Email Author Nick Pinkerton

2011 Stories by Nick Pinkerton

• Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

  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 >>

• Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

  published December 15, 2011

  For 15 years and now four sequels, Tom Cruise has pilgrimaged regularly to the Mission: Impossible franchise. Like a Hindu’s... More >>

• Tower Heist: Lobby vs. Penthouse

  published November 3, 2011

  A revenge of the have-nots playing on the clear class stratification of the luxury high-rise, Tower Heist pits lobby against... More >>

• Anonymous: Much Ado About Nothing

  published October 27, 2011

  Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, is the close-second candidate to be attributed authorship of the 37 plays of William Shakespeare, the... More >>

• In Toast, The Duel Arts of Reduction and Seduction

  published October 13, 2011

  Premiered as a BBC1 telefilm, now flaunting its wasteful widescreen in theaters, Toast adapts the autobiography of Nigel Slater,... More >>

• Real Steel: Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em, Love 'Em Robots

  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 >>

• Killer Elite: Recycled Mayhem

  published September 22, 2011

  Wholly unrelated to the 1975 Sam Peckinpah film of the same name, Killer Elite is distinguished by one no-mercy, eye-gouging,... More >>

• Rise of the Planet of the Apes: Simian Disobedience

  published August 4, 2011

  The latest descendant of the half-century old de-evolution concept that began with Pierre Boulle's novel, Rise of the Planet of the... More >>

• The Princess of Montpensier: A Fine French Western

  published June 9, 2011

  The finest Western you'll see this year, The Princess of Montpensier is set in aristocratic 16th-century France, in the heat of... More >>

• Submarine Doesn't Go Deep

  published June 9, 2011

  Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts), a rampant 15-year-old only child, has two presiding preoccupations, detailed in rapid voiceover throughout... More >>

• 13 Assassins: Buried in Mud and Guts

  published June 9, 2011

  Lord Naritsugu (Gorô Inagaki) is a royal terror, and the court fears Caligula-like horrors should he come into his royal succession. Samurai... More >>

• The Double Hour Plays it Safe

  published June 9, 2011

  Cinematographer Tat Radcliffe's gray Turin sets the monotone of The Double Hour, while director Giuseppe Capotondi softens promising... More >>

• Something Borrowed Will Make You Blue

  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: Redford Helms Another Dull History Lesson.

  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 >>

• Miral: Style, but Little Substance in Schnabel's Palestine Plea.

  published April 14, 2011

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

• Your Highness: Dirty Jokes for the D&D crowd.

  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 >>

• Insidious: The Saw duo take us through a haunted house.

  published March 31, 2011

  There is a great deal of prowling motion in Insidious: a recurring sideways dolly outside an ominous house, a trenchcoat-clad... More >>

• Kill the Irishman Lacks (Low-) Life

  published March 24, 2011

  With post-GoodFellas crime-movie tropes dyed for St. Patrick's Day, this Ballad of Danny Greene attempts to enshrine the Irish-American... More >>

• Take Me Home Tonight: A Reagan-era Bacchanalia Succumbs to Nostalgia.

  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 >>

• Hall Pass: The Farrellys Fulfill Their Raunch and Goo Quotients.

  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 >>

• Outside: A Long- Not Epic- Look at the Algerian War.

  published February 24, 2011

  Rule of law scarcely discourages the endless reprisals in Rachid Bouchareb's Algerian War–era family-ties drama Outside the... More >>

• The Rite: Exorcising Demons No Scarier Than Nasty Older Sisters.

  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... More >>