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
1995 Retrospective: The Best Films of 1995
The 1990s will always be perceived as a superlative decade for cinema. Especially 1995, a year where so many films brewed into classics as the years went by. From game-changing animation with Toy Story to [...]
Wicked: For Good
Last year's Wicked was a sensational adaptation of one of modern pop culture's most influential and defining musicals. Splitting the 2003 Broadway musical into two parts, Part One was both an irresistible and dazzling smash [...]
Rental Family
Rental Family is an often-maudlin work with an awkward Brendan Fraser at the center, yet that awkwardness is what keeps this from falling apart. It is a film that may irk a viewer early on, [...]
Train Dreams
Train Dreams, based on the novella by Denis Johnson, is a deeply moving, lyrical and intelligent film about pain, loss, time, beauty and connection. Blessed with a stand out cast, featuring William H Macy, Joel [...]
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
Little Amelie or the Character of Rain is an unusual and deeply moving animated film based on an unlikely source. Amelie Nothomb is a Belgian novelist who wrote Metaphysiques des tubes, which in English was known as The [...]
Peter Hujar’s Day
Peter Hujar was a photographer in New York, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. Before dying, as far too many artists of that era did, of AIDS, he left behind an unusual project, recorded [...]
Sentimental Value
One of the most emotionally charged films of the year is also one of the most rewarding. Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value might appear to be another backstage drama about filmmaking that becomes meta, but at [...]
The Running Man (2025)
What a year it has been for Stephen King adaptations. This summer's The Life of Chuck was a moving and life-affirming story of a man's life told in reverse. The HBO series It: Welcome To [...]
Predator: Badlands
After the franchise was nearly derailed by the disaster that was Shane Black's 2018 The Predator, the fan-favorite series has made its long-awaited return to the big screen. Dan Trachtenberg, who revitalized the franchise with [...]
Die My Love
Lynne Ramsay's Die My Love—which is her first feature in 8 years-- is a superbly directed movie, even if it falters quite a bit in the third act. It's an unforgettable movie that pulls you [...]
Radu Jude’s Dracula
Trash cinema is a term not lightly used by this reviewer. First, how does one define or intend the use of that term? John Waters and Andy Warhol both made “trash” yet their films have-mostly-stood [...]
Nouvelle Vague
The French New Wave is one of the most important movements in the history of cinema, and Jean-Luc Godard is one of the prime movers within. His film, Breathless, released in 1960, is a milestone. Nouvelle Vague, the [...]
It Was Just an Accident
Iranian master filmmaker Jafar Panahi returns with his greatest film to date in his impressive filmography, It Was Just an Accident, a dramatically charged and timely political thriller that is courageous and bold as it [...]
Shelby Oaks
Anyone around the early days of the Youtube film scene is most certainly familiar with Chris Stuckmann. A warm and welcoming figure whose passion for film separated him from the pack of early-Youtube film critics, [...]
