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

• "True Grit" Review: The Coen Brothers Take Their Tongues Out of Their Cheeks

  published December 23, 2010

  The Coen brothers' True Grit is well-wrought, if overly talkative, and seriously ambitious. Opening with a strategically abbreviated Old... More >>

• Mother and Child Reunion in Lena Dunham's "Tiny Furniture"

  published December 23, 2010

  Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture is a comedy of youthful confusion that gets its kick not only for evoking a world of unromantic hookups,... More >>

• Talk of the Nation

  published December 23, 2010

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

• Natalie Portman Goes Batshit in a Tutu in "Black Swan"

  published December 16, 2010

  A near-irresistible exercise in bravura absurdity, Black Swan deserves to become a minor classic of heterosexual camp — at the... More >>

• "Tron: Legacy" a Totally Incomprehensible Head Trip of CGI

  published December 16, 2010

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

• Mark Wahlberg's "The Fighter" Lets Micky Ward's Too-Familiar Story Fall Through the Ropes

  published December 16, 2010

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

• "Last Train Home" Calculates the Human Cost of a Chinese Miracle by Mapping a Family Tragedy

  published November 18, 2010

  Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan's prize-winning documentary is an intimate portrait of an unfathomable immensity, focusing on a single... More >>

• Irrational Premise Harangue's Eastwood's "Hereafter," Matt Damon Be Damned

  published October 21, 2010

  Is America's last cowboy icon prospecting for more Oscar gold? Taking for his map an original screenplay by British docu-dramatist Peter Morgan... More >>

• "Howl" the Movie, Touching on Ginsberg's Early Life, Dramatizes the Poem's Obscenity Trial

  published October 21, 2010

  As suggested by its title, Allen Ginsberg's game-changing poem Howl is essentially performative — and so is Howl, the... More >>

• "Never Let Me Go" Sentences Children to a Certain Fate

  published October 7, 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 >>

• "The Social Network" Invites You to Comment on Mark Zuckerberg's Status

  published September 30, 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 >>

• "Life During Wartime" Features the Sensibilities of Todd Solondz — With South Florida as the Backdrop

  published September 9, 2010

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

• "Lebanon" Takes You Inside an Israeli Tank and the Reality of War

  published September 2, 2010

  Lebanon, written and directed by Samuel Maoz, is the strongest new movie of any kind I've seen in 2010. Like Ari Folman's groundbreaking... More >>

• Alain Resnais Does His Carrot-Topped Muse No Favors in "Wild Grass"

  published July 29, 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 >>

• Lesbian Family Values in "The Kids Are All Right"

  published July 22, 2010

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

• "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work" Review: There Has to Be More to Joan Rivers

  published June 24, 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 >>

• Please Give Exposes the Soul of Liberal Guilt

  published June 10, 2010

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

• "No One Knows About Persian Cats" Peers Into Life in Iran

  published May 20, 2010

  The great boundary-crosser of Iranian cinema, Bahman Ghobadi purposefully steps over the line with No One Knows About Persian Cats... More >>

• "Greenberg" Goes West With an Unlikable Protagonist

  published March 25, 2010

  Sad, funny, and acutely self-conscious, Greenberg is the sort of mordant character study that people imagine were common in the '70s.... More >>

• "Chloe" a Gallic Shrug-fest of Adultery

  published March 25, 2010

  Chloe is posh, cool, and never less than obvious. The movie was adapted by Erin Cressida Wilson from Anne Fontaine's marital thriller... More >>

• "A Town Called Panic" Mostly Extreme Quirk to Handle a Million Bricks

  published March 25, 2010

  Animals and people are all jumbled up in this hyperactive Belgian puppet animation — as in A Town Called Panic's central... More >>

• Green Zone and Matt Damon Confirm the Big Lie, Hollywood-style

  published March 11, 2010

  Paul Greengrass' expertly assembled Green Zone has evidently been parked for some time on Universal's shelf. Had the movie been released... More >>

• Alice in Wonderland Review: Tim Burton's Vision Is Not Nearly Curiouser and Curiouser Enough

  published March 4, 2010

  Walt Disney mulled an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland for decades before producing an animated feature in 1951, although by all accounts,... More >>

• Police, Adjective Is a Serious Black Comedy About Cops and Conscience

  published February 25, 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 >>

• The White Ribbon Review: There's a Sure Hand Behind This Unsolved Mystery

  published February 11, 2010

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