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

• 'A Separation' Makes You the Family Court Judge

  published December 29, 2011

  A Separation—the fifth feature by Iranian writer/director Asghar Farhadi—is an urgently shot courtroom drama designed to... More >>

• 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' Takes Control

  published December 22, 2011

  The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is hardly a personal project. Still, David Fincher's sveltely malevolent remake of the 2009... More >>

• 'War Horse' Is Nothing More Than Schmaltz

  published December 22, 2011

  A doggedly overwrought production less felt than facile, Steven Spielberg's War Horse is an essentially uninvolving prestige... More >>

• Theatrical Favorites of 2011

  published December 22, 2011

  The past 12 months brought a number of powerful, introspective, big-theme cine-statements, many of them by old masters (see below). Some... More >>

• 'Young Adult' Shows the Bitch Is Back

  published December 8, 2011

  Described as a "psychotic prom-queen bitch," the anti-heroine of Young Adult is a prize part that affords Charlize Theron one of the... More >>

• 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' Plays Whack a Mole

  published December 8, 2011

  John le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the 1974 spy novel generally regarded as the writer's finest, is predicated on a... More >>

• 'Shame' Has Body Horror

  published December 1, 2011

  Steve McQueen's first two films both star Michael Fassbender, feature virtually interchangeable titles, and are nearly as grueling to watch as... More >>

• 'A Dangerous Method' Explores the Question 'What Do Men Want?'

  published November 24, 2011

  A Dangerous Method, the title of David Cronenberg's viscerally cerebral new film, is something of an understatement. As cataclysmic as... More >>

• 'The Descendants' Is a Fantasy Island

  published November 17, 2011

  As life-or-death dramedy, The Descendants poses several important questions: Why has it taken Alexander Payne seven years to follow up... More >>

• 'Melancholia' Goes Not With a Whimper, But a Bang

  published November 10, 2011

  The first thing you see in Lars von Trier's Melancholia is a tight close-up of Kirsten Dunst's face. Behind her, slow as molasses,... More >>

• 'J. Edgar' Proves There's Life After 'Hereafter'

  published November 10, 2011

  A resounding "yes" to the question trembling on every lip: There is life after Hereafter! Clint Eastwood goes deep into Oliver Stone... More >>

• 'The Rum Diary' Channels the Ghost of Hunter S. Thompson

  published October 27, 2011

  Written and directed by Bruce Robinson, The Rum Diary is what the Brits might call a rum movie—an oddly inoffensive piece and a... More >>

• 'Martha Marcy May Marlene' Is About People Who Need People

  published October 20, 2011

  As taut and economical as its title is unwieldy, Sean Durkin's Martha Marcy May Marlene—a first feature that won the Best... More >>

• 'Drive' Is No Talk, All Action

  published September 15, 2011

  As stripped-down and propulsive as its robotic title, Drive is the most "American" movie yet by Danish genre director Nicolas Winding... More >>

• 'Black Power Mixtape' Is Your Civil-Rights History

  published September 8, 2011

  "The revolution will not be televised." So Gil Scott-Heron asserted in 1970, and so it was not—at least not on American TV. As... More >>

• The 'Gainsbourg' Dilemma

  published September 1, 2011

  Sometimes it's easier for life to imitate art than vice versa—witness French cartoonist Joann Sfar's first feature, an ambitious attempt... More >>

• 'Tales From the Golden Age': Survival of the Witless

  published August 25, 2011

  The 1990s coinage ostalgie, which combines the German words for "east" and "nostalgia," describes a particular sort of longing.... More >>

• 'Amigo' Is Living History

  published August 18, 2011

  John Sayles's Amigo aspires more to educate than entertain, but it's no less engrossing for that. Torn from the pages of history, if... More >>

• 'Magic Trip' Is an Acid Flashback

  published August 4, 2011

  The subject of Magic Trip is the LSD-powered, cross-country road movie orchestrated by novelist Ken Kesey in the summer of '64. More... More >>

• The Children Are 'The Future'

  published July 28, 2011

  

Is there such thing as a sincerely calculated naïveté? Or put another way, does Miranda July have any idea of how... More >>

• 'Tabloid' Offers the Truth According to Miss Wyoming

  published July 14, 2011

  As a documentarian, Errol Morris is less a humanist than a connoisseur of “human interest,” and Tabloid, his ecstatically... More >>

• Ghetto Shakespeare

  published July 7, 2011

  Where once there were millions, there are now, at best, a few hundred thousand Yiddish speakers—mostly ultra-orthodox Jews, klezmer... More >>

• Of Boys and Men

  published June 30, 2011

  A genially despised genre appealing to a constant and constantly expanding demographic, the high school movie has for years provided ambitious... More >>

• 'The Real World': Midtown

  published June 16, 2011

  Nobody cries, “Stop the presses!” in Andrew Rossi’s Page One: Inside The New York Times; no one would dare.... More >>

• 'Super 8' Flirts With Disaster

  published June 9, 2011

  A big-bang demolition derby, J.J. Abrams' much-anticipated, greatly enjoyable Super 8 seems bound for box-office glory. Opening three... More >>