Film After Film

A former film critic for the Village Voice, Hoberman (The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties) reprises many of his previously written articles in this collection. One of his theses is that the growing use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) in cinema has created a new cinema for a new century. Since its first sporadic use in the 1980s, CGI has led to the proliferation of special effects-laden films that might have been prohibitively expensive for the traditionally photographed movie. While Hoberman has not rewritten any of the essays, he has updated them with both copious footnotes and some new material, which is in boldface text. The discussion focuses on films produced during the George W. Bush presidency, and Hoberman organizes the book by each year of Bush's tenure. Most of the films Hoberman discusses at some length are foreign or art-house films, and are not well-known to most American audiences. They include Dogville, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Inland Empire, Flight of the Red Balloon, and Hunger.