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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2010 Stories by J. Hoberman

• How therapy saved the monarchy in The King's Speech

  published December 30, 2010

  A picnic for Anglophiles, not to mention a prospective Oscar bonanza for the brothers Weinstein, The King's Speech is a well-wrought,... More >>

• The Coen brothers take their tongues out of their cheeks for True Grit

  published December 23, 2010

  Boldly reanimating the comic Western that secured John Wayne his Oscar 41 years ago, the Coen brothers' True Grit is well-wrought, if... More >>

• J. Hoberman's Top 10 Movies of 2010

  published December 23, 2010

  Many of my favorite films of the year are still awaiting wider release, so although this top-ten list wraps up my 2010, it can also serve as a... More >>

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  Blissing out on the 3-D, CGI'd, totally incomprehensible head trip of Tron: Legacy

  published December 16, 2010

  Jeff Bridges is God, and, as image-captured from the original 1982 Tron, he's also the devil in Disney's mega-million-dollar reboot,... More >>

• The Micky Ward story falls through the ropes in a too-familiar The Fighter

  published December 16, 2010

  The Fighter is based on the true story of Lowell, Massachusetts, light welterweight champ "Irish" Micky Ward, but, starring Boston... More >>

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  Dance Dance Revulsion: Natalie Portman goes batshit in a tutu in Black Swan

  published December 9, 2010

  A near-irresistible exercise in bravura absurdity, Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan deserves to become a minor classic of heterosexual camp... More >>

• Mother and child reunion in Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture

  published December 9, 2010

  Winner of last spring's SXSW festival and current indie darling, Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture is a comedy of youthful confusion that... More >>

• Saint Clint chokes the life out of Hereafter

  published October 20, 2010

  Life is wonderful, death is wow, chance is weird, and Clint Eastwood's Hereafter is a puddle of tepid ick. Is America's last... More >>

• Children sentenced to a certain fate in Never Let Me Go

  published October 6, 2010

  Published five years ago, Kazuo Ishiguro's massively praised Never Let Me Go is set in an alternate universe where life has been... More >>

• David Fincher commented on Mark Zuckerberg's status. With The Social Network, he invites you to join him.

  published September 29, 2010

  The Social Network is a wonderful title, at once Olympian in its detachment and self-descriptive in its buzz. Everyone will opine (and... More >>

• Lebanon takes you inside an Israeli tank and the reality of war

  published September 22, 2010

  Lebanon, written and directed by Samuel Maoz, is not just the year's most impressive first feature but also the strongest new movie of... More >>

• Becoming a couple, squirmy moment by squirmy moment, in Everyone Else

  published September 15, 2010

  An exercise in voyeurism, Maren Ade's provocatively titled, superbly performed, emotionally graphic Everyone Else is more fascinating... More >>

• Todd Solondz is back with an update in Life During Wartime

  published August 25, 2010

  Elegant opening credits, written as if calligraphy on a wedding invitation, yield to a couple in blunt close-up — unhappy, interracial,... More >>

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  Red Bull: Alain Resnais does his carrot-topped muse no favors in Wild Grass

  published August 4, 2010

  Alain Resnais' Wild Grass has plenty of fans — it copped an award at Cannes in 2009 — but I don't see what they see. The... More >>

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  Lesbian family values in The Kids Are All Right

  published July 21, 2010

  Serious comedy, powered by an enthusiastic cast and full of good-natured innuendo, Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right gives... More >>

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  Killer's tormented self gets simplified for screen

  published July 7, 2010

  Implicit in its title, the premise of The Killer Inside Me — directed by Michael Winterbottom from Jim Thompson's 1952 crime novel... More >>

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  There's got to be more to Joan Rivers

  published June 23, 2010

  Opening with a close-up of the crow's feet around its subject's eyes and expanding to reveal her Botox-frozen upper lip, the... More >>

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  Liberal guilt's got soul in Please Give

  published June 9, 2010

  Nicole Holofcener's fourth feature, Please Give, is a notable rebound from the insufficiently examined self-absorption of her last,... More >>

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  Jury of One: The Cannes crew picked a true winner, but the best of the fest wasn't even allowed to compete

  published May 26, 2010

  CANNES, France — The jury has their awards, and I have mine. Sometimes they even coincide. Palme d'Or winner Apichatpong... More >>

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  Noah Baumbach goes west for his latest self-obsessed, unlikable protagonist in Greenberg

  published March 24, 2010

  Sad, funny and acutely self-conscious, Noah Baumbach's new movie is the sort of mordant character study that people imagine were common in the... More >>

• Mission Finally Accomplished: American hero Matt Damon and his WMD of a movie Green Zone confirm the big lie, Hollywood-style

  published March 10, 2010

  Better late than never — a bang-bang pulse-pounder predicated on the Bush administration's deliberate fabrication of WMDs in Iraq, Paul... More >>

• History Repeats: There's certainty at the end of The White Ribbon's unsolved mystery—and a sure hand behind it.

  published February 24, 2010

  The White Ribbon is Michael Haneke's first German-language film since the original Funny Games (1997) and, addressing what used... More >>

• It depends what the meaning of “conscience” is in Police, Adjective, a seriously black cop comedy

  published February 3, 2010

  Detective stories imply that mysteries can be solved, or at least rationally explained. Even the most debased example is a secular article of... More >>

• New Orleans is the breeding ground for one Bad Lieutenant

  published February 3, 2010

  The joke's on someone in Werner Herzog's awkwardly titled Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Possibly Abel Ferrara who, exploding... More >>

• My Blue (Screen) Heaven: Thanks to the magic of 3-D CGI, Peter Jackson makes a one-dimensional Lovely Bones

  published January 13, 2010

  A one-film cabinet of curiosities, The Lovely Bones turns the most successful CGI director of the '00s loose on one of the decade's... More >>