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
September 5
September 5 is a dramatization of the events surrounding ABC Sports coverage of the Israeli hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Games. Directed by Tim Fehlbaum, the film features a fine cast headlined by Peter Sarsgaard [...]
Den of Thieves 2: Pantera
The first Den of Thieves was one of the best January surprises in recent memory. The first month of the year is typically the time when studios dump out their genre programmers while putting their [...]
I’m Still Here
I’m Still Here is the latest film from director Walter Salles, the Brazilian filmmaker who has previously helmed films such as Central Station and The Motorcycle Diaries. Here, as in those films, Salles proves himself adept at quickly establishing [...]
Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat
Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat has a premise that mixes jazz with politics, in what at first appears to be a case study but is in fact more about 20th century colonialism than the assassination of Patrice [...]
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Since the late 1980's, Aardman Animation's duo of Wallace and his top dog, Gromit, have delighted audiences around the world. After several iconic short films including A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers and A [...]
The Last Republican
The Last Republican is an unlikely documentary film to come from the director of Hot Tub Time Machine, but it was apparently just that quirky fact that led Adam Kinzinger, now former congressman from Illinois, to allow [...]
The Count of Monte Cristo (2024)
The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the most beloved novels Alexandre Dumas wrote and yet of the many adaptations of the giant novel, few have managed to capture the essence of the novel. At [...]
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Like many other Iranian films and filmmakers, Mohammad Rasoulof's latest film, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, had to be made discreetly in fear of being fined or jailed. This is because Iran doesn't have [...]
Year in Review: The Best Films of 2024
As we entered the fall movie season; I had already rated six films my highest rating of four stars. I wasn't sure if I was overrating things, but as the months went by, I knew [...]
The Girl with the Needle
The Girl With the Needle is a Danish film, from director Magnus von Horn, who previously made the film Sweat, set in the world of aerobics. This film is decidedly not that one, as this is an [...]
The Fire Inside
The Fire Inside, the debut film from the talented Rachel Morrison, is the true story of boxer Claressa Shields, who won gold at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, Here, you see her story from the [...]
The Room Next Door
It's an inevitable, perhaps an expected decision, but it was only a matter of time before the great Pedro Almodóvar would follow suit and pivot towards his first American film just as so many renowned [...]
Nickel Boys
A harrowing, unsettling chronicle by documentary-turned-narrative filmmaker RaMell Ross (Hale County This Morning, This Evening), Nickel Boys is a highly engaging adaptation of the acclaimed 2019 novel by novelist Colson Whitehead. The film is based [...]
Sonic the Hedgehog 3
The 2020 film adaptation of the classic SEGA video game character helped launch a new era of video game adaptations. Despite the occasional Borderlands flop, the genre of adaptations has flourished in recent years with [...]
Mufasa: The Lion King
Barry Jenkins’ latest film, Mufasa, serves as both a prequel and sequel to Disney’s 2019 film, The Lion King. Both films are Lion King franchise renderings in photorealistic animation and offer increased detail and depth [...]
The Brutalist
In Brady Corbet's third feature, The Brutalist, which is gaining large acclaim, is a sweeping chronicle of the immigrant experience. The narrative is told through the perspective of a Jewish Holocaust survivor named László Tóth [...]