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ARTINFO.com

ARTINFO.com is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): J. Hoberman.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
The Hunger Games (2012) J. Hoberman The Hunger Games is undeniably progressive in making its protagonist so plucky, independent, and self-actualizing a young woman.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
Bonsai (2011) J. Hoberman Chilean director Cristián Jiménez's "Bonsái" is the essence of cosmopolitan provincialism. A superbly grounded, programmatically small, meta-literary tragicomedy of student-boho life.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
The Dark Knight Rises (2012) J. Hoberman The Dark Knight Rises not only celebrates a caped Übermensch but is itself, as a commercial enterprise, something beyond good and evil.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
Damsels in Distress (2011) J. Hoberman [Damsels in Distress] is genteel lowbrow farce, with musical comedy aspirations.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
John Carter (2012) J. Hoberman For the most part, the first "live action" feature by Andrew Stanton, is graphically splendiferous and enjoyably nonsensical.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
Post Mortem (2010) J. Hoberman Building in intensity, this is a movie that's both elusive and visceral in its metaphors. The perverse anti-virtuosity of the filmmaking heightens the sense of pervasive shabbiness and ineptitude. It's a new and original vision of political terror.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
Artificial Paradises (2011) J. Hoberman Paraisos Artificiales is an exemplary situation documentary that employs one professional actor, Luisa Pardo, and a single location, Playa Jicacal, as the basis for an 83-minute movie that's as much reverie as narrative.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
Keep the Lights On (2012) J. Hoberman The movie's elaborately failed closure only makes sense once you understand that the filmmaker's all-too-human desire for self-justification apparently trumped the ruthless self-control required to make a work of art.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
Cloud Atlas (2012) J. Hoberman I wouldn't call The Cloud Atlas pure cinema, but... the mix and mash trumps the balderdash.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
The Master (2012) J. Hoberman The main thing is that The Master is so unlike anything else in its seriousness and so admirable in its vitality that one has to support it.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
Let the Fire Burn (2012) J. Hoberman The violent clash between constitutional freedoms and social society, not to mention the racial conflict, make for a very American story.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
Stand Clear of the Closing Doors (2013) J. Hoberman The sub working-class, Latino milieu shades more exotic than authentic, but the cast is terrific, the movie is extremely well-shot up close and personal.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
The Grandmaster (2013) J. Hoberman The Grandmaster strikes me as Wong's strongest film since In the Mood for Love and surprisingly credible as an exercise in kung fu stylistics as well as temps perdu.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
Burning Bush (2014) J. Hoberman The opening is sensational and, as if the narrative weren't compelling enough, [Agnieszka] Holland keeps trying to top it for the rest of the movie with a hectic, hyper dramatic camera style.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
La Beaute du Diable (1949) J. Hoberman However fusty and old-fashioned, La Beauté du Diable burnished my appreciation for Michel Simon's comic gifts.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
Four Bags Full (1956) J. Hoberman In essence, A Pig Across Paris plays the German occupation for slapstick comedy.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974) J. Hoberman Celine and Julie is verdant, airy, and playful.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
Dark Shadows (2012) J. Hoberman Sad to report, the [Tim] Burton opus is an unnecessarily complicated tale involving too many characters, not to mention an unresolved moral conundrum that has us happily rooting for an unapologetic mass serial killer.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
Elena (2011) J. Hoberman Andrey Zvyagintsev is the most internationally-acclaimed Russian filmmaker to emerge during the Putin era, and his expertly directed third feature Elena is, albeit oblique, the most vivid evocation I've seen of Moscow's contemporary society.
Posted Feb 25, 2019  Edit critic review
Bernie (2011) J. Hoberman Bernie lacks the edge of malice one might reasonably expect from so nasty a tale.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) J. Hoberman The movie's mad gusto is truly infectious.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
2 Days in New York (2012) J. Hoberman 2 Days in New York is initially quite pleasing in its chaotic near slapstick but the non-stop manic insouciance grows wearisome and ultimately self-indulgent.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Almayer's Folly (2011) J. Hoberman Almayer's Folly, is a brilliant, wayward mash-up suggesting European colonialism as a madman's fantasy.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Cosmopolis (2012) J. Hoberman Cosmopolis is as an exercise in outlandish dialogue and bone-dry humor, a contemporary allegory that is also a sustained riff on the idea of a virtual world.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Lawless (2012) J. Hoberman Lawless wants to be something larger than life, but it's too joyless to be a tall tale and too self-satisfied for tragedy.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
The Gatekeepers (2012) J. Hoberman Six smart, tough guys, tightly framed and talking to the camera: Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh's compelling Oscar-nominated doc The Gatekeepers gives the voice of experience a human face.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Caesar Must Die (2012) J. Hoberman Despite its lean and hungry look, the Taviani Brothers' Caesar Must Die may be the most effectively gimmicked version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in the 75 years since Orson Welles's modern-dress, anti-fascist staging.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Side Effects (2013) J. Hoberman Side Effects showcases much of what the just 50-year-old filmmaker does best.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Le pont du nord (1981) J. Hoberman What the Surrealists found in Louis Feuillade's World War I serials, we can find here. [Jacques] Rivette too renders the ordinary dreamlike by filming his fantasy-driven actors in the midst of life.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Blancanieves (2012) J. Hoberman Filmed in glamorous black and white, all dialogue furnished via intertitles, the movie is less a pastiche than The Artist and, at least initially, it's not as precious.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
To the Wonder (2012) J. Hoberman Where The Tree of Life was sanctimonious, To the Wonder is about the failure of sanctimony.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
This Ain't California (2012) J. Hoberman This Ain't California is what the Germans would call a "sehr schöne Märchen."
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Post Tenebras Lux (2012) J. Hoberman If only the movie were as terrific as its 10-minute pre-title sequence.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Behind the Candelabra (2013) J. Hoberman Although Behind the Candelabra may be Soderbergh's swan song, it's an uncanny resurrection of the creature that was Liberace.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Something in the Air (2012) J. Hoberman The great thing about Something in the Air is that the movie makes the thrill of that brief but all-encompassing rupture apparent without sentimentality or even (excessive) nostalgia.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
The Great Gatsby (2013) J. Hoberman Subtlety is not a concept but giddy as it is, The Great Gatsby lacks the lunatic excess of Moulin Rouge!
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
The Bling Ring (2013) J. Hoberman The Bling Ring is basically the same thing over and over.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
I'm So Excited! (2013) J. Hoberman I'm So Excited! is a bit repetitive, but it's unashamedly frivolous and often very funny.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Museum Hours (2012) J. Hoberman Museum Hours offers neither a city symphony nor a love story but a serenely eccentric way of looking.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Viola (2012) J. Hoberman Viola, [Matias] Piñeiro's latest film is his most accomplished film to date, at once lucid and opaque using an amateur, all-female production of Shakespeare's cross-dressing comedy Twelfth Night.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013) J. Hoberman [Ain't Them Bodies Saints] is... beautifully shot, highly aestheticized, ponderously lyrical, dramatically inert, lugubriously scored, and weirdly sanctimonious.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Computer Chess (2013) J. Hoberman A double or maybe a triple nerd-fest, influential independent Andrew Bujalski's typically deadpan Computer Chess is a small movie with a comic novel premise and a near cosmic theme.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Enough Said (2013) J. Hoberman Enough Said is cute but restrained, despite the plethora of age jokes.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Captain Phillips (2013) J. Hoberman The Navy SEALS procedural is a bit of a jumble even as it comfortingly demonstrates American competence in the face of a standoff. Still, it's the captain's passion that gives the movie its emotional intensity.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
The Fifth Estate (2013) J. Hoberman Given its own aggressive attention deficit disorder, The Fifth Estate is the sort of movie that might induce a migraine.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013) J. Hoberman The most discomfiting thing about Blue [Is The Warmest Color] is that it ultimately feels like a menage a trois involving the actors and the camera, staged for the benefit of the director.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
At Berkeley (2013) J. Hoberman Indeed, in its implicit defense of educational democracy, At Berkeley is doubly didactic and one of Wiseman's most passionate films.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
The Wind Rises (2013) J. Hoberman I don't doubt the sincerity of Miyazaki's pacifism but I'm appalled by his abstract vision. Like, how many tens or hundreds of thousands of real people in Asia and the Pacific were de-animated thanks to [Jiro] Horikoshi's dreams?
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Nebraska (2013) J. Hoberman Nebraska is a slow-burning heart-warmer that neatly dodges the cornball bullet of a climactic manly hug.
Posted Feb 22, 2019  Edit critic review
Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus (2013) J. Hoberman Jamie and Crystal are vivid '60s types, indelibly played.
Posted Nov 21, 2018  Edit critic review
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