1st Annual Defacto Film Awards: Robert Butler’s Picks
To celebrate the Oscars, I am pleased to announce the Best of 2018 nominees and winners in fourteen categories. I selected the top five picks in the following categories: Best Picture, [...]
Road to the Oscars: Alfonso Cuarón Retrospective
Alfonso Cuarón is a pure filmmaking genius. He's directed a total of 8 very impressive feature films. I've seen every single one, and everyone is impressive in their own right. [...]
2019 Oscar Nomination Predictions
The Golden Globes, the Critics' Choice Awards have came and gone, and the British Academy Awards made their favorites known. The road to the Oscars narrows it's journey on early [...]
Bye Bye Man
The Bye Bye Man (2017, USA, d. Stacy Title, 96 minutes) by Noah Damron It wouldn’t be January without a C-level horror film and this year is [...]
Live By Night
Live By Night (2016, USA, d. Ben Affleck, 128 minutes) by Noah Damron As the poster child for career comebacks, Ben Affleck has proved himself to one [...]
The Olives of Wrath
by Barry Germansky Just as The Leopard (1963) can be seen as Italy's answer to Gone with the Wind (1939), Rocco and His Brothers (1960) can be seen as [...]
Out of Which Past?
by Barry Germansky Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko (2001) proves there is no such thing as genre outside the enterprise of convenient label-making. Due to the malleability of language, any [...]
Invasion of the Adulthood Snatchers
by Barry Germansky The adult world is polymorphously corrupt and lacks the imagination to recognize that "The Way Things Are" is merely a byproduct of a deteriorating sense of [...]
Steven Spielberg, Schindler’s List, and the Crisis of Representation
by Barry Germansky With Schindler's List (1993), Steven Spielberg achieved what so many other filmmakers had deemed impossible. This masterpiece was a breakthrough in the historical epic, the comprehensive [...]
Monsterpalooza 2019: Douglas Schulze’s Mimesis: Nosferatu
By Robert Joseph Butler|04/05/2019|
In 1992, a decade before Michigan took a great interest in film with tax credits and film incentives, and the growing accessibility of digital film technology that makes it even [...]