J. Hoberman

J. Hoberman Village Voice Oct 20, 2026 Full Metal Jacket is sometimes unpleasant and often wrongheaded, but it's more than once indelible and hardly ever boring. Go to Full Review Full Metal Jacket (1987) 84% 94%

J. Hoberman Artforum Oct 15, 2026 However well received, the movie is hardly a blockbuster. In its anti-corporate, relative commercial purity Coyote vs. Acme serves as a corrective to a previous Warner Bros. product, namely the egregious Space Jam. Go to Full Review Coyote vs. Acme (2026) 96% - -

J. Hoberman The New York Review of Books Sep 2, 2026 Amrum is typically described as a coming-of-age story, but it is also a children’s adventure narrative in the manner of a Grimms’ folk tale predicated on “the difficult task” (die schweren Aufgaben). Go to Full Review Amrum (2025) 98% - -

J. Hoberman New York Times Jul 30, 2026 Impressive a quarter century ago, it seems even more so today. Go to Full Review The Hole (1998) 86% 85%

J. Hoberman Village Voice Mar 18, 2026 It's a superior entertainment -- as creepy, witty, and suggestive as its disreputable genre would warrant. Go to Full Review The Howling (1981) 76% 60%

J. Hoberman New York Times Feb 9, 2026 "Stranger on the Third Floor” is a fantastic tale given authority by its sets, special effects and production design. Go to Full Review Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) 75% 64%

J. Hoberman Village Voice Jan 21, 2026 As comedy, no less than camp, the movie inspires little more than rote chuckles. It's too smugly mush-brained to be funny and may even be too snuggly mush-hearted to sell. Go to Full Review The American President (1995) 90% 77%

J. Hoberman Village Voice Sep 24, 2025 Treating the rise and fall of an adult entertainment star without flinching from its allegorical potential, Anderson has produced what may be the American movie of the year on what is surely the subject of any age. Go to Full Review Boogie Nights (1997) 91% 89%

J. Hoberman LA Weekly/Village Voice Sep 22, 2025 An ambitious attempt to fuse folklore and domestic drama, this may be Charles Burnett’s most original film—providing, among other things, Danny Glover’s career performance as an enigmatic trickster. Go to Full Review To Sleep With Anger (1990) 93% 79%

J. Hoberman Village Voice Sep 22, 2025 As fastidious (and unbelievable) as enigmatic Sydney, Hard Eight has a precise narrative structure and a clean, vérité look. Go to Full Review Hard Eight (1996) 82% 83%

J. Hoberman New York Times Aug 13, 2025 Hectic yet smooth and powered by an extensive playlist of vintage Motown. Go to Full Review Cooley High (1975) 83% 88%

J. Hoberman Village Voice Jul 11, 2025 The film is overplotted and rickety. Go to Full Review Explorers (1985) 49% 66%

J. Hoberman Village Voice Jun 30, 2025 Less story-driven than Jaws or even Jurassic Park, The Lost World eliminates transitional scenes, recapitulating its predecessor's thrills as if running down a checklist... Much of it is just unpleasantly nerve-racking. Go to Full Review The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) 57% 51%

J. Hoberman Village Voice Jun 25, 2025 Romero has remained true to the wise-guy left-liberalism that underlies the E.C. gross-out aesthetic. Go to Full Review Day of the Dead (1985) 62% 75%

J. Hoberman Village Voice Jan 23, 2025 Eraserhead's not a movie I'd drop acid for, although I would consider it a revolutionary act if someone dropped a reel of it into the middle of Star Wars. Go to Full Review Eraserhead (1977) 87% 82%

J. Hoberman The New York Review of Books Jan 15, 2025 Similarly devoid of nuance, its moral reckoning accentuated by brilliant black-and-white cinematography, Green Border is a visceral ordeal and virtuoso tumult. Go to Full Review Green Border (2023) 94% - -

J. Hoberman Artforum Oct 9, 2024 Alexander Horwath’s erudite, entertaining three-hour meta-biopic. Go to Full Review Henry Fonda for President (2024) 86% - -

J. Hoberman Village Voice Aug 6, 2024 At least Alien 3 had intimations of mythological grandeur. Too tepid to be satire, "Resurrection" has reached the point of diminishing returns. Go to Full Review Alien Resurrection (1997) 55% 39%

J. Hoberman Village Voice Apr 3, 2024 The spirit of desecration rules Mel Brooks’s Spaceballs. Buoyant, unsentimental low comedy, this manic Star Wars parody is continually vulgar without ever seeming smarmy. Go to Full Review Spaceballs (1987) 53% 83%

J. Hoberman The Nation Mar 30, 2024 Indeed, given Jude’s willingness to engage with (or disinclination to disengage from) the cyber-powered second life, Do Not Expect is more despairing if even funnier than Bad Luck Banging. Go to Full Review Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023) 95% - -