Email Author Nick Pinkerton

2012 Stories by Nick Pinkerton

• "Promised Land": The Message Is the Message

  published December 26, 2012

  Salesmen are typically depicted in screen drama as the quintessential American phonies. The exceptions — in Barry Levinson's... More >>

• "Dragon": A Clever, Graceful Hong Kong Western

  published November 28, 2012

  The roaring popular success of Peter Chan's Wu xia in China — renamed Dragon for export — is no mystery: It's an... More >>

• The Way We Die Now: Movie Violence Has Never Been Better

  published November 28, 2012

  Part of the renascent body-count action industry, More >>

• "The Collection": Nothing to See Here

  published November 28, 2012

  A murkily directed bore "dealing" with the subject of serial killers and revenge only to reconfirm to its horror-fanboy audience that both are... More >>

• "Red Dawn": North Korea (and Audiences) Go Home Unhappy

  published November 21, 2012

  America has had its national traumas — its Antietams and Pearl Harbors and 9/11s — but what we haven't faced since the... More >>

• "Anna Karenina": Now with Extra Artifice

  published November 14, 2012

  Joe Wright's dust-blowing new adaptation of Anna Karenina faces a towering mountain of precedent: not only the greatest novel by the man... More >>

• The Sky Keeps Falling!: A Short History of the Death of Cinema

  published November 14, 2012

  That the American cinema is deader than Dillinger is a fact no right-thinking observer unwilling to be laughed out of the room would even think... More >>

• "Flight": Denzel Washington Sulks and Soars

  published October 31, 2012

  The yammering about "Oscar gold" and Denzel Washington's potential three-peat will soon reach a deafening pitch, but such noise can only... More >>

• "The Man with the Iron Fists": The RZA Gets Good and Weird

  published October 31, 2012

  As Wu-Tang Clan's principal producer and myth-maker, Robert "RZA" Diggs translated the group's rugged urban background into the language of... More >>

• "Cloud Atlas": Centuries of Too Muchness

  published October 24, 2012

  The trailer for Cloud Atlas, the gargantuan new movie of David Mitchell's 2004 novel that took two Wachowski siblings and Tom... More >>

• "Sinister": A Creepy-Crawly Horror Show

  published October 10, 2012

  In a neat bit of poaching, Sinister uses a premise borrowed from anti-horror pundits — the idea that some images can't be unseen... More >>

• "Here Comes the Boom": Pandering Morality for Dopes

  published October 10, 2012

  Here Comes the Boom confronts the crisis in our nation's public schools, and multiplexes, for even an affable, saccharine, rudimentary... More >>

• "Taken 2": The World's Most Boring Superdad Fights Again

  published October 3, 2012

  The one surefire punchline in Taken 2 is unintended, a bitter laugh. Ex-CIA operative Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), delivering his... More >>

• "Hotel Transylvania": A Comic Dracula Still Kills

  published September 26, 2012

  Casting a tapered, vase-slender silhouette and speaking in a Transylvanian accent with a touch of Borscht Belt, Hotel Transylvania's... More >>

• "Trouble with the Curve": Still Too Old After All These Years

  published September 19, 2012

  What a strange thing for an actor, when one has been rehearsing one's decline and death for so very long! Eastwood is 82 today; he was wasting... More >>

• "House at the End of the Street": Don't Root for This Underdog

  published September 19, 2012

  A proficient suburban thriller that distributor Rogue has left to sell itself through the inducement of Hunger Games' Jennifer... More >>

• Game Boy: The Bigger, Better Mousetraps of Paul W.S. Anderson

  published September 12, 2012

  The big movie event of September will be the anticipated latest from a certain filmmaker who signs his films with the surname Anderson and a... More >>

• "Resident Evil: Retribution": A Triumph of the Human Spirit

  published September 12, 2012

  Most action filmmakers are lucky to generate as much sheer razzle-dazzle in the course of an entire movie as Paul W.S. Anderson gets into the... More >>

• "Lawless": Prohibition Drama Pits Hillbillies vs. Peacocks

  published August 29, 2012

  Screening the history of bootlegging in urban America led to the invention of a genre — the gangster film — but moviegoers have... More >>

• "Hit and Run": A Car-Chase Flick for the "Utne Reader" Set

  published August 22, 2012

  Hit & Run, a new action comedy engineered by faintly Muppety co-director/writer/star Dax Shepard, is as much about running mouths as... More >>

• "Premium Rush": Sharp Action, Silly Concept

  published August 22, 2012

  Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a new kind of action hero: one that most of America's movie-going population could knock out with one punch. Happily,... More >>

• "The Apparition": Witless Scares in Suburbia

  published August 22, 2012

  The Apparition is not a great or even good haunted-house movie, but it does have the advantage of a memorable setting. Rather than... More >>

• Full Range

  published August 22, 2012

  In a gymnasium, a clandestine four-person group meets to discuss its name. One member suggests "Alps," explaining: "The mountains of the Alps... More >>

• "2 Days in New York": Julie Delpy Brings the "Paris" Gang West

  published August 15, 2012

  Calling back many of the same characters and more than a few of the same jokes, 2 Days in New York, Julie Delpy's fourth film as... More >>

• "Total Recall": The Original's Outsider Art

  published August 15, 2012

  Just because it made loads of money, stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, and features a three-titted mutant doesn't mean Total Recall isn't... More >>