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 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 [...]
All We Imagine As Light
A visually sublime and richly intimate exploration of womanhood and friendship in India, and an impressive sophomore feature by Payal Kapadia. All We Imagine as Light is both elliptical and humanistic, one in which Kapadia [...]
Gladiator 2
Gladiator 2, director Ridley Scott’s sequel to his Oscar-winning Roman epic from 2000, may give many viewers familiar with that film a sense of Deja Vu. That is because, nearly beat for beat, this is a [...]
A Different Man
A Different Man is a strange concoction. It is a film of two halves, one fairly decent and the other increasingly obnoxious and less engaging. Despite the presence of three terrific performers, the film fails [...]
The Piano Lesson
August Wilson was one of the most ambitious playwrights of all time, and The Piano Lesson is one of his best, most complex and fully formed works. Previously adapted into a television film by stage legend George [...]
Small Things like These
Tim Midlands's Small Things Like These is a heavy, distressing watch—involving flashbacks about a troubled childhood—but it also offers levels of courage that resonate thanks to a devoted, soul-searching performance by Cillian Murphy, in which [...]
His Three Daughters
His Three Daughters, a drama starring Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen and Natasha Lyonne, from writer- director Azazel Jacobs, feels much like a play for most of its 101-minute run time. This is not a complaint, [...]
A Real Pain
There are many actors that pivot towards directing, and often they have an uphill battle; some succeed more than others, and whether or not critics and audiences approve of their works will remain uncertain. Yet [...]
My Old Ass
My Old Ass, a coming-of-age film from writer/director Megan Park (The Fallout), staring Maisy Stella -- a fine film debut -- and Aubrey Plaza -- the Old Ass of the title -- in a delightful [...]
