Email Author J. Hoberman

Awards

• 2010 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published October 13, 2009

  "Let the Mild Rumpus Start!"

• 2010 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published September 29, 2009

  "Robert Frank's Real America"

• 2010 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published February 4, 2009

  "Why Hard Times Won't Mean Good Times"

• 2009 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published June 12, 2008

  "Deep Freeze"

• 2009 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published September 18, 2008

  "What We Learned About the Election in this Summer's Movies"

• 2009 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published January 24, 2008

  "Kill One for the Gipper"

• 2007 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published December 5, 2006

  "Mel Gibson is Responsible for All the Wars in the World"

• 2007 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published May 16, 2006

  "The New Disaster Movie"

• 2007 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published March 14, 2006

  "Anarchy in the UK"

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2008 Stories by J. Hoberman

• Dogs of War: Waltz With Bashir

  published December 25, 2008

  Ari Folman’s broodingly original Waltz With Bashir is a documentary that seems only possible, not to mention... More >>

• Mickey Rourke and Darren Aronofsky Make a Visceral Comeback in The Wrestler

  published December 18, 2008

  The Wrestler may be plenty visceral, but it’s no more a sports movie than professional wrestling is a... More >>

• Plamegate, Reimagined as a Soccer-Mom Duel

  published December 18, 2008

  Ripped from yesterday’s headlines — or, perhaps, given the scenario’s emphasis on motherhood, from... More >>

• Wendy and Lucy's Lady With the Little Dog

  published December 11, 2008

  Sometimes, less really is more. Two weeks before Christmas, at the very time prestige pictures and tinsel-bedecked holiday... More >>

• Soderbergh's Che: One-Ton Guerrilla

  published December 11, 2008

  And so the endless campaign wraps up with a flurry of virtual leaders. Richard Nixon will always be part of America’s... More >>

• Milk: Proposition Hate

  published November 27, 2008

  Gus Van Sant has never been what you’d call a risk-averse filmmaker, but... More >>

• Fall Film: Robert Downey, Sr. — A Prince

  published November 13, 2008

  Before his son and namesake grew up to be the edgiest Hollywood actor of his generation, Robert Downey Sr. enjoyed a small... More >>

• W.: Bush's Brain

  published October 16, 2008

  W. may be less frenzied than the usual Oliver Stone sensory bombardment, but in revisiting the early ’00s by... More >>

• Happy-Go-Lucky: Female Persuasion From Mike Leigh

  published October 9, 2008

  It’s uncommon these days to see movies with women in strong central roles. Rarer still, at least outside the... More >>

• Lola Montes: Revered and Reviled, Max Ophuls' Legendary Swan Song Returns

  published October 9, 2008

  A legendary disaster on its initial release, and consequently one of the great causes célèbres of auteurist film criticism, Max... More >>

• Religulous: Bill Maher's Adolescent Case Against Religion

  published October 2, 2008

  Redolent of Roman decadence and authority gone mad, the title Religulous rolls pleasingly off the tongue. But Bill... More >>

• Burn After Reading: Intolerable Cruelty

  published September 11, 2008

  Masters of the carefully crafted cheap shot, Joel and Ethan Coen have built a career on flippancy. Given their refusal to... More >>

• Costume Ball

  published July 3, 2008

  Catherine Breillat hitches her wagon to the hottest of European stars, Asia Argento, in a highly entertaining adaptation of French dandy... More >>

• Oh, Canada

  published June 19, 2008

  Guy Maddin’s frozen reverie on Canada’s “Gateway to the West” is barely defrosted by the warmth of the projector bulb.... More >>

• Some Alternative Cannes Awards

  published May 29, 2008

  Cannes, France: The competition for the Palme d’Or is ongoing as I write, but the story of the 61st Cannes Film... More >>

• Shots in the Dark at Cannes 2008

  published May 22, 2008

  CANNES, France—No need for dreaming here. Each Cannes Film Festival generates its own metaphors for a 10-day regimen of visions in the... More >>

• Speed Racer On the Fast Track to Nowhere

  published May 8, 2008

  Converting a fondly remembered cartoon series — one of the first Japanese animes syndicated on American TV — into... More >>

• Standard Operating Procedure: Get Out of Jail Free

  published May 1, 2008

  It’s been 20 years since Errol Morris made The Thin Blue Line — a found noir that served to free an... More >>

• A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams blurs into view

  published May 1, 2008

  Danny Williams, subject of Esther Robinson’s documentary portrait A Walk Into the Sea, was a ’60s casualty. His brief life... More >>

• Etgar Keret's Jellyfish: An Israeli Movie With Neither Politics nor Religion

  published April 24, 2008

  Predicated on the spectacle of functionally depressed types stuck in mildly ridiculous situations not entirely of their own making, the... More >>

• Floating Life

  published April 17, 2008

  GO  FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON The Red Balloon was the art-house E.T. of 1956. Flight of the Red... More >>

• Spurlock's Search: Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?

  published April 17, 2008

  Morgan Spurlock, the daredevil documentarian who lived on Big Macs for a month and turned this exercise in “body... More >>

• Army of One

  published April 10, 2008

  Spare yet tactile, a mysterious mixture of lightness and gravity, Alexander Sokurov’s Alexandra is founded on... More >>

• Sk8ter Boi: Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park

  published March 13, 2008

  The pleasing circularity of Gus Van Sant’s masterful Paranoid Park is not only a function of the film’s... More >>

• Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad returns

  published January 31, 2008

  Back in the day, literal-minded audiences had great fun pretending to be baffled by this artiest of European art films. Basically, Last... More >>