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.
True History of the Kelly Gang
A follow-up to “MacBeth,” (2015) Justin Kurzel's “True History of the Kelly Gang,” is an ultra violent Aussie-Western period piece movie, offering an episodic account of bushranger Ned Kelly in Australia circa 1870s. “True History [...]
The Tax Collector
Having dabbled in colorful, fantastical worlds such as the DC universe in his (since disowned) 2016 smash, Suicide Squad and the 2017 Netflix blockbuster, Bright, director David Ayer's newest feature, The Tax Collector, is a [...]
Palm Springs
A high-concept film–a romcom about a potential couple trapped in a time loop as they live the same day over and over--"Palm Springs" is a hysterical, often witty and charming film about two people, those [...]
The Vast of Night
The shadow of Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, Brian De Palma, and even P.T. Anderson looms large over Andrew Patterson's debut feature “The Vast of Night,” a small scale sci-fi period piece, set in a fictional [...]
Bad Education (2020)
As a follow-up to Cory Finley’s feature debut “Thoroughbreds,” “Bad Education (2020)” represents a step forward for the young filmmaker since both sagas deal with issues of deception and trust, except that the scope of [...]
Beastie Boys Story
More memorial and a laugh-fest than a concert movie, this is a spirited chronicle of the memories and reflections from the Beastie Boys surviving members, Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz in Spike Jonze's "Beastie Boys [...]
The King of Staten Island
A two-hour-plus summer comedy, Judd Apatow's “The King of Staten Island” is perhaps his sharpest and funniest film to date, while the film still holds the same flaws from his several other films including an [...]
The Painted Bird
“The Painted Bird,” Václav Marhoul follow-up to his Czech adaptation of “The Red Badge of Courage ,” is another technically impressive literary rendition, this time around of accomplished novelist Jerzy Kosinski, whose works have also [...]
Miss Juneteenth
Just when you thought filmmaking needed stronger and more diverse voices, both in Hollywood and indie cinema, along comes the perfect timing of "Miss Juneteenth", an enormously enjoyable celebration about great parenting and Black womanhood [...]
Da 5 Bloods
“Da 5 Bloods,” Spike Lee's follow-up to his Oscar adaptation of “BlacKkKlansman,” is another impassioned and timely rendition of the challenges of our modern era. Top-lined by Delroy Lindo, who has appeared in other Spike [...]
Buffalo ’66 (Spotlight Review)
“We’re taking pictures for my parents… Do you understand that? We’re taking pictures like we’re a couple. Like, we like each other. Like, we’re husband and wife, and we span time together. We span time [...]
Essential Civil Rights Movies
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution put an end to slavery and involuntary servitude in 1865, but it didn't put an end to social injustices and inequality. The recent tragic murders of Ahmad Arbery, [...]
End of Sentence
It has taken the newcomer producer-turned-director Elfar Adalsteins eight years to get his debut feature film off the ground, aptly titled "End of Sentence."His first feature is an overly familiar but multi-nuanced melodrama about the fragile relationship between a father and son (superbly played by John Hawkes and Logan Lerman), whose vulnerabilities and dynamics go through transitions and reconciliation upon their trip from Alabama to Ireland. With the right word-of--mouth and [...]
The Lovebirds
In an alternate reality, The Lovebirds would have opened in theaters nationwide the first week of April. However, we don't live in that world and after the pandemic delayed every upcoming film in its path, [...]
The Painter and the Thief
The documentary film "The Painter and the Thief" revisits familiar ideas about unconventional love that has been explored in numerous indie films. The central premise of director Benjamin Ree's second feature documentary is a bizarre [...]
The Trip to Greece
Reprising their roles from "The Trip," "The Trip to Italy", "The Trip to Spain," we now have the fourth installment of "The Trip" movie series with "The Trip to Greece," starring comedians Steve Coogan and [...]