Life is a cabaret, old sport, or maybe halftime at the Super Bowl in Baz Luhrmann’s overhyped and overheated 3D adaptation of “The Great Gatsby”—the fifth time Hollywood has taken on the 1925 F. Scott Fitzgerald novel that many consider the greatest novel in the American language.
J. Hoberman on movies and movie-related things
MOVIE JOURNAL: J. Hoberman on movies and movie-related things
Archive for the ‘Movies’ Category
May 9, 2013, 8:16 am
3-D “Gatsby”: Doo-Wack-a-Doo Up the Wazoo
May 2, 2013, 10:30 am
All That Is Solid: Assayas’s “Something in the Air”
A youthful movie in more ways than one, Olivier Assayas’s “Something in the Air” evokes an irretrievable past even as it manages to embody the total excitement of a particular historical moment and even, self-reflexively, the trajectory of the French director’s career. This quasi-autobiographical evocation of student politics and European hippie counterculture circa 1971 is also a crypto sequel or perhaps a prequel to “Cold Water”, the extended party movie with which Assayas made his reputation in the mid ‘90s.
April 23, 2013, 10:22 am
Tribeca 2: Heralding the Unheralded
Ransack the Tribeca Film Festival and ye shall find, in this case, three relatively unheralded items that are well worth seeing. (more…)
April 22, 2013, 1:12 pm
Three Two-Handers at Tribeca
Has the Tribeca Film Festival improved? That’s what everyone says and, on the basis of the first weekend, the 2013 edition would certainly seem to have less flash and more substance. (more…)
April 20, 2013, 4:31 pm
“A Horse, a Horse!” Olivier’s Greatest Vehicle
Not that it needs a peg but, newly remastered by Criterion, Laurence Olivier’s 1956 version of William Shakespeare’s “Richard III” is unexpectedly topical thanks to the confirmation that a skeleton discovered beneath a parking lot in Leicester, England, was indeed that of a much reviled 15th century British monarch.
April 13, 2013, 12:40 pm
Ulmer’s “Ruthless”–The Way It Was
The least predictable and most wide-ranging of DVD outfits, Chicago-based Olive sneaks an obscure auteurist touchstone onto the market with a clean and crisp Blu-Ray copy of the UCLA-restored, 104-minute version of Edgar G. Ulmer’s 1947 “Ruthless.”
April 10, 2013, 10:27 am
Malick in “Wonder” Land
There’s no American director who inspires greater devotion than Terrence Malick, as I discovered when I wrote a less than favorable review of “The New World” (“all is diffuse, gauzy, insubstantial, underwhelming”). There is also very little middle ground when it comes to his achievements. (more…)
February 7, 2013, 11:28 am
“Side Effects”: Soderbergh’s Sedated Swan Song
Over the last three decades, Steven Soderbergh has been the most versatile, not to mention hyperactive, of Hollywood directors and, as befits the movie that he has said will be his swan song, “Side Effects” showcases much of what the just 50-year-old filmmaker does best.
February 3, 2013, 8:23 pm
Hollywood & the CIA Can Agree on “Argo”
"Argo" story conference: Hollywood or Iran?
January 9, 2013, 4:47 pm
“Gangster Squad”: “I Never Killed Nobody…”
Sean Penn as Mickey Cohen (Warner Bros)
Warner Bros., the studio most associated with the gangster flick in the genre’s early ’30s heyday, makes a modest and not especially welcome attempt at a revival with “Gangster Squad,” directed by Ruben “Zombieland” Fleischer from Will Beale’s screenplay. (more…)
