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 Humans
Stephen Karams' experience as a playwright and screenwriter (The Seagull, Speech & Debate) delivers him promising directing skills in The Humans, a Thanksgiving family reunion dark comedy that is carried out with caustic humor and [...]
House of Gucci
Following the traditional rise and fall formula, where the main characters of the yarn rise from nothing and fall right after hitting the peak as the narrative unfolds, House of Gucci is a deeply flawed [...]
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
After the unnecessary debacle over the failed 2016 relaunch of Ghostbusters, the decision was made to salvage the franchise by instead following the trend of legacyquels and craft a follow-up to the original two films. [...]
tick, tick…Boom!
Jonathan Larson quickly became one of the defining voices of his generation, and never even lived to witness it. Larson passed away suddenly from an aneurism from marfin’s syndrome the night before the opening day [...]
King Richard
Following his 2018 feature debut, the Sundance police drama "Monsters and Men," Reinaldo Marcus Green makes a huge leap from an indie drama to a studio drama with King Richard, a highly inspiring sports drama [...]
Red Notice
What do the films, Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981), Oceans 11 (2001), and The Hitman’s Bodyguard (2017) have in common? Well, almost nothing except for the fact Netflix’s new action-comedy, [...]
Wes Anderson Retrospective (Film Rankings from Worst to Best)
Wes Anderson's tenth film, The French Dispatch, was just recently released to some polarizing reactions from both critics and audiences, but it still has its champions. The most common question I have been getting from [...]
The Beta Test
What is it about Jim Cummings and PJ McCabe’s, The Beta Test, that lures and attracts audiences into the psychological disarray that it is? Perhaps it’s the dreamscape-esque environment the film takes place in that [...]
Wife of A Spy
Once again succeeding on a artistic level, Wife of A Spy, which is acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshsi Kurosawa's 23rd film which was released on Japanese Television last year during the pandemic, but released theatrically here [...]
The Harder They Fall
Attempting to reinvent and create a refreshing twist to a century-old genre is quite the challenge, especially when it comes to westerns. And yet Jeymes Samuel takes that challenge and runs with it, crafting decently [...]
Mogul Mowgli
In his sophomore effort, the dramatic film Mogul Mowgli, Pakistani filmmaker Bassam Tariq holds a lot of promise as a co-writer and director with his first attempt at narrative filmmaking. After making a splash on [...]
Last Night in Soho
After years of making acclaimed genre comedies, filmmaker Edgar Wright finally struck commercial gold with his fifth feature film, Baby Driver, earning both universal critical acclaim and over $200 million at the worldwide box office. [...]
The French Dispatch
It's no surprise to find that Wes Anderson returns to his singular style and traits that he is celebrated for with The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel being his highlights, yet his distinctive [...]