Email Author Nick Pinkerton

2009 Stories by Nick Pinkerton

• Old Partner, a Tale of Marriage, Labor, and Love

  published December 29, 2009

  The key image in Old Partner is that of farmer Choi Won-kyun, 79, slumped in his jerry-rigged cart, being pulled down the rural South... More >>

• The Passably Distracting A Film with Me in It

  published December 29, 2009

  Mark (Mark Doherty) is a hardly-working actor, snubbed at an audition to play "Concerned Neighbor," behind on rent, and barely tolerated by his... More >>

• Country Music, Faded Stardom, Liquor, and Age in Crazy Heart

  published December 15, 2009

  Yesterday's honky-tonk hero, Bad Blake, arrives at a Clovis, New Mexico, bowling alley. It's another in a string of low-paying, low-turnout... More >>

• Howard Hawks's His Girl Friday at BAM

  published December 15, 2009

  Howard Hawks's 1940 His Girl Friday reworked a decade-old Broadway smash, The Front Page, in which adversarial paper editor and... More >>

• Dino Risi, Making it Look Easy, at MOMA

  published December 8, 2009

  Law student Roberto is bullied away from his desk when an obstreperous stranger, Bruno, barges into his apartment to use the phone, then drags... More >>

• Until the Light Takes Us: A Norwegian Black Metal Documentary

  published December 1, 2009

  The subject of Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell's documentary is Norwegian Black Metal, a scorched-earth subset of thrash that materialized around... More >>

• 'James Whale Festival' at Film Forum

  published December 1, 2009

  Idle and ailing, James Whale drowned himself in his swimming pool in 1957—shades of the obsolete Englishman-in-Hollywood from Evelyn... More >>

• Gigante Never Quite Crests

  published December 1, 2009

  The title refers to Jara (Horacio Camandule), a swaybacked lug who stands a head taller than his co-workers at a warehouse-size Montevideo... More >>

• Dave Foley Goes Lower than Celebrity Poker for The Strip

  published December 1, 2009

  Could Dave Foley prostitute his talent to amuse any further without actually becoming a prostitute? In a plunging step down from emceeing... More >>

• Matt Dillon and Laurence Fishburne in Armored

  published December 1, 2009

  A crew of working-stiff armored truck personnel decide to lift their own payload with a heist plan that no one would ever attempt outside a... More >>

• Small Change at IFC, A Winter Portrait at Alliance Française

  published November 24, 2009

  Literally translated as "Pocket Money," the title of François Truffaut's 1976 film gets at something meager and precious about... More >>

• 'Celebrating Chekhov' and Ward No. 6

  published November 24, 2009

  With "Celebrating Chekhov," Lincoln Center compiles seven screen adaptations from the good doctor. Of the five Soviet-era productions, 1970's... More >>

• Buschel's Missing Person Gestures Towards Missing Profundity

  published November 17, 2009

  John Rosow is a P.I., hired off a cold-call to trail a man. It turns out he's distinctly bad at his job—once he's got his mark in sight,... More >>

• James DeMonaco's Debut, Staten Island

  published November 17, 2009

  Native son James DeMonaco overlaps three Staten Island stories, set amid strip-mall Italian joints, tasteless suburban manors, and ship... More >>

• Nicolas Cage Is an Axiom

  published November 10, 2009

  Nic Cage has a film with Werner Herzog coming out next week, and "serious actor" respect coming back with it. What's next? Something called... More >>

• Bad Wine Bar Music Backs the Big Questions in Oh My God?

  published November 10, 2009

  Have you been praying for The Varieties of Religious Experience translated to World Beat? Peter Rodger's documentary Oh My God?... More >>

• More Fat Guys Screamin' About Pussy in Splinterheads

  published November 3, 2009

  Future students of early-21st-century screen comedy will be mystified by just how much film we devoted to fat guys screaming about gettin'... More >>

• The House of the Devil Proficient, if not Psychologically Piercing

  published October 27, 2009

  The Devil, apparently, lives in an out-of-the-way gingerbread Victorian, just past the cemetery, where college sophomore Samantha (Jocelin... More >>

• Sátántangó Turns 15, MOMA Throws (Serious) Party

  published October 20, 2009

  Sinking into the literal and spiritual bog of a fetid Hungarian backwater, Béla Tarr's 1994 Sátántangó is... More >>

• Saw VI, Another Bumblefuck

  published October 20, 2009

  If you haven't followed the series up until now, there's not much point in trying to catch up with the agonized convolutions of the... More >>

• At Least Hilary Swank Looks Like an Amelia

  published October 20, 2009

  Hilary Swank, slender, toothsome, and long-jawed, is a gussied-up physical match for Amelia Earhart—and this is the only meaningful way in... More >>

• Remake of a Remake Only as Good as its Stepfather

  published October 20, 2009

  Awkwardly chummy guys with weird glasses who disappear into darkened rooms with your laughing mother to listen to Donald Fagen solo... More >>

• Spike Jonze Gets His Long-Overdue MOMA Retrospective

  published October 6, 2009

  Has anybody been as ubiquitous along the post-Nirvana alterna-indie-hipster continuum as Spike Jonze? Coming of age too late for hardcore... More >>

• 'Hungarians in Hollywood' at BAM

  published October 6, 2009

  Buda and Pest united, and one of the world's most civilized capitals evolved. Then wrong World War allegiances contracted Hungary's borders,... More >>

• Ricky Gervais Can Only Get So Far, Or Funny, with Invention of Lying

  published September 29, 2009

  The Invention of Lying's plot hook sounds like a pile-up of Jim Carrey–Tom Shadyac concept comedies. The assumption is that there... More >>