Nick Pinkerton

Take Me Home Tonight

Nick Pinkerton
TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT Fresh out of MIT, Matt Franklin (Topher Grace) is back in hometown Los Angeles, waiting for his future to clarify itself while he loiters behind the counter at Suncoast Video, hawking VHSes of Harry and the Hendersons because it's, like, totally 1988. Inspiration comes when Matt......
Jason Sudeikis and Owen Wilson assume the position for the Farrelly brothers in Hall Pass

Hall Pass: Old Stools

Nick Pinkerton
Rick and Fred (Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis) are two domesticated husbands whose long marriages (to Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate, respectively) have achieved somnolent routine in suburban Providence, R.I. Yet the wives worry. Rick is a girl watcher; Fred masturbates in the privacy of their parked Honda Odyssey (his......
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You Won't Miss Me: Stella Schnabel Gets Gloriously Grungy

Nick Pinkerton
You Won't Miss Me, Ry Russo-Young's character study of a gal passing the worst years of her life in cool North Brooklyn, leads off with a scene that lets you know right away that you're in the good hands of a young director sensitive to the idiosyncratic details that breathe......

Drive Angry

Nick Pinkerton
DRIVE ANGRY Genre-unto-himself Nicolas Cage's latest displays much the same tattoo-parlor hellfire imagery as Ghost Rider, but this is the hard-R version, with Johnny Blaze's jellybeans from a goblet in the earlier film now replaced by a cold after-work beer drunk from a human skull. Cage plays a black-denim God’s......

Justin Bieber: Never Say Never

Nick Pinkerton
JUSTIN BIEBER: NEVER SAY NEVER The Bieber movie, a concert experience and origin-myth documentary, is not good — not that it needs to be. It is draggily paced and lacks felicity of form; the 3-D is a rip-off and the songs are pap, save a snippet of Etta James singing......

The Roommate

Nick Pinkerton
THE ROOMMATE It’s exactly what you thought it would be: A plagiarized, campus-set Single White Female pitched to teens, The Roommate traces over scenes from Barbet Schroeder’s sleepover classic with no notable improvement (the big-gasp “This girl is crazy” moment moves from the hairdresser's to a tattoo parlor; the menaced......

The Rite

Nick Pinkerton
THE RITE The latest of at least a dozen widely released American movies in half as many years with demonic possession as a major plot point, The Rite introduces the exorcist — here, Father Lucas (Anthony Hopkins, disarmingly distracted, softly authoritative and given to prancing when the role takes a......

When We Leave

Nick Pinkerton
WHEN WE LEAVE With her young son in tow, Umay (Head-On's Sibel Kekilli) walks out on her abusive husband and foregone conclusion of a life in Istanbul. She returns to her family in Berlin, where she grew up and, presumably, assimilated a larger idea of her possibilities. But to her......

A Somewhat Gentle Man

Nick Pinkerton
A SOMEWHAT GENTLE MAN A low-life comedy in registers of Norse pallor and reticence, A Somewhat Gentle Man begins with ex-thug Ulrik (Stellan Skarsgard) paroled from a 12-year sentence for murder. Returning to the seedy milieu he left behind, on the outskirts of an unnamed city, Ulrik is a watchful,......

Season of the Witch

Nick Pinkerton
SEASON OF THE WITCH Season of the Witch begins in a Crusade taking place after the Crusades, in a 14th Century for Dummies about as immersive and real as the Ohio State Renaissance Festival. Disillusioned, defected knights Behmen and Felson (Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman) retreat home across a hotchpotch......