Email Author Nick Pinkerton

2012 Stories by Nick Pinkerton

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  Promised Land Review: Gus Van Sant Directs a Screenplay by Matt Damon and John Krasinski

  published December 27, 2012

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

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  Mitchell Leisen, the Forgotten Rom-com Specialist, Gets a Series at UCLA

  published November 15, 2012

  Midnight (1939), in which penniless cab driver Don Ameche pursues American gold-digger Claudette Colbert across a Paramount–back... More >>

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  Flight Review: Denzel Washington Sulks and Soars as an Alcoholic Pilot

  published November 1, 2012

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

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  Horror Movies to See in October That You Probably Haven't Heard Of

  published October 4, 2012

  For 11 months of the year, horror movies live a skulking, marginalized existence, despised, like carnival freaks, by the studios for whom they... More >>

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  The Other Director Named Paul Anderson

  published September 13, 2012

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

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  Lawless Review: Shia LaBeouf Goes Bootlegging

  published August 30, 2012

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

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  Sam Fuller Series at the Aero

  published August 23, 2012

  The Naked Kiss (1964) is the prototypical Sam Fuller film, from the leering paperback title to the in medias res opening that... More >>

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  2 Days in New York Review: Julie Delpy Directs Herself and Chris Rock

  published August 16, 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 >>

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  Spaghetti Westerns at the Egyptian and Aero Theaters

  published July 26, 2012

  Frame-filling, dirt-seamed showdown squints accompanied by a soundtrack that's a menagerie of caws, grunting hombres, twanging spokes and livid... More >>

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  Ruby Sparks Review: Paul Dano Invents a Girlfriend

  published July 26, 2012

  It's one of the most cherished legends of the American indie: A socially retarded ugly duck, despite making no effort to regulate his glaring... More >>

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  Killer Joe Review: The Lurid Pleasures of William Friedkin and Tracy Letts

  published July 26, 2012

  At one point in Killer Joe, a hideously funny tabloid noir set on the outskirts of Dallas County, Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch) is let into the... More >>

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  Dark Knight Rises Review

  published July 19, 2012

  Christopher Nolan's ponderous, pontifical action movies are written less as screenplays than as operator's manuals, guiding an audience through... More >>

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  People Like Us Review

  published June 28, 2012

  People Like Us is a certifiable adult drama built atop sturdy thematic supports, a rare enough item these days, though it's telling... More >>

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  Prometheus Review: Ridley Scott's Epic

  published June 7, 2012

  Arriving in theaters on the back of a portentous ad campaign, Ridley Scott's Prometheus assumes the air of something more than a... More >>

• The Color Wheel Review

  published June 7, 2012

  Les Enfants Terribles Alex Ross Perry's The Color Wheel Alex Ross Perry's second feature, shot in 16mm black-and-white,... More >>

• Rainer Werner Fassbinder Series at American Cinematheque

  published May 31, 2012

  In 1971's Beware of a Holy Whore, Rainer Werner Fassbinder bottled the anarchic atmosphere in which his art was created. In the lobby... More >>

• Snow White and the Huntsman Review

  published May 31, 2012

  If ever there were a perfect example of pure, fresh, classical simplicity unnecessarily trodden under with complications, it is Snow White... More >>

• Men in Black 3 Review

  published May 24, 2012

  Can any one of the millions of Americans who saw Men in Black 2 in 2002 describe its plot today? A single scene? I saw both... More >>

• Grand Illusion Rereleased

  published May 17, 2012

  Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion opened in an anxious France in June 1937, as wars were going badly for the Spanish and Chinese republics... More >>

• Robert Bresson Retrospective at the Aero

  published May 10, 2012

  There is a moment at the end of Robert Bresson's penultimate film, The Devil, Probably (1977), when Charles (Antoine Monnier), a young... More >>

• Dark Shadows and God Bless America Reviewed

  published May 10, 2012

  A significant portion of Tim Burton's output over the past decade has been concerned with slipping the "Burton treatment" to susceptible texts:... More >>

• Bernie Review

  published April 26, 2012

  Richard Linklater's Bernie is the rarest of rarities: a truly unexpected film. It might be classified as a black comedy, for it deals... More >>

• Terence Davies Interview

  published March 22, 2012

  With The Deep Blue Sea, the great British director Terence Davies returns to the postwar period — although, in a sense, he has... More >>

• The Turin Horse Review

  published March 1, 2012

  Béla Tarr, the Hungarian director who became something like the patron saint of slow cinema with 1994's 450-minute... More >>

• Wanderlust Review

  published February 23, 2012

  "There's no one way to live our lives," hopes the displaced, adrift couple at the center of Wanderlust. Shopping between the prefab... More >>