If Emilio Estevez had made this film under the name Fred Smith, I suspect it would be receiving a much fairer shake at the hands of a lot of critics than it is. But because Estevez was a member of the “Brat Pack,” starred in some dubious movies (one he made himself), and is the […]

While — believe it or not — I go into every film hoping it will be good, the prospect of finding merit in just about anything signed by Tony Scott (Spy Game (2001) and The Hunger (1983) to one side) seemed sufficiently remote to warrant something approaching cinematic dread when settling in for Deja Vu. […]

The latest film from director Richard Linklater (A Scanner Darkly), Fast Food Nation, would seem to be another in a long line of important message pictures — think Super Size Me (2004), Lord of War (2005) or Crash (2005) — preaching to us about the evils of our culture. Instead of just stating the obvious […]

Catherine Deneuve is luminous as always in Indochine (1992), a film that picked up the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1993, and has the inherent sadness of all films set at the end of an era. (Regardless of how you feel about the era in question, there’s an inescapable melancholy that clings to […]

Here we go again — another of these Tim Allen Santa Clause things. That means once more we’re treated to the unconvincing spectacle of 10-year-olds in elf drag, not very funny comedy on scrupulously antiseptic and unreal sets, and that faint wave of nausea that passes for a tug at the heartstrings in corporate filmmaking. […]

Hirokazu Koreeda’s Nobody Knows (2004) is one of those highly regarded recent films that just somehow never made it to Asheville during its original release, so it’s nice to see it finally show up. The film is based on an actual occurrence in Tokyo in 1988 when four children were abandoned by their mother to […]