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.
He later went on to 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.
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.
The Prom
Firmly riding the line between annoyance and infectiousness is Producer-extraordinaire Ryan Murphy's film adaptation of the Broadway musical, The Prom. Murphy, directing his first feature since his 2014 HBO film The Normal Heart, enlists a [...]
Black Bear
Lawrence Michael Levine is a part of the second generation of mumblecore filmmakers. Mumblecore is a “genre” of film in a way, but more so was a group of filmmakers that came up in the [...]
Sound of Metal
While having made its initial premiere at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, Sound of Metal, the feature length debut from filmmaker Darius Marder, is almost eerily timely for 2020. In a year such as [...]
The Nest
The long-awaited follow-up to "Martha Marcy May Marlene," the 2011 feature debut of Canadian director Sean Durkin, his sophomore feature film "The Nest" is another impressive film about dislocation and being coerced into an undesired [...]
David Fincher Retrospective (Film Rankings from Worst to Best)
Easily one of the greatest film artisans of our time, film director David Fincher has had a film directing spanning nearly thirty years. Fincher holds an impressive framework of films mostly involving protagonists who endure [...]
Mank
Art and politics collide in David Fincher's ambitious and elegant effort that plays an extolling tribute to screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, superbly embodied by Oscar winner Gary Oldman in "Mank" that should be a darling [...]
Happiest Season
Even though same sex attraction is something that has been with the human race most likely since the dawn of humanity—I’m sure cavemen weren’t only clubbing cavewomen, if ya know what I mean—I have never [...]
Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on the Exorcist
‘The Exorcist’ is one of the most iconic films in film history, and quite frankly, one of the most iconic pieces of art in general. Most people have no doubt come across one of the [...]
Run
Aneesh Chaganty's feature directorial debut, 2018's Searching, a techno-thriller acquired by Sony/Screen Gems out of Sundance, won major acclaim from both critics and audiences. The film, budgeted for less than $1 million, ended up grossing [...]
The Climb
‘The Climb’ opens on two friends cycling, one of them tells the other they are going to get married and the other friend admits to them that they slept with their fiancé. That would probably [...]
Hillbilly Elegy
For every major awards contender, your Parasite's and Joker's of the year, also comes an occasional The Goldfinch. Ron Howard's latest outing, based on the New York Times bestselling novel "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of [...]
Ammonite
It's always rewarding whenever you get two accomplished actresses in the same film together, especially when the are from two from different generations. Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan are paired together for the first time [...]
Mortal
‘Mortal’ is a return to Norway for André Øverdal which is where he shot his breakthrough feature film ‘Trollhunter’, he then headed over to the U.K. for the coroner two-hander ‘The Autopsy of Jane Doe’, [...]
Ham On Rye
When I was in my late teens, I remember saying to my friends on a couple of occasions, that I felt like our lives were a movie; the late nite Denny’s parking lot hangouts, the [...]
Bad Hair
I hate waking up with bed head. And if you don’t got the time or energy to take a shower, you just gotta walk around with that glop of hair just poking out all kinds [...]
Synchronic
[…]
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
After it's unprecedented global success of "Borat," Sacha Baron Cohen's iconic character went onto to be celebrated in pop culture around the world. A cartoonish stereotype, the Borat character was a pure embodiment of American's [...]
The Last Shift
We all need money. Every one of us is stuck in this system, whether we like it or not. And a lot of people are stuck in dead end jobs, where they are barely getting [...]
10 Essential Political Documentaries To Stream Now! 2020 Election
Ever since the success of Michael Moore's 2004 documentary masterpiece "Fahrenheit 9/11," many filmmakers since have went onto to direct many political documentaries all in hopes of shaping the election, but in the 2016 election [...]
The Empty Man
There's a strong likelihood that you've never heard of Disney/20th Century's newest release, The Empty Man, at least until a week ago when the first trailer was released. All signs would point to this film [...]