Review: Greenberg, 2010, dir. Noah Baumbach

Director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Margot At the Wedding) is no stranger to awkward family dynamics; for him, it’s well-tread territory that he’s obviously and contradictorily comfortable exploring in his cinema. Which, for some, might make his latest effort, Greenberg, feel somewhat effortless and even slight considering the source. After all, he’s done it … Continue reading →

Review: Megamind, 2010, dir. Tom McGrath

Dreamworks’ 2010 resembles something of a roller coaster, climbing to the peak of ascension in March with the outstanding How to Train Your Dragon before racing back down the rails with May’s Shrek Forever After. This November, the studio has risen back up to the middle with their original (if one can call it that … Continue reading →

From the Cinema to the Sofa: The Walking Dead, Episodes 1-3

Occasionally, we here at Andrew at the Cinema like to watch television. Zombies have long constituted their own trusted and heavily explored sub-genre of horror, and in the last decade or so our favorite subtext-rich movie monster has seen something of a resurgence as filmmakers have gone back to the  well to produce their own … Continue reading →

Review: Ip Man, 2008, dir. Wilson Yip

Suggested alternate title: Donnie Yen’s Wide, Wide World of Butt-Kicking. Donnie Yen is the kind of real-deal martial arts maestro who, by an unjust stroke of fate, never caught on as a mainstream kung-fu cinema hero for American audiences in the way that performers like Jet Li and Jackie Chan have. Arguably, Yen has no … Continue reading →

Review: Shutter Island, 2010, dir. Martin Scorsese

(Warning: The following review delves ever so slightly into spoiler territory, so you may wish to avoid reading this if you haven’t watched the movie yet.) And for his next trick, Martin Scorsese does his very best M. Night Shyamalan impression and tries his hand at the horror genre. Shutter Island, by all means, isn’t … Continue reading →

Review: Nine, 2009, dir. Rob Marshall

Rob Marshall is no stranger to the musical genre; just eight years ago he enjoyed considerable success adapting Bob Fosse’s iconic crime satire Chicago, both critical and monetary, from Broadway to the silver screen. His film wound up inexplicably snagging the Best Picture award at the Oscars, and even if Marshall himself got black flagged … Continue reading →

Review: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, 2010, dir. Niels Arden Oplev

Unspoken rule when discussing film adaptations of literary works: Films must be judged on their own merits rather than compared against the source material. For the most part, this seems fair. Film and literature, after all, constitute two very different storytelling mediums; the former must, if not for artistic purposes than for logistical ones, successfully … Continue reading →