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
Silent Night
“Start Gang War?” This annotation, a calendar reminder written by the film’s protagonist Brian Godluck (Joel Kinnaman), is a perfect encapsulation of just how stupid Silent Night is. Legendary director John Woo returned from a [...]
Godzilla Minus One
After 2016's critically acclaimed Shin Godzilla, another soft reboot of the 1954 kaiju classic Godzilla may seem redundant. However, Toho's latest resurrection of the beloved property, Godzilla Minus One, proves that it deserves inclusion into [...]
Dream Scenario
A surrealist satire that takes a lot of aim in its commentary doesn't always rise to the occasion, but it draws some rich ideas about our modern meme culture. Very much in the vein of [...]
Fallen Leaves
Perhaps Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki's (The Man Without a Past, Le Havre) simplest film of his 40-year career, an amusing and bittersweet seriocomedy, Fallen Leaves breaks no ground; it's executed like his other films, but [...]
Napoleon
Surprisingly, the legendary historical figure Napoleon Bonaparte has never had a historical Hollywood epic, and the grandiose new epic Napoleon doesn't live up to the potential this story has to offer. Despite some stunning battle [...]
Monster
The transition from childhood into the teenage years can be among the most turbulent years of a person’s life. Thoughts, actions, and relationships change, and kids often feel alone during this time. Even those with [...]
Saltburn
The massive undisclosed mansion at and around Drayton House, Northamptonshire, is the stage for desire, imitation, and obsession in Saltburn, the sophomore feature by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman). Though even more [...]
May December
Mostly a film about performance and partly about identity, Todd Hayes's May December is quite a fascinating film on many levels. An artful, rangy, and engrossing psychological drama that merges elements of melodrama, wry humor, [...]
Thanksgiving
Over a decade ago, Grindhouse teased horror fans with the delightfully messy and nostalgic mock trailer for what is now Eli Roth's 2023 holiday slasher, Thanksgiving. The full-length feature is a shadow of what the [...]
Next Goal Wins
Plagued with anger, embarrassment, and the inability to coach a team to the World Cup, Dutch American soccer coach Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender) is given the ultimatum of being fired from his position as a [...]
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
As film appreciation has continued to grow in the last few decades or so, in part due to Blu-Rays, DVDs, and streaming, which have spawned social media film cultures and bubbles, you can now spot [...]
Scrapper
What at first looks like a recognizable coming-of-age indie that echoes the social realism of a Ken Loach movie ends up taking some very uneven detours in Charlotte Regan's mediocre first feature, Scrapper. A tale [...]
It’s a Wonderful Knife
The emerging trend of "classic family movie gets a campy slasher adaptation" continues with its first blatantly Christmas-themed entry, It's a Wonderful Knife, a spin on Frank Capra's 1946 holiday staple, It's a Wonderful Life. [...]
Nyad
Based on the remarkable and nearly impossible biographical true story of long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad's persistent efforts to swim straight from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage, Nyad, the latest Netflix sports movie, is [...]
Radical
An inspiring teacher seeks to switch up traditional teaching methods for himself and his troubled students, only to find that there are many roadblocks set against his good intentions. Persistence for needed change is the [...]
The Holdovers
A deeply humane and fully sustained absorption in loneliness, grief, world history, and philosophy, along with frequent quarrels between a history instructor and a small group of New England boarding school students The Holdovers marks [...]
The Burial
The courtroom drama film has been around nearly as long as the medium of film itself. Following what felt like an oversaturation in the Grisham-influenced 1990s, the genre seemed to fall somewhat out of favor [...]
Priscilla
Melancholic, poetic, and deeply empathetic, Sofia Coppola's biopic Priscilla follows Priscilla Presley and her relationship, marriage, and breakup with Elvis Presley. The film is a compelling, stylish portrait of a vulnerable soul. Cailee Spaeny delivers [...]
When Evil Lurks
Following the success of his paranormal thriller Terrified, Argentinian director Demián Rugna returns with the highly-anticipated demon possession film When Evil Lurks. Rugna shocked audiences in 2017 with a horror film that focused heavily on [...]
Five Nights at Freddy’s
In 2014, a little indie video game created by Scott Cawthorn called Five Nights at Freddy's took online culture by storm. With playthroughs of the game racking up hundreds of millions of views, a unique [...]