Email Author Melissa Levine

2004 Stories by Melissa Levine

• Here's to You, Mrs. Robinson

  published December 23, 2004

  What is it about older women and younger men this year? No fewer than five films -- The Door in the Floor, The Mother,... More >>

• The Year in Queer

  published December 23, 2004

  The gay films of 2004 merit a solid fair to middling overall rating, with a couple of lovely exceptions. Chief among those was Miguel Albaladejo's... More >>

• Love Letter to Alexander Payne

  published December 23, 2004

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

• Wake Up, Spike Lee

  published December 23, 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 awaken... More >>

• Misdirected

  published December 16, 2004

  Bad Education, the new film by the flamboyant Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, opens on a man sitting at a table, poring over... More >>

• Brave and Crazy

  published November 18, 2004

  Whatever else can be said about Tarnation -- and there is plenty to say -- there is no denying this: It is a very brave movie.... More >>

• Sour Grapes

  published November 11, 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 >>

• The Anton Newcombe Massacre

  published November 11, 2004

  I'm not for sale. I'm fucking love. I give it away." So says Anton Newcombe, the raging megalomaniac who heads the Brian Jonestown... More >>

• Secrets and Lies

  published October 28, 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 >>

• 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... 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 >>

• Sa-Weet!

  published July 15, 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 >>

• Crouching Forward, Hidden Goalie

  published July 15, 2004

  If you've seen a movie at a Landmark theater in the past year or so, you've probably enjoyed the trailer for Shaolin Soccer. Over a... More >>

• Mother Courage

  published July 1, 2004

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

• Weirdest Movie in the World

  published June 17, 2004

  Ah, the peculiar genius that is Guy Maddin. Who else but the morose Canadian director, born and raised in one of the coldest cities in the world,... 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 >>

• Radio Free Haiti

  published April 29, 2004

  Every once in a while, you encounter a person who seems to have been born under an urgent, righteous star -- a person who is both a fiery activist... More >>

• Prey to Pretense

  published April 8, 2004

  The most notable thing about The United States of Leland, a youth violence drama from writer-director Matthew Ryan Hoge, is its... More >>

• The Wince and Me

  published April 1, 2004

  She's a premed farm girl intent on administering to the world's suffering children. He's a car-racing Danish prince looking to shed the burdens of... 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,... More >>

• Rationality Will Not Save Us

  published February 12, 2004

  At the opening of The Fog of War, the brilliant new documentary from director Errol Morris, we see a composed, sharply groomed, and... More >>