Email Author Nick Pinkerton

2008 Stories by Nick Pinkerton

• Hoppity Goes to Town Screening at Film Forum

  published December 24, 2008

  The Fleischer Bros., Max and Dave, were doing just ducky off Betty Boop and Popeye before getting prodded into keeping up with those damn... More >>

• Yukio Mishima, A Life in Four Chapters, and Countless Contradictions

  published December 17, 2008

  The Japanese have a storied tradition of writer suicides, but the reams of foreshadowing and grand-gesture media spectacle of Yukio Mishima's... More >>

• Where God Left His Shoes Muddles Vérité and Adult-Contemporary

  published December 10, 2008

  Undercard boxer Frank Diaz (John Leguizamo) is a ring slickster whose lack of jaw and heart has kept his looks while eroding his self-worth.... More >>

• Nothing Like the Holidays Offers Seasonal Warm Fuzzies, Little More

  published December 10, 2008

  The Rodriguez kids, spread far from their native Chicago, reunite for Xmas under the roof of their voluminous burgher patriarch (Alfred... More >>

• Paul Newman at BAM

  published December 3, 2008

  Save a perfunctory screening of The Hustler, BAM's eulogy for Paul Newman strays wide of the beaten path. No Sting Cassidy and the... More >>

• "Punk 'n' Pie" Series at BAM

  published November 26, 2008

  BAMcinématek's "Punk 'n' Pie" series is more a study in late-20th-century Brit dandyism than rawk, but anyone interested in pop history... More >>

• The Dukes' Low-Payoff Losers Work the L.A. Nostalgia Circuit

  published November 12, 2008

  Even if you don't know the name, you'll recognize Robert Davi's slightly corroded handsomeness and shiny, bottomless eyes. The ubiquitous... More >>

• Anthology Takes a Tour of the Bonnie and Clyde Director's America

  published November 12, 2008

  Arthur Penn last directed for the big screen in 1989—a Penn & Teller movie, at that. Now 85, he's on the posterity circuit—a voice... More >>

• The Guitar

  published November 5, 2008

  Ever wonder where those model-perfect homeless girls you always see riffing on Stratocasters in Tompkins Square Park come from? The answer lies... More >>

• Monks: The Transatlantic Feedback Resurrects '60s Protest Band of Former GI's

  published October 29, 2008

  The Monks were a five-piece (including strident electric banjo), staffed by former American GIs who met while stationed in West Germany. The... More >>

• Passengers

  published October 29, 2008

  Anne Hathaway has the biggest damn chestnut eyes you’ve ever seen—I spent a lot of time swimming in them, as they’re about the... More >>

• The Elephant King a Pale Excuse for a Cinematographer's Holiday

  published October 15, 2008

  In the miasma of permanent-vacation desperation (c.f. Malcolm Lowry, Saint Jack) we find Jake (Jonno Roberts), a footloose American... More >>

• Stuyvesant's Finest Run for Class Prez. in Frontrunners

  published October 15, 2008

  The great American student-government election: teenagers exposing their fragile egos to public ballot-box rejection and spending a small... More >>

• Joe Sawnberg and Greta Gerwig Attempt To Tell the Truth in Nights and Weekends

  published October 8, 2008

  Nights and Weekends telescopes a year-and-a-half relationship into a sampler of chats, spats, and screws. James and Mattie are two kids... More >>

• Guy Ritchie Returns to Form, For Better Or Worse, in RocknRolla

  published October 8, 2008

  What do you have to do to get your career revoked in England, short of being Gary Glitter? After a box-office-catastrophic two-movie run, Guy... More >>

• Forever Strong Should Play Well to Church Groups, Niche Sports Enthusiasts

  published September 23, 2008

  This latest variant in the life-lessons-through-youth-sports continuum takes place in a strange alternate America where people care about rugby... More >>

• Towelhead, American Beauty Scribe Alan Ball's Dreaded Feature-Directing Debut

  published September 10, 2008

  American Beauty scribe Alan Ball makes his dreaded feature-directing debut with another tale of suburban purgatory, featuring yet... More >>

• The Pool

  published September 3, 2008

  Leaving Milwaukee to tell an indigenous tale of life on India's west coast, director Chris Smith inevitably brings an outsider's eye. Instead... More >>

• College Leaves its Stain on One's Very Humanity.

  published August 27, 2008

  Film critics never come home stinking of their honest labor, but the nearest equivalent is covering something like College, which leaves... More >>

• Recalling A Wilder City In NYC Vigilantes Series

  published August 19, 2008

  Was New York City in its debt-saddled, under-patrolled, crime-capital days ever really this Stygian? The wish-fulfillment appeal of vigilantism... More >>

• (Another) Rock 'n' Roll Suicide in Germs Biopic

  published August 5, 2008

  Secret? Not anymore it ain't. In my day, you had to visit a dozen Blockbusters to find a ratty copy of The Decline of Western... More >>

• Profit Motive and The Whispering Wind's Selective Memory

  published July 29, 2008

  There's no voiceover preamble contextualizing Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind's slideshow of headstones and roadside historical... More >>

• America the Beautiful a Well-Intentioned, Scattershot Look at the Image Conscious

  published July 29, 2008

  The scattershot America the Beautiful recapitulates vintage Beauty Myth trumpery: Beauty standards make us average frumps... More >>

• Canary

  published July 23, 2008

  Canary begins on the false promise of momentum: Twelve-year-old Koichi (Hoshi Ishida) is on the lam from child-welfare agents, who... More >>

• David Gordon Green Moves to the Mainstream?

  published July 16, 2008

  Has David Gordon Green gone pop? The question hovers over BAMCinématek's retrospective, which culminates in a preview of Pineapple... More >>