About Defacto Film Reviews

The sweeping historical epic is a longtime favorite genre for filmmakers. Even now, outside of the genre’s heyday, there are still quite a few that pop up. Recent examples include Napoleon, The Woman King, and The Last Duel. [...]

An emotionally raw, energetic, fractured and finally poignant coming-of-age drama about a trio of young women who go on a summer trip together to a beach resort on the Greek islands of Crete for a [...]

Continuing the much-valued painted animation technique that was used previously with Loving Vincent (2017), married directors DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman deliver a despairing, sometimes grueling, and tiring adaptation of Władysław Reymont's classic Polish novel [...]

Bacurau writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho's personal and in-depth Pictures of Ghosts explores the history of his home town of Recife, while examining the deep cultural impact of Brazilian movie palaces. Using archival footage and home [...]

Sentimental and manipulative would be the inevitable criticism of Tótem if writer-director Lila Avilés second dramatic feature were a Hollywood studio-driven movie. Luckily, it isn't, though the set-up has all the markings of tugging at your [...]

The hitman may be the most overused figure in cinema, particularly in contrast to what hired killers turn out to be in the news stories we really hear about, who are rare and often brutish [...]

Films about colonialism and settlers overtaking Western land are often in Western movies, and they most often come up with white protagonists who side with the oppressed Indigenous people, and they combat against the oppressors. [...]

There has always been a lot of passion and perspective for filmmaker Ava DuVernay; there is no denying that she has always crafted films about essential issues that tie our past with the present. She [...]

Freud’s Last Session, the new film from director Matt Brown (2015’s The Man Who Knew Infinity) occupies a strange filmic space. Like Brown’s previous film, it is based on real life characters. But whereas The Man Who [...]

Taking a more dramatic approach than having the same old routine narrative of astronauts discovering threatening extraterrestrial life and dying off slowly, I.S.S. deserves some praise for coming up with creative ways in its refreshing [...]

The biblical epic was a Hollywood mainstay decades ago, particularly in the 1950s and early 1960s. The genre has largely fallen out of favor, with religious films now largely the province of small-scale dramas and [...]