Selected by Nick Pinkerton | Freelance

“Emily Dickinson wrote that she knew she was in the presence of poetry if she felt ‘physically as if the top of [her] head were taken off,’ which nicely describes the sensation I had when first encountering the voluptuous montage in Badlands which combines Sissy Spacek’s naïve voice-over, so like faded romance magazine copy; stereopticon slides; Martin Sheen playing soldier boy; and Carl Orff’s bouyant ‘Gassenhauer,’ occurring shortly after the film’s first nonchalant murder. Along with the work of David Lynch, which I was discovering at around the same time, Terrence Malick’s debut film was my introduction to cinematic poetry in the American grain.” – N.P.

Nick Pinkerton is a freelance journalist and film programmer. He has written about films for Sight & Sound, ArtForum, the Village Voice, Frieze, Little White Lies, and Reverseshot.com, among other publications. He is currently a member of the New York Film Critics Circle.

He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, lives in Brooklyn, NY, and has programmed at a variety of venues throughout the NYC area.

He tweets as @NickPinkerton.