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
Saturday Night
Jason Reitman is a skilled director, and he may have finally found his flair in Saturday Night. That might seem like a surprising statement about the director who has made such highly acclaim films as [...]
Rebel Ridge
Police corruption, civil liberties, and martial arts collide in Jeremy Saulnier's newest effort for Netflix, Rebel Ridge.
Joker: Folie à Deux
2019's Joker was a lighting-in-a-bottle film that came with much buzz and discourse, with overwhelming box office returns to boot. Todd Phillips' distinct vision of the classic DC villain was met with equal amounts of [...]
The WIld Robot
DreamWorks Animation has typically been seen as the B-side to the greater works of Pixar. When there was Toy Story 1 & 2, there was DreamWorks’ Shrek, which was less emotionally demanding, but still proved [...]
Megalopolis
It was inevitable that both film critics and modern film buffs wouldn't be fully united on Francis Ford Coppola's latest magnum opus, Megalopolis, a highly sophisticated, dense, and visionary film that surely holds many shortcomings [...]
Strange Darling
After a large array of horror and serial killer thrillers full of style and atmosphere, 2024 continues its horror streak with JT Mollner's gripping, brutally intense, and wildly unpredictable Strange Darling. It is one of [...]
Speak No Evil (2024)
The 2022 Danish film Speak No Evil left a toll on any audience member willing to sit through its punishing display of brutality. Directed and co-written by Christian Tafdrup, the original film was an oppressively [...]
The Substance
The Substance is a riptide of desire, chaos, the vain reality of Hollywood, and outwardly grotesque body horror. It's also one of the most shocking and impactful genre films of 2024.
The 4:30 Movie
In the wake of films such as Roma, The Fabelmans and Belfast, films that saw major filmmakers looking past nostalgia to their respective upbringings, writer/director/editor Kevin Smith has now made his own coming-of-age film largely [...]
Close Your Eyes
If there is one filmmaker that works at an even slower pace than Jonathan Glazer and Terrence Malick did, it's Spanish auteur Victor Erice. He has only released four features now in the last 50 [...]
The Critic
The Critic, based on the novel Curtain Call is set in the world of 1930s London. Here, we meet Jimmy Erskine who has been the drama critic for The Chronicle, for decades. He wields his pen and opinions [...]
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Tim Burton's original 1988 Beetlejuice was something of a pop culture phenomenon in its initial release. Just the second feature film from Burton, Beetlejuice was largely responsible for establishing the filmmaker's iconic sensibilities. In the [...]
The Deliverence
Have you ever wondered what a horror film from Tyler Perry would look like? With The Deliverance, director Lee Daniels has provided that answer. Drawn from a purported case of real life haunting, the film is [...]
The Crow (2024)
The year was 1994; Kurt Cobain is dead. OJ is on trial and star Brandon Lee, son of legend Bruce Lee, has died on the set of his soon-to-be-iconic role in The Crow. The original [...]
Between the Temples
Nathan Silver's Between the Temples is one of those unique films that feels like it's made in the 1970s. It is very much a modern take on Harold and Maude, as it focuses on taboo [...]
Blink Twice
Blink Twice is a tight and occasionally chuckle-worthy thriller that showcases the willpower of women and the cruelty of men in a refreshing way.
2009 Retrospective: The Best Films of 2009
Most modern film buffs and pundits are fans of 2009 cinema. Many treasure the year for its box-office spectacles like Avatar and other high-caliber genre films like District 9, and the year had a lot [...]
