Email Author NICK PINKERTON

2012 Stories by NICK PINKERTON

• 'Bernie' Features Murder In a Small Town

  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 >>

• It's Another Day, Another Drink in 'The Day He Arrives'

  published April 19, 2012

  You don't have to understand the intricacies of Korean manners to enjoy Hong Sang-soo's subtly mortifying comedies. Nor do you have to be on... More >>

• Everybody Loves the '90s

  published April 5, 2012

  A historical romance with a then-unheard-of price tag, James Cameron's 1997 Titanic was the nearest thing to a Gone With the... More >>

• Minor-League 'Goon'

  published March 29, 2012

  Doug Glatt (Seann William Scott) is a polite Jewish boy from fictional Orangetown, Massachusetts, whose one God-given talent is having a skull... More >>

• The Problem With Romance in 'The Deep Blue Sea'

  published March 22, 2012

  The Deep Blue Sea, the first fiction feature in a dozen years from the visionary British director Terence Davies, is a film about love... More >>

• This 'Silent House'

  published March 8, 2012

  The foundations of Silent House are laid atop La Casa Muda, a nil-budget 2010 Uruguayan horror film that enjoyed an afterlife... More >>

• 'Act of Valor' Wants You

  published February 23, 2012

  Act of Valor is, according to the opening titles, "based on real acts of valor," whatever that means. It stars real active-duty Navy... More >>

• 'Wanderlust' Gets Its Freak On

  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 >>

• The Dispassion of 'Michael'

  published February 16, 2012

  The clean, orderly home has a particular hold on the Austrian imagination—specifically the basement, the nation's subterranean... More >>

• Humor Is the First Casualty in 'This Means War'

  published February 16, 2012

  Hostilities in This Means War are declared as two workmates compete for the affection of the same woman. The contested object is... More >>

• 'Return' to the Home Front

  published February 9, 2012

  Still wearing desert camo, Kelli (Linda Cardellini) comes back from a tour of duty in an unspecified country to the husband (Michael Shannon),... More >>

• This Way Lies Darkness In 'The Turin Horse'

  published February 9, 2012

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

• 'The Vow': For Better or for Amnesia

  published February 9, 2012

  The Vow, a full-bodied lunge for the heartstrings, has a humdinger of a premise, forcing its characters to face a question that most... More >>

• 'The Inkeepers' Is Horror, Stripped Down to Its Bones

  published February 2, 2012

  Ti West, the 34-year-old writer/director of The Innkeepers, has spent the past several years steadily toiling his way through the... More >>

• Gina Carano Goes 'Haywire'

  published January 19, 2012

  There's a point in Haywire when the film's protagonist, ex-Marine Mallory Kane (Gina Carano), gone rogue from her job as hired muscle... More >>

• These Guns Are 'Contraband'

  published January 12, 2012

  Will there someday be a movie in which the "one last job" goes off without a hitch? It's not Contraband, which begins with that... More >>

• What 'The Divide' Needs Is a Conch

  published January 12, 2012

  A mushroom cloud blooms over Manhattan at the opening of The Divide. We see it reflected in the tearful eyes of Eva (Lauren German),... More >>