Email Author Nick Pinkerton

2010 Stories by Nick Pinkerton

• Little Fockers: The Franchise Has Seen Better Days.

  published December 23, 2010

  Just in time for the whole family to file into the multiplex on a silent Christmas night when there's nowhere else to go: a return to the... More >>

• Narnia: An Ailing Franchise Gets Another Chance

  published December 9, 2010

  A massive project, taken up lightly by Disney in the giddy post-Lord of the Rings atmosphere and dropped upon failing to return the... More >>

• William S. Burroughs: A Man Within: Profile of a Counterculture Saint

  published December 9, 2010

  In Yony Leyser's documentary hagiography—which ends with John Waters nominating its subject for iconoclast-artist sainthood—William... More >>

• Rivette Gets the Gang Back Together Again for Around a Small Mountain

  published November 11, 2010

  Around a Small Mountain travels with an itinerant one-ring circus of proud artisans, performing to shrinking rural crowds. "We're the... More >>

• Let Me In: Puppy Love With Sharp Teeth.

  published September 30, 2010

  An orphan for all practical purposes, 12-year-old Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) has been left to sprout like a weed. At home, he gets sparse... More >>

• Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps: Oliver Stone Goes Soft.

  published September 23, 2010

  Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps doesn't have the clean, fable-like arc of its predecessor. Everything is so much... More >>

• The Town: Ben Affleck, Caught Between Redemption, Action and Hometown.

  published September 16, 2010

  Directing himself as a verifiable big-movie lead after some time in supporting-actor Triple-A ball, director/star Ben Affleck models a full... More >>

• The Last Exorcism: Trembling Before God and the Handheld Camera.

  published August 26, 2010

  With a small, well-chosen cast, sly script, and slippery, ambivalent characters, The Last Exorcism gives a welcome twist to the... More >>

• The Expendables: Stallone Hawks Nostalgia and Really Big Explosions

  published August 12, 2010

  "If the money's right, we don't care where the job is." So explains the leader of hired-gun task force The Expendables, Barney Ross (Sylvester... More >>

• The Other Guys: Will Ferrell and Adam McKay Re-Team, With Decreasing Returns.

  published August 5, 2010

  After obligatory helicopter views of New York's skyline open Adam McKay's The Other Guys, we're introduced to Danson and... More >>

• Inception, An Important Picture, Tries to Get Inside Our Heads.

  published July 15, 2010

  Inception is a chilling trip into the psyche...of writer-director Christopher Nolan, an Anglo-American action director who... More >>

• Karate Kid Remake Is Too Cynical To Catch A Fly With Chopsticks

  published June 10, 2010

  Like its predecessor, 2010's Harald Zwart-directed The Karate Kid begins with an uprooting. Young Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) and... More >>

• Splice: One Crazy Test-Tube Mutant of a Movie

  published June 3, 2010

  Though Sundance-screened and sporting an upscale cast, writer-director Vincenzo Natali's Splice has a mad science quality. He has... More >>

• Iron Man 2 Will Lead To 3 And Probably 4, But That Doesn't Mean It's Good

  published May 6, 2010

  As Iron Man 2 begins, Tony Stark—mechanical genius, Forbes 400 perennial, the pop-star CEO of Stark Industries—has... More >>

• The Eclipse

  published April 15, 2010

  The Eclipse: The Eclipse is a curious Irish ghost story that fiddles with the recipe just enough to produce interesting... More >>

• Head-Trip Shutter Island Is The Good Kind Of Insane

  published February 18, 2010

  Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, a florid art shocker that Paramount welcomed into the world with the strained enthusiasm of a... More >>

• From Paris With Love: John Travolta is the Plays the Real Ugly American in France

  published February 4, 2010

  As personal assistant to the U.S. ambassador to France, James Reese (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) can keep himself in well-tailored suits and keep his... More >>

• Edge of Darkness: Mel Gibson Gets Some Kind of Revenge With a Semi-Successful Vigilante Flick

  published January 28, 2010

  "Did you shoot my daughtah?" is the question posed, in flat-voweled Bostonian, in the trailer for Edge of Darkness. And Mel... More >>

• The Book Of Eli's Post-Apocalyptic Theology Is a Little Warped

  published January 14, 2010

  Directors Allen and Albert Hughes' fourth film, The Book of Eli, centers on the Christianity that was at the margins of their... More >>