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Andrea Gronvall

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Chicago Reader film critic.

Publications:

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
The Dragon Painter (1919) 91% EDIT “The film is compelling for its mythic underpinnings and Hayakawa's sensitive performance.” – Chicago Reader May 18, 2021 Full Review EDIT “This cloying Taiwanese romantic comedy is painful to watch despite the attractive young couple at its center.” – Chicago Reader Apr 21, 2020 Full Review Mercury in Retrograde (2017) 71% EDIT “[An] observant, nuanced indie.” – Chicago Reader Apr 20, 2020 Full Review Shadowman (2017) 95% EDIT “Remarkable for its sweep and its refreshing lack of cant and sentimentality.” – Chicago Reader Apr 20, 2020 Full Review Macario (1960) 100% EDIT “Roberto Galvadon's 1959 rags-to-riches fable combines magical realism and folkloric elements of Mexico's Indianist movement with results that are alternately comic and poignant.” – Chicago Reader Apr 20, 2020 Full Review The Pink Egg (2017) EDIT “[Animator Jim] Trainor conveyed animal freakishness more effectively in his short animation The Bats(1999).” – Chicago Reader Apr 20, 2020 Full Review Wajib (2017) 100% EDIT “[A] crowd-pleasing Palestinian drama.” – Chicago Reader Apr 16, 2020 Full Review Whack (2017) EDIT “Energetic, incisive, and sometimes hilarious.” – Chicago Reader Apr 16, 2020 Full Review Disappearance (2017) 64% EDIT “A compelling debut feature.” – Chicago Reader Apr 16, 2020 Full Review The White Helmets (2016) 100% EDIT “These one-on-ones are the soul of the movie, as the men - in their former lives, a builder, a blacksmith, a tailor - affirm their belief in humanity and a better tomorrow.” – Chicago Reader Apr 7, 2020 Full Review Blockage (2017) EDIT “Gritty [and] suspenseful.” – Chicago Reader Apr 6, 2020 Full Review Dean (2016) 67% EDIT “This material might've worked better as sketches in an omnibus film.” – Chicago Reader Apr 3, 2020 Full Review Murder on the Orient Express (2017) 60% EDIT “The actors here try too hard to flesh out roles that are little more than stock types.” – Chicago Reader Mar 25, 2020 Full Review Just Getting Started (2017) 5% EDIT “The producers must think this drivel is what their senior target audience wants, but only someone who's lost an appetite for real life could find any entertainment in it.” – Chicago Reader Mar 25, 2020 Full Review Rona, Azim's Mother (Rona, madar-e Azim) (2018) EDIT “Everything in this sensitively observed film... builds a sense of quiet desperation and ineluctable fate, culminating in an effect that is almost novelistic in terms of sweep, tone, and psychological depth.” – Chicago Reader Mar 25, 2020 Full Review Arctic (2018) 91% EDIT “First-time feature director Joe Penna and his cowriter and editor Ryan Morrison skillfully exploit genre conventions, but suspense arises mostly from what fresh hells they devise for the hero to conquer, for conquer he must.” – Chicago Reader Mar 25, 2020 Full Review A Dark Place (2018) 60% EDIT “[Andrew] Scott here fascinates as a vulnerable yet remarkably resilient odd duck.” – Chicago Reader Mar 24, 2020 Full Review The Wedding Guest (2018) 45% EDIT “In the end, the screenplay is the letdown, hewing too closely to generic convention.” – Chicago Reader Mar 24, 2020 Full Review The Fall of the American Empire (2018) 60% EDIT “For those who prefer their larcenous high jinks leavened by a serious social conscience, this ebullient romp is just the ticket.” – Chicago Reader Mar 24, 2020 Full Review Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable (2018) 97% EDIT “[Garry Winogrand] seems very much alive in Sasha Waters Freyer's richly detailed documentary.” – Chicago Reader Mar 24, 2020 Full Review Hotel Mumbai (2018) 76% EDIT “The movie's coda cements the overarching message of extolling heroism and the survivors' refusal to let terror define them. But that moral still rings a little hollow.” – Chicago Reader Mar 24, 2020 Full Review Las Sandinistas! (2018) 88% EDIT “As fascinating as these women are, the film would have been stronger if a clearer timeline and more interviews with their male military colleagues had been included (although Noam Chomsky and Bernie Sanders pop up in archival footage).” – Chicago Reader Mar 24, 2020 Full Review Paternal Rites (2018) EDIT “At times painful viewing, this brave, unsparing work ends in liberating catharsis.” – Chicago Reader Mar 23, 2020 Full Review Echo in the Canyon (2018) 89% EDIT “Several of the talking heads and reminiscences were part of Jon Brewer's nostalgic documentary Legends of the Canyon: The Origins of West Coast Rock (2010), but Slater's film is slicker, better photographed, and more revealing.” – Chicago Reader Mar 20, 2020 Full Review Searching (2018) 92% EDIT “Shot mostly with iPhones and GoPro cameras, the movie is visually drab and a little too gimmicky - ultimately it's a stunt, albeit an engrossing one.” – Chicago Reader Mar 20, 2020 Full Review
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