Email Author Nick Pinkerton

2010 Stories by Nick Pinkerton

• The Strange Case of Angelica: Touched By an Angel

  published December 29, 2010

  In 1952, Manoel de Oliveira sketched a fable of impossible longing that became, finally, The Strange Case of Angelica. Though the... More >>

• The Agony, Sans the Ecstasy, in Hadewijch

  published December 22, 2010

  Enthusiasm is to be expected from a postulant nun, but there are worries about Hadewijch (Julie Sokolowski). Fingers knotted around her... More >>

• Little Fockers and the Franchise of Diminishing Returns

  published December 22, 2010

  Just in time for the whole family to file into the multiplex on a silent Christmas night when there’s nowhere else to go: a return to the... More >>

• I Am Secretly an Important Man: Profile of Underground Bard Jesse Bernstein

  published December 15, 2010

  “The following is pure fiction: I’ve been handsome and popular all my life.” That sour joke is one of the better lines from... More >>

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  Sweet Lou Castel, Still Fighting the Good Fight

  published December 8, 2010

  Olivier Assayas’s Irma Vep (1997), about the filming of a Les vampires remake in contemporary Paris, is, on the surface,... More >>

• You Wont Miss Me on the Luxury of a Brooklyn Quarter-Life Crisis

  published December 8, 2010

  You Wont Miss Me, Ry Russo-Young’s character study of a gal passing the worst years of her life in cool North Brooklyn, leads off... More >>

• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Shows Signs of Life on Narnia

  published December 8, 2010

  A massive project, taken up lightly by Disney in the giddy post–Lord of the Rings atmosphere and dropped upon failing to return the... More >>

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  All Good Things: True Crime, Minus the Truth

  published December 1, 2010

  Generously bankrolled (then shelved) by an imperiled Weinstein Company and peopled with Oscar® nominees, it’s tempting to call All... More >>

• Come Undone's Affair to Remember

  published December 1, 2010

  Anna (Alba Rohrwacher) is a thirtyish accountant living in monotonous, childless comfort with her irreproachably well-intentioned loaf of a... More >>

• The, Derivative, Obvious, Quite Enjoyable Warrior's Way

  published December 1, 2010

  A successful example of the tropes exchange program, The Warrior's Way happily treats its novelty, mashup premise—cowboys meet... More >>

• For Cannon Films, Chuck Norris + Godard = Success

  published November 17, 2010

  For more than a decade, behind a logo that looked nothing like a cannon, Cannon Films produced work by a pool of auteurs ranging from Godard to... More >>

• William S. Burroughs: A Man Within Strokes the Myth

  published November 17, 2010

  In Yony Leyser’s documentary hagiography—which ends with John Waters nominating its subject for iconoclast-artist... More >>

• In Heartless Jim Sturgess Makes a Deal With the Devil

  published November 17, 2010

  Heartless is multimedia artist Philip Ridley’s third feature film, and his first since 1995; in the interim, he’s been busy... More >>

• Miserable White Folks, Done Right, in Helena From the Wedding

  published November 10, 2010

  Alex and Alice (Melanie Lynskey and Lee Tergesen), newlywed but together long enough to familiarly co-habit a bathroom, arrive to host a New... More >>

• Plamegate Gets the Somber Sean Penn Treatment in Fair Game

  published November 3, 2010

  Adapted from Valerie Plame and Joseph C. Wilson’s memoirs, the unsurprisingly validating Fair Game begins as a timeline-hopping... More >>

• Long Does Not Equal Epic in Algerian War Drama Outside the Law

  published November 3, 2010

  Rule of law scarcely discourages the endless reprisals in Rachid Bouchareb’s Algerian War–era family-ties drama Outside the... More >>

• Red Hill a Poor (Aussie) Man's Coen Bros. Western

  published November 3, 2010

  Patrick Hughes’s feature debut starts out promisingly enough, setting the table for a square-meal genre picture. Relocated big-city cop... More >>

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  Joseph Sarno, the Chekhov of Softcore

  published October 27, 2010

  Infidelity timed around the LIRR schedule. Key parties and sloppy boozing among the split-level set. Swappers, cheaters, hookers, and go-go... More >>

• Faith, Film, and Lots of Fado in The Portuguese Nun

  published October 20, 2010

  A French actress, Julie de Hauranne (Leonor Baldaque), arrives in Lisbon to shoot a 17th-century costume drama. She’ll star in an arty... More >>

• Cleveland Is Dying: Sketching a Town in Decline in Sometimes City

  published October 20, 2010

  “It’s hard to believe you can buy a house for $1,900,” says one of the subjects of Tom Jarmusch’s documentary, Sometimes... More >>

• A Portrait of the Muslim-American Hardcore Scene, The Taqwacores Is Not Punk Rock

  published October 20, 2010

  There are all the elements of a terrific spoof in The Taqwacores, which follows a year in the life of a house of Muslim punk/hardcore... More >>

• What Happens After the Ex-Wife Dies? Nora's Will

  published October 13, 2010

  José (Fernando Luján) has been divorced from Nora for 20 years. They were married at least as long. Now he keeps an apartment... More >>

• An Idea? A Place? Just What Exactly Is Urville?

  published October 13, 2010

  “Urville,” explained at the beginning of a fanciful documentary that explains little else about itself, is a rumored Mediterranean... More >>

• How Do You Solve a Problem Like Hildegard von Bingen? Vision

  published October 13, 2010

  The fifth collaboration of director Margarethe Von Trotta and actress Barbara Sukowa, Vision continues the proto-feminist canonization... More >>

• Death by Chicken Tikka Masala in It's a Wonderful Afterlife

  published October 6, 2010

  A lady-murderer is loose in West London’s Indian community, using food as her deadly weapon—knife-point feedings of lava-hot vindaloo... More >>