Email Author Nick Pinkerton

2011 Stories by Nick Pinkerton

• The latest Sherlock Holmes is more James Bond than enigmatic sleuth

  published December 15, 2011

  Although supplying boy's adventure thrills on the side, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories are remarkable for how they make the... More >>

• Puncture's a muckraking tale of drugs and Big Pharm

  published November 10, 2011

  Puncture is proudly "Based on a True Story." As is so often the case, this means an indifference to "true" human relationships in... More >>

• Anonymous proffers conspiratorial jabbering akin to the Da Vinci Code

  published November 3, 2011

  Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, is the close-second candidate to be attributed authorship of the 37 plays of William Shakespeare... More >>

• Spare-parts melodrama Real Steel is almost human

  published October 6, 2011

  Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is a two-bit trainer traveling the state-fair circuit in a not-too-distant future. His line is robot fighting, a... More >>

• In Warrior, two MMA-fighting brothers reunite in the cage

  published September 8, 2011

  You know those Affliction shirts, covered in skulls, gothic lettering and tribal patterns, all cacophonous symbols of bad-ass machismo? That's... More >>

• The Guard is a shaggy-man character study

  published August 18, 2011

  The Guard is a shaggy-man character study, its subject a fifty-something policeman in West Ireland, Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan... More >>

• Unresolved, hidden emotions are revealed in Nora's Will

  published July 28, 2011

  José (Fernando Luján) has been divorced from Nora for twenty years. They were married at least as long. Now he keeps an apartment... More >>

• Trollhunter is a mock doc that drains the magic out of troll-hunting

  published June 30, 2011

  Alleged to be compiled of found college-project footage from a group of missing students, Trollhunter begins as an investigative... More >>

• Amid a torrent of stylistic effects, Submarine stays the course

  published June 23, 2011

  Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts), a rampant fifteen-year-old only child, has two presiding preoccupations, detailed in rapid voiceover throughout... More >>

• Miral tries to address the Israel-Palestine question, but its convictions get muddied

  published May 26, 2011

  A U.N. premiere! A Vanessa Redgrave cameo! Zionist hoodlums! Distributors the Weinstein Company and director Julian Schnabel overcome their... More >>

• The Princess of Montpensier deals in corrupted love and pointless war

  published May 5, 2011

  The finest Western you'll see this year is set in aristocratic sixteenth-century France, in the heat of counter-Reformation. In... More >>

• Something Borrowed never asks the hard questions without an answer prepared in advance

  published May 5, 2011

  Something Borrowed is based on a 2005 work of chick literature by Emily Giffin. It was directed with extraordinary impersonality... More >>

• Prom is a formal disaster

  published April 28, 2011

  "This one perfect moment." "That soul-crushing mistress." "Our forever night." These and other understated definitions are obsessively applied... More >>

• The Conspirator is barely worth the extra credit

  published April 14, 2011

  Set in the months after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, The Conspirator follows the consequences of the fatal shot at Ford's... More >>

• Your Highness is a dirty-joke blooper reel set in EverQuest land

  published April 7, 2011

  Your Highness plays like a dirty-joke blooper reel made by the cast of a junky sword-and-sorcery epic, streaked with carelessly... More >>

• A Somewhat Gentle Man is a lowlife comedy of Norse pallor

  published March 24, 2011

  A low-life comedy in registers of Norse pallor and reticence, A Somewhat Gentle Man begins with ex-thug Ulrik (Stellan... More >>

• Sorry, 45-year-olds: Take Me Home Tonight is for '80s babies

  published March 3, 2011

  Ink still wet on his MIT degree, Matt Franklin (Topher Grace) is back in hometown Los Angeles, waiting for his future to clarify itself while... More >>

• With Hall Pass, the Farrellys have hit their own midlife crisis

  published February 24, 2011

  Rick and Fred (Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis) are two domesticated husbands whose long marriages (to Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate,... More >>

• The Strange Case of Angelica is surprising in its casual grace

  published February 3, 2011

  In 1952, Manoel de Oliveira sketched a fable of impossible longing that became, finally, The Strange Case of Angelica. Though the... More >>

• There's no pea soup, but The Rite spews its story just the same

  published January 27, 2011

  The Rite is the latest of at least a dozen widely released American movies in half as many years with demonic possession a major... More >>

• All Good Things is an upscale version of straight-to-cable true-crime pap

  published January 6, 2011

  Generously bankrolled (then shelved) by an imperiled Weinstein Company and peopled with Oscar nominees, it's tempting to call All Good... More >>