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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2011 Stories by J. Hoberman

• Godard's Sensuous State of the Union in Film Socialisme

  published June 1, 2011

  In the late ’60s, when Jean-Luc Godard was at the acme of his influence, Manny Farber concluded an enthusiastic if grudging appreciation... More >>

• Not a Picnic: Dennis Hopper's Family Drama Out of the Blue

  published June 1, 2011

  Dennis Hopper changed the game with Easy Rider (1969), blew up his career with The Last Movie (1971), and then, through a never... More >>

• Donald Krim, Cinephile, Film Distributor (1945-2011)

  published May 25, 2011

  A discerning film distributor and a passionate cinephile, Kino International president Donald Krim died of cancer last Friday at the age 65. The news reached many who knew him during the award present... More >>

• A Revolution Eats Its Own in United Red Army

  published May 25, 2011

  The hectic first hour of Koji Wakamatsu’s grueling, engrossing three-hour United Red Army uses newsreel footage, scored by Jim... More >>

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  Cannes Outdoes Itself

  published May 25, 2011

  CANNES, FRANCE—The last day screening of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s ruminative, challenging Once Upon a Time in Anatolia strengthened... More >>

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  Cannes 2011 Has Issues

  published May 18, 2011

  CANNES, FRANCE—Midway through the Cannes Film Festival, the competition has been all about family—more specifically all about parents... More >>

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  City of Life and Death Weeps for the Rape of Nanking

  published May 11, 2011

  Lu Chuan’s City of Life and Death has the title and the feel of a monument. This widescreen, austerely monochromatic, two-hour-plus... More >>

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  Will Ferrell, Down and Out, in Everything Must Go

  published May 11, 2011

  Greatly expanded from a four-page, single-situation story by Raymond Carver, Dan Rush’s first feature, Everything Must Go, is an... More >>

• It's a Baby! Male Midlife, With Child, in Octubre

  published May 4, 2011

  Octubre, an assured first feature by two thirtysomething Peruvian brothers, Daniel and Diego Vega, is a more laconic (and consistently... More >>

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  Mel Gibson Is Crazy (in The Beaver)

  published May 4, 2011

  An earnest, intermittently droll dramedy about a manic-depressive toy manufacturer and his bewildered family, The Beaver is a parable... More >>

• Cave Man: Werner Herzog Can't Get Out of His Own Way in Forgotten Dreams

  published April 27, 2011

  One of the few justifiable recent excursions into 3-D, Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams documents a secret wonder of the... More >>

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  A Tragic Life, Lip-Synched, in The Arbor

  published April 27, 2011

  Precocious playwright Andrea Dunbar (1961–1990) spoke for the lumpen abused of her native Bradford, England; The Arbor, video... More >>

• Marshal Fields: The Comedic Misanthrope, for Your Pleasure

  published April 20, 2011

  A presence who transcends his vehicles, squinty-eyed, bulbous-nosed W.C. Fields (1880–1946) is less a movie star than a figure in our... More >>

• Surviving the Bomb in Children of Hiroshima

  published April 20, 2011

  A movie that has waited nearly 60 years for a U.S. theatrical premiere and could hardly be more timely, Kaneto Shindo’s Children of... More >>

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  Saluting the Supreme Soviet Filmmaker, Dziga Vertov

  published April 13, 2011

  The greatest red documentary filmmaker of the 1920s, the greatest documentary filmmaker of the ’20s, the greatest filmmaker . . . ever? In... More >>

• Transcending Biology, Singing Fados in To Die Like a Man

  published April 6, 2011

  Portuguese fado makes something wistfully jaunty out of inconsolable loss and so does João Pedro Rodrigues’s third feature, To... More >>

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  Meek's Cutoff: Western Disunion

  published April 6, 2011

  Tenacious indie Kelly Reichardt has specialized in quirky, minimalist quasi–road movies in which loners come unmoored in some great... More >>

• Celebrating the Cycle of Life in Le Quattro Volte

  published March 30, 2011

  Grave, beautiful, austerely comic, and casually metempsychotic, Michelangelo Frammartino’s Le Quattro Volte is one of the wiggiest... More >>

• Raising Cain in Todd Haynes's Mildred Pierce

  published March 23, 2011

  This week’s big movie may be found on TV. Arch-independent filmmaker Todd Haynes makes a characteristically sidelong move toward the... More >>

• 35 Years Later, Taxi Driver Still Stuns

  published March 16, 2011

  Some motion pictures produce the uncanny sensation of returning the spectator’s gaze. Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver—a... More >>

• Truffaut's Unjustly Neglected The Soft Skin Ripe for Reappraisal

  published March 9, 2011

  Coming in the wake of The 400 Blows, Shoot the Piano Player, and Jules and Jim, François Truffaut’s fourth... More >>

• Finding (Fake?) Love in Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy

  published March 9, 2011

  Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy is exactly that: The Iranian modernist’s first feature to be shot in the West is a flawless... More >>

• David Perlov's Diary, 1973-1983 Makes Its Belated NYC Premiere at MOMI

  published March 2, 2011

  The flow of history accelerates, slows down, and turns back on itself in the course of David Perlov’s six-hour Diary... More >>

• Matt Damon Wades Through Cosmic Slop in The Adjustment Bureau

  published March 2, 2011

  Written, directed, and co-produced by George Nolfi (a neophyte helmer whose writing credits include The Bourne Ultimatum and... More >>

• Spirits in the Material World in Uncle Boonmee

  published March 2, 2011

  The acme of no-budget, Buddhist-animist, faux-naïve, avant-pop magic neorealism, Apichatpong Weera-sethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who... More >>