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 May 16, 2006

  "The New Disaster Movie"

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

  "Anarchy in the UK"

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

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

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2002 Stories by J. Hoberman

• Days of Heaven

  published December 31, 2002

  Far From Heaven is something close to universal. As predicted here when the movie opened in early November, Todd Haynes's faux-'50s... More >>

• Voice Critics' Top Tens

  published December 31, 2002

  Not a bad year at all: The top four films are masterpieces that, rooted in documentary as they are, will only improve with age. Is this the first... More >>

• Portraits of the Artist

  published December 24, 2002

  Roman Polanski's world is predicated on violent absurdity, and in the first few moments of his new movie, The Pianist, war breaks out with... More >>

• Vice City

  published December 17, 2002

  Arriving a year late and saddled with abundant backstory, Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York is finally slouching into Bethlehem,... More >>

• Road Warriors

  published December 10, 2002

  Driving into the blizzard of Christmas releases come two star-powered road movies, the echt-American About Schmidt and Brit fave Morvern... More >>

• The Truths About Charlie

  published December 3, 2002

  Being John Malkovich, the comic brain-twister directed by Spike Jonze from Charlie Kaufman's screenplay, invited analogy seekers to cast... More >>

• Space Odysseys

  published November 26, 2002

  The unique trajectory of Steven Soderbergh's career takes him close to the stratosphere with his wholly unexpected and unexpectedly fine remake of... More >>

• Roads to Hell

  published November 19, 2002

  "Life swarms with innocent monsters," Charles Baudelaire famously observed in The Spleen of Paris—and, although none could be... More >>

• It's a Sin

  published November 12, 2002

  A sensation in Mexico, where it broke Y TuMamá También's opening-weekend record and is now the highest-grossing homemade... More >>

• Signs of the Times

  published November 5, 2002

  It may not have seemed so then, but the mid-1950s moment of Marilyn and Howl, Disneyland and Songs for Swingin' Lovers, blue suede... More >>

• Salvage Lot

  published October 29, 2002

  The past isn't dead—it isn't even past—in The Weight of Water, Kathryn Bigelow's fiercely wrought, if sub-Faulknerian,... More >>

• Deconstructing Hairy

  published October 22, 2002

  She's been dead for nearly half a century, but Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is the quintessential artist of our moment. Kahlo was female, Latina,... More >>

• Slaves to the Grind

  published October 15, 2002

  Paul Schrader's Auto Focus and Roger Avary's The Rules of Attraction are just about as clinical as their titles imply, and the... More >>

• They Aim to Please

  published October 8, 2002

  Two cheers for Michael Moore—and a raspberry. Released as the countdown begins for a second Gulf War, Moore's latest documentary psychodrama,... More >>

• Collision Courses

  published October 1, 2002

  A match made in PR heaven, Punch-Drunk Love brings together Hollywood's most doggedly lowbrow young comic and its most fearlessly grandiose... More >>

• The Untouchables

  published September 24, 2002

  Fools rush in, and so does British stalkumentarian and pop culture muckraker Nick Broomfield—this time churning up the murky waters that have... More >>

• Fling Time in a Quiet Town

  published September 17, 2002

  TORONTO—The urbanologist Jane Jacobs imagined Toronto as the idyllic future of city life. New York and national film critics see... More >>

• Mirror Men

  published September 10, 2002

  Increasingly famous in the decade since his death, the enigmatic Harry Smith pushes to the limit any number of conceptions of the artist as... More >>

• Invisible Cities

  published September 3, 2002

  Jean-Luc Godard's In Praise of Love is tactile yet elusive—its tragic grandeur is as graspable as running water and as shifty as... More >>

• Computer Love

  published August 27, 2002

  Once upon a time, motion pictures were theorized as a technology of truth, 24 frames per second. But as movies lose their basis in photographed... More >>

• Artificially Preserved

  published August 20, 2002

  The comic books of my childhood used to employ the written sound effect "Glorch!" to signify a violent lump in the throat. There's a kindred form... More >>

• Literary Agents

  published August 13, 2002

  "It is possible for a writer to make, or remake at least, for a reader, the primary pleasures of eating, or drinking, or looking on, or sex," A.S.... More >>

• Hungry Hearts

  published August 6, 2002

  "Madame Bovary c'est moi," her creator, Gustave Flaubert, is supposed to have said. To which Jennifer Aniston can now add, "Me too." The... More >>

• Crime Scenes

  published July 30, 2002

  The title Full Frontal promises a daring disclosure, but what Steven Soderbergh's unshapely new movie delivers is a familiar, if... More >>

• Industrial Symphony

  published July 9, 2002

  The greatest of all pulp fantasies, Fritz Lang's 1927 Metropolis returns to the borough that inspired it in the most complete version since... More >>