Email Author Nick Pinkerton

2011 Stories by Nick Pinkerton

• Mission Impossible -- Ghost Protocol: Tom Cruise Lives Another Day

  published December 22, 2011

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

• 10 Movie Womanizers, From the Sick to the Sublime

  published December 15, 2011

  The movies are full of bed-hopping men — think of Humphrey Bogart's serial flirtations in The Big Sleep (1946), and Richard... More >>

• Sherlock Holmes Gets a Bond Makeover in 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 >>

• Alexander Payne's Pessimism Is Good for Business

  published November 24, 2011

  "I don't think about the home where my films will land," says Alexander Payne, free-range in a film culture fenced off into art house and... More >>

• Tower Heist: The Little Guys Steal from the Rich Guys in This Throwback Action-Comedy

  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 penthouse.... More >>

• Anonymous: The Shakespeare Expose No One Has Been Waiting For

  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 >>

• Real Steel Has a Semblance of Human Emotion

  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 >>

• Rise of the Planet of the Apes: The Making of a Monkey Activist

  published August 4, 2011

  The making of a monkey activist in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The latest descendant of the half-century old de-evolution concept... More >>

• How the West Was Really Won: Gunslingers Battle Space Invaders in Movie Mash-up Cowboys & Aliens

  published July 28, 2011

  Gunslingers battle space invaders in movie mash-up Cowboys & Aliens. We begin in classic, saddle-sore terrain. A lone stranger with a... More >>

• The Tree of Life: What Terrence Malick Has to Offer Is Worth Working For

  published June 9, 2011

  Including glimpses of Sleeping Beauty in her glass coffin, the rings of Saturn, and a roadside Texas BBQ, Terrence Malick's The Tree of... More >>

• 13 Assassins

  published May 26, 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 >>

• Something Borrowed: The Divine Secrets of the Eskimo Sisterhood

  published May 5, 2011

  Something Borrowed is based on a 2005 work of chick literature by Emily Giffin. It was directed with extraordinary impersonality by Luke... More >>

• Prom: As If Experiencing Your Own Wasn't Bad Enough

  published April 28, 2011

  "This one perfect moment." "That soul-crushing mistress." "Our forever night." These and other understated definitions are obsessively applied... More >>

• Miral: There's Style But Little Substance in Schnabel's Palestine Plea

  published April 21, 2011

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

• The Conspirator: Robert 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 Theater... 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 trench-coat-clad cacodemon... More >>

• Take Me Home Tonight: Reagan-Era Bacchanalia Succumbs to Soggy 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 Dutifully Fulfill Their Raunch and Goo Quotients

  published February 24, 2011

  The Farrellys dutifully fulfill their raunch and goo quotients. Rick and Fred (Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis) are two domesticated... More >>

• The Rite Features 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 major plot... More >>