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
28 Years Later
28 Years Later is the third zombie film of the "28" zombie film series, and it marks a return by legendary filmmaker Danny Boyle (28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire) and screenwriter Alex Garland, who both [...]
Materialists
Writer/director Celine Song's debut feature Past Lives was an indie darling that captured both the hearts and minds of audiences in the summer of 2023. Earning an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, Song is one [...]
The Life of Chuck
The Life of Chuck, written and directed by Mike Flanagan, is based on the novella by Stephen King. These two are no strangers to one another, with Flanagan having adapted both Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep. Flanagan, [...]
How To Train Your Dragon
How To Train Your Dragon is a live-action remake of the 2010 animated film, from writer and director Dean DeBlois, who also served the same function for the original. Based on a series of books [...]
Ballerina: From the World of John Wick
The success story of the John Wick franchise has been a shining light over Hollywood. Starting life as an indie actioner that nearly got sent straight to DVD, the first film quickly received enormous praise [...]
The Phoenician Scheme
The Phoenician Scheme, the latest work of writer-director Wes Anderson, is another in a long line of films about a very specific time, place and type of person and set of behaviors. In his last [...]
Bring Her Back
In the heart of the 2023 summer movie season, A24 released the small indie horror film Talk To Me to stellar critical and audience reviews and quickly became a sleeper hit, grossing over $90 million [...]
Lilo & Stitch
Lilo and Stitch is a live-action remake of the 2002 animated film of the same name, and that carries certain expectations. Disney has been churning these out in droves since 2010 and so far, the [...]
Caught by the Tides
Director Jia Zhang-Ke once again explores the passage of time and its changes in how humans interact due to cultural and technological changes with Caught by the Tide. Like Richard Linklater's Boyhood, Zhang-Ke uses footage [...]
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Star/producer Tom Cruise has solidified his legacy through death-defying stunts and the kind of general showmanship not typically seen in American movie stars since the days of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and even Gene Kelly. [...]
Hurry Up Tomorrow
Canadian singer/songwriter Abel Tesfaye aka The Weeknd has dominated the music charts for over a decade, combining his dark, noir-tinged R&B roots with his signature angelic voice to unprecedented levels of success. The singer, whose [...]
Final Destination: Bloodlines
Horror is a tricky genre to get right. It requires a delicate balancing of elements, namely suspense, emotion, levity, the grotesque and the unnerving, among others. For as many films get made and released in [...]
Friendship
While it will surely appeal to fans of Tim Robinson, who has made a reputable name for himself with such shows as I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, Detroiters, and Invincible, Andrew DeYoung's [...]
Until Dawn
Some of the more beloved video games of the past decade have been horror games. From survival horror like Outlast and Resident Evil: Biohazard, to games like The Quarry and Until Dawn -- where it's [...]
Thunderbolts*
I'm not sure how Thunderbolts* will eventually fit into the MCU and if it will ever qualify as an "Avengers" film, but it sure injects some creativity back into the Marvel films after many such [...]
The Ugly Stepsister
More often than not, most retellings of classic fairy tales in recent years have largely been produced by Disney, in their attempt to remake as many of their classic animated films as possible. While many [...]
The Wedding Banquet (2025)
Charming and witty, The Wedding Banquet (2025) is a romantic comedy about two couples and friends who are attempting to take their relationship to the next level, but they hit many roadblocks along the way. [...]
The Shrouds
Filmmaking veteran and icon David Cronenberg (Eastern Promises, Dead Ringers) has always been celebrated as a great visual director, he's also a great writer too who is celebrated for his cerebral themes that can often [...]
Grand Tour
The sixth feature film by Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes, Grand Tour plays out like a companion piece to his 2012 masterpiece Tabu, with some striking similarities to his 2008 sophomore film Our Beloved Month of [...]