About Defacto Film Reviews
Defacto Film Reviews is a unique site where the film critics are also filmmakers themselves. It will feature weekly reviews as well as lists and more.
Originally formed in 2002 under Defactoweb.com, our website’s chief film critic is Robert Joseph Butler. His top ten lists were featured under Movie City News. His reviews have also been published at Michigan Movie Magazine and on Michigan’s longest running film school website, MPIFilm.com. His reviews have also been featured and published in The Oakland Press as well, which is one of Michigan’s largest newspaper publications.
He later went on to become an award-winning filmmaker of several independent short films including such festival hits as The Spirit of Isabel and Within, which won the Audience Choice Award at the 2015 Cinetopia International Film Festival. His short film “The Girl on the Mat” won Best Screenplay at the 2017 Queens World Film Festival. His most recent feature length movie, “Blood Immortal,” won Best Horror Feature Film at the 24th annual Indie Gathering International Film Festival and is now available to own on DVD and is available on Digital streaming platforms.
Using grassroots support, the site is devoted to celebrating independent and art-house cinema, as well as to high-crafted films that tell engaging stories with vision, focus, and skill.
Defacto Film Reviews is a unique case where the film critics are also filmmakers themselves. We will give readers comprehensible, honest, and erudite analysis of each film.
Rating System–4 Stars
Masterpiece/Top 10 Worthy
Exceptional
Quality
Mediocre
Poor
Reviews published in
P.T. Anderson Retrospective (Film Rankings from Worst to Best)
Easily one of the most extraordinary and gifted visionaries working today, Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the world's most celebrated and renowned filmmakers of our era. With the release of his latest film, titled [...]
Eleanor the Great
Scarlett Johansson's directorial debut, Eleanor the Great, works the best when it focuses on itself as a character study as well as on a close but deceiving friendship. However, it fumbles and doesn't quite dive [...]
One Battle After Another
Renowned filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson's engrossing One Battle After Another is a politically charged thriller about combating cruelty, oppression, and power. It also examines the struggles of the revolutionary lifestyle. His 10th film is an [...]
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
A Long, Excruciating, Painful Mess, should be the true title of A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, the newest film from Kogonada, the filmmaker behind Columbia and After Yang. Neither of those films prepares one for the utter failure [...]
The History of Sound
Though it holds many similarities to Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, which is based on a short story by author Ben Shattuck who also wrote the screenplay, still holds it's own as a tender gay romantic [...]
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, is the third and final film in the Downton Abbey film series, which means it is also the end of the story which began on television in 2010. The series, which [...]
The Long Walk
Filmmaker Francis Lawrence is no stranger to dystopian futures, having directed I Am Legend and every Hunger Games film sans the first entry. While having the same filmmaker who brought to life the expanded world [...]
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues
Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues, is the sequel to the 1984 mockumentary classic. The film is once again directed by co-writer Rob Reiner, who co-stars alongside fellow writers Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry [...]
The Conjuring: Last Rites
The Conjuring series has seen its share of ups and downs. The first two films were solid, respectable entries in the possession/haunting categories. The first Annabelle film tried perhaps a bit too hard and the less said about [...]
Highest 2 Lowest
Highest 2 Lowest is the new Spike Lee film, based on Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, which was itself adapted from Ed McBain’s King’s Ransom. Where the original film has as part of its core, the angst and [...]
Honey Don’t!
Honey Don’t! is a film that may not work for everyone, and in fact, likely has a very specific audience for which it will. The second film in Ethan Coen’s “Lesbian B-Movie Trilogy” after 2024’s Drive Away [...]
Caught Stealing
For a filmmaker that started out his career with heavy, dramatically-taxing works such as Pi and Requiem For a Dream, Darren Aronofsky has become one of the 21st century's most acclaimed and controversial auteurs. Making [...]
The Toxic Avenger (2025)
The Toxic Avenger is a loving, smartly updated take on the 1984 splatter horror comedy landmark. Where the original was nearly all gore and sex, often for what seemed to be the sake of pure [...]
2005 Retrospective: The Best Films of 2005
2005 in many ways resembles 2025. Politically, it was a miserable year, as we were in the first year of the second term of George W. Bush, and we had to endure unbearable news stories [...]
Vulcanizadora
Regional film making can be rich and rewarding. It can cast a light and use a very specific voice to say something unique about the area and the people within it. It can also use [...]
It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley
Jeff Buckley was among the select few singers in popular music to be gifted with the vocal range of four or more octaves. His ability to mimic the works of others, including Leonard Cohen and [...]