl stands on a chair in a hallway of photos, pointing at the... More >>

• Sa-Weet!

  published July 1, 2004

  It's charming. It's hilarious. It is perhaps the most beautifully crafted, lovingly rendered portrait of extreme geekitude ever to grace the... More >>

• The Passion for Christ

  published June 10, 2004

  Beware the exclamation point. When found at the end of a title, it almost inevitably signals a level of self-hype rarely justified by the content... More >>

• Multiplying by Zero

  published May 6, 2004

  The setting: an institutional high school in the affluent suburbs. The protagonists: two boys -- intelligent, charming and smoldering -- with... More >>

• Lenin Grads

  published April 22, 2004

  If you were a college-aged East Berliner in October of 1989, chances are that your time was occupied by one of several things. Protesting comes to... More >>

• From Bad to Worse

  published March 11, 2004

  If you were expecting the first film to emerge from Afghanistan since the defeat of the Taliban to be even remotely celebratory, you'll have to... More >>

• Sizzle? Fizzle.

  published February 26, 2004

  This is not a good movie. Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights is, in fact, a bad movie. The script bleeds one cliché after another, the... More >>