Email Author Nick Pinkerton

2009 Stories by Nick Pinkerton

• You, the Living

  published December 30, 2009

  You, the Living flips through 50-some single-panel vignettes, many very funny, arranged by Roy Andersson, a Swedish director best known for... More >>

• The Missing Person

  published December 23, 2009

  John Rosow is a P.I., hired off a cold-call to trail a man. It turns out he's distinctly bad at his job—once he's got his mark in sight, he... More >>

• Crazy Heart

  published December 23, 2009

  Yesterday's honky-tonk hero, Bad Blake, arrives at a Clovis, New Mexico, bowling alley. It's another in a string of low-pay, low-turnout gigs with... More >>

• Country music, faded stardom, liquor, and age in Crazy Heart

  published December 23, 2009

  Yesterday's honky-tonk hero, Bad Blake, arrives at a bowling alley in Clovis, N.M. It's another in a string of low-pay, low-turnout gigs with... More >>

• Hello, Walls

  published November 11, 2009

  The Devil, apparently, lives in an out-of-the-way gingerbread Victorian, just past the cemetery, where college sophomore Samantha (Jocelin... More >>

• Ricky Gervais can only get so far, or so funny, with The Invention of Lying

  published September 30, 2009

  The Invention of Lying's plot hook sounds like a pile-up of Jim Carrey–Tom Shadyac concept comedies. The assumption is that there... More >>

• You, the Living

  published September 23, 2009

  You, the Living flips through 50-some single-panel vignettes, many very funny, arranged by Roy Andersson, a Swedish director best known for... More >>

• Drag Me To Hell

  published September 2, 2009

  Often a drifting virtuoso in the years before finding his Spider-Man gig, with Drag Me to Hell director Sam Raimi defaults to the horror romps... More >>

• The Dardennes do what they do, again, in Lorna's Silence

  published August 5, 2009

  Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, secular worker-priests of the Belgian cinema, emerge once more from their lower depths. In describing one... More >>

• My Sister's Keeper is honest about illness but false about everything else

  published June 24, 2009

  Eleven-year-old Anna Fitzgerald's parents didn't just plan for her — they customized her in utero, with the specific end of providing... More >>

• Fados

  published June 3, 2009

  The Fado is a dolorous folksong tradition from Portugal, first sung in the early 19th century by barefoot peasants mending nets and... More >>

• Heaven can wait: Drag Me to Hell is much more fun.

  published May 27, 2009

  Sam Raimi wants to go home again. Often a drifting virtuoso in the years before finding his Spider Man gig, with Drag Me to Hell... More >>

• Save yourself from McG's Terminator

  published May 20, 2009

  Both warning and advertisement, the Terminator films are technophobic teases, selling tickets by promising this decade's model of killing... More >>

• Sticking it to the Man

  published May 20, 2009

  Hitoshi Matsumoto, one-half a legendary Japanese comic duo, debuts as big-screen director/star with this goof on the rubber monster movie line,... More >>

• Gigantic

  published April 8, 2009

  I don't remember ever wanting to just haul out and punch a movie before Gigantic. Interrupting every scene with a proud little fart of... More >>

• Alien Trespass mocks the '50s invasion flicks

  published April 1, 2009

  What's most admirable about onetime X-Files producer R.W. Goodwin's Alien Trespass, a simulacra of the '50s flying-saucer flick,... More >>

• Last House on the Left: That's So Craven

  published March 11, 2009

  That was the most offensive display of sexualized violence I have ever seen," one wilting fellow in need of a camphor hankie was... More >>

• Donkey Punch

  published January 28, 2009

  The personnel behind Donkey Punch could’ve released anything with such a “No way” title—if you haven’t been on the... More >>

• Reading Rainbow

  published January 21, 2009

  Brendan "Kids' Choice" Fraser returns to the multiplex daycare as "Mo" Folchart, antiquarian-book-repairman-cum-adventurer. In... More >>

• Remembrance of Demons Past

  published January 7, 2009

  For as long as it forges ahead without explanations, The Unborn works, in its way, as a series of snap-cut gotchas introducing each new... More >>