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
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 [...]
Hard Truths
Hard Truths, filmmaker Mike Leigh’s first film since 2018’s Peterloo, is a return to familiar territory the master director. Reuniting with his Secrets & Lies star, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Leigh’s film places Baptiste as one of the most disagreeable [...]
A Complete Unknown
A Complete Unknown, based on the book Bob Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald, is the newest film from director and co-writer James Mangold. In 2005, Walk the Line, a biopic also helmed and co-written by [...]
Kraven the Hunter
It's no secret that Sony's universe of Spider-Man spinoffs have not exactly lit a fire among audiences. While the Venom films have had strong success, they were surrounding by a gonzo dual performance from star [...]
The Last Showgirl
The Last Showgirl, the new film from director Gia Coppola, is a-mostly-understated drama about the late in life changes for a Las Vegas showgirl. Pamela Anderson is-almost-revelatory as Shelly, who has been in the same [...]
2014 Retrospective: The Best Films of 2014
Before I compile my 2024 best of the year list, I wanted to include my retrospective list for 2014. This will be final retrospective list of the year as I plan on publishing lists next [...]
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
Peter Jackson's Middle Earth saga has become a milestone for 21st century filmmaking. His adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic novels have proved to be timeless, continuing to usher in new fans with each passing year. [...]
Nightbitch
Amy Adams delivers a raw and nuanced performance in Marielle Heller's Nightbitch, but whatever made Rachel Yoder's debut novel such an acclaimed success doesn't quite work here; it's uneven with its tonal shifts and it's [...]
The Return
Adapting classical literature is never an easy task, because of both the expectations that come with it as well as the simple fact these stories are so known, so defining, that it is difficult to [...]
Oh, Canada
Oh, Canada is the newest film from the writer-director Paul Schrader, here reunited with his American Gigolo star, Richard Gere, and once again, as with Affliction, based on a novel by the late Russell Banks, to whom the film [...]
Memoir of a Snail
Memoir of a Snail is an unusual stop-motion animated feature, telling a rather devastating story about loss and guilt. What appears on the surface to be a whimsical tale soon reveals itself to be anything [...]