Melissa Anderson

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Village Voice
For 371 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 30% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 67% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 8.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Melissa Anderson's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 57
Highest review score: 100 The Royal Road
Lowest review score: 0 Another Happy Day
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 142 out of 371
  2. Mixed: 175 out of 371
  3. Negative: 54 out of 371
371 movie reviews
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    • 71 Metascore
    • 90 Melissa Anderson
    River of Grass
    Reichardt pays clear homage to Breathless and Badlands, but her movie, the title of which is a local name for the Everglades, operates in its own ecosystem, teeming with the droll, shrewd observations about downwardly mobile life explored more solemnly in Reichardt's next two films, Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Melissa Anderson
    Little Ashes
    A typically bombastic lives-of-the-artists production made even more stilted by having all the actors (including the Spanish ones) speak accented English.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Melissa Anderson
    My One and Only
    Occasionally diverting but ultimately forgettable, My One and Only will become unforgivable if it inspires other former competitors from "Dancing With the Stars" to go in search of lost time.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Melissa Anderson
    Change of Plans (Le code a changé)
    A comedy of manners in need of Ritalin.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Melissa Anderson
    Just Wright
    Another movie, not as awful as this one, might one day find better use for the easygoing vibe between Queen Latifah and Common, the stars of Just Wright.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Melissa Anderson
    The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
    In this densely populated ensemble piece, Reeves stands out as the only actor whose damaged character evokes sympathy and avoids cliché. Pippa, played by Wright Penn in near-permanent Stepford Wife mode, isn't much more than a vehicle for false epiphanies and forced rapprochements.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Melissa Anderson
    Ricky
    Ozon's fractured-working-class-family magical realism, liberally adapted from Rose Tremain's short story, "Moth," works best in specific moments.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Melissa Anderson
    Sex Positive
    It helps that Wein's subject is such a fascinating, garrulous paradox.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Melissa Anderson
    Down Terrace
    Down Terrace has frequently been appreciated as "The Sopranos meets Mike Leigh." But a more fruitful comparison might be to last year's stand-out British satire "In the Loop": In both films, verbal aggression makes for the biggest laughs and the surest signs of moral decay.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 0 Melissa Anderson
    Happy Tears
    Continuing both his bad filmmaking and obsession with lethal orifices, Mitchell Lichtenstein follows up "Teeth," his clumsy debut about a dismembering vagina, with a voluminous explosion of poop.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Melissa Anderson
    Black Dynamite
    No matter how many trips to Kung Fu Island our hero makes, nothing in Black Dynamite captures the exhilarating absurdity of Pam Grier hiding razors in her Afro in "Coffy"--or the loony genre experimentation in "Pootie Tang."
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Melissa Anderson
    Chocolat
    Denis quickly immerses us in her voluptuous, allusive mode of storytelling.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Melissa Anderson
    Brothers
    Sheridan, repeatedly drawn to family sagas, including his own (2002's In America), aims for Greek tragedy but ends up with a PTSD melodrama, with Maguire able to produce slobber almost as effortlessly as Portman can summon up tears--essentially all her role calls for.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 50 Melissa Anderson
    When in Rome
    Bell, unlike Katherine Heigl and Sandra Bullock, who executive-produced their big-screen debasements of 2009, brings enough effervescence to the film that she's able to spark believable chemistry with a usual dud like Josh Duhamel.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 30 Melissa Anderson
    Wonderful World
    It's heartbreaking to see Lathan, an underemployed actress whose talents were last put to good use in 2006's "Something Else," in such a ridiculous, impossible role.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Melissa Anderson
    Love Ranch
    Hackford's pacing throughout is continuously off, with scenes extending several beats too long, his two leads adrift and bored.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 10 Melissa Anderson
    Oxygono
    Curiously, Blackmail Boy's alternate title is "Oxygen"--and by film's end, you'll be gasping for it.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 30 Melissa Anderson
    Paris 36
    Like Amélie's scrubbed-up "City of Lights," Paris 36 is an antiseptic arthouse trifle, so eager to soothe that it only numbs.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 40 Melissa Anderson
    The Spy Next Door
    Immediately forgettable family entertainment, suitable for release only in the dung-heap month of January.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Melissa Anderson
    Ellie Parker
    A clumsy spoof of Hollywood, EP always roots for its hapless heroine. But where this trifle fascinates most is in its connections to David Lynch's masterpiece.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 20 Melissa Anderson
    Lila Says
    A misguided tale of sentimental education.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Melissa Anderson
    Handsome Harry
    As in the films that precede it, the mysteries--and terrors--of desire also propel Handsome Harry, which reunites Gordon with Luminous Motion's Jamey Sheridan, here in the title role.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Melissa Anderson
    Stalin's Wife
    Tsukerman is not interested in disproving or discounting theories, but merely assembling them.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Melissa Anderson
    American Violet
    A docudrama with a good heart but a heavy hand.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Melissa Anderson
    Sugar
    Without a trace of didacticism, Boden and Fleck portray the insidious details of exploitation and hollow American maxims.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Melissa Anderson
    Fame
    The sanitized moppets in the new Fame sing the body generic.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Melissa Anderson
    (Untitled)
    A film only Hilton Kramer could love, (Untitled) aims wide and misses.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Melissa Anderson
    Good Hair
    Breezy, superficial documentary.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Melissa Anderson
    The Extra Man
    Going below the surface, the filmmakers and the cast (including a marvelous performance by Marian Seldes as an osteoporotic doyenne) successfully create the hardest characters to pull off: exotic yet recognizable New Yorkers.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Melissa Anderson
    Pontypool
    For a film about the perils of too much talk, there's quite a lot of babbling presented as profundity. The political statements in Pontypool, much like those in another recent Canadian offering, Atom Egoyan's trite terrorism hand-wringer "Adoration," seem all the less provocative for appearing several years too late--McDonald's film might have had more punch if it were released when Bluetooth first rolled out.
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