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
Green Border
Agnieszka Holland, the famed Polish director who is perhaps her nation’s best currently active filmmaker, has created both a film and a polemic, with her newest effort, Green Border. This brutally uncompromising look at the refugee [...]
Kinds of Kindness
Yorgos Lanthimos's surrealist, wickedly funny horror/dark comedy Kinds of Kindness may be more in line with his earlier Greek films, but its otherworldly tone and rich style, with themes that ask fresh, fascinating questions about [...]
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley is the fourth film in the franchise. At times, it certainly feels like a fourth entry, but mostly it avoids the complete mess most extended and “too late” problems from [...]
A Quiet Place: Day One
John Krasinski's A Quiet Place franchise has been one of the major breakout stories in the horror genre from the past decade. While Parts 1 and 2 came with varying degrees of success, audiences showed [...]
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1
The Western is a genre almost as old as film itself. From the Golden Age of Ford, Mann, Daves, Boetticher, and others to the darker 1960s and 70s under Leone, Peckinpah, and Eastwood, to the [...]
A Family Affair
A Family Affair, directed by Richard LaGravenese, is a comedy with smiles and chuckles rather than laughs, but far more groans and cringes of embarrassment than any other response. Despite a fine cast, without a [...]
1999 Retrospective: The Best Films of 1999
W hat a remarkable year 1999 was. It was in a period long before streaming services, and virtually everyone went to the movies and the box-office wasn't in draught. It was a year where brains [...]
The Bikeriders
Director Jeff Nichols has not released a film in eight years. His previous film Loving, was a portrayal of Richard and Mildred Loving, whose marriage led to the historical Supreme Court ruling that nationally legalized [...]
Ghostlight
Ghostlight is a magnetic and unique journey through the grieving process that will effortlessly cause feelings to bubble to the surface.
Inside Out 2
Inside Out 2, the sequel to the brilliant 2015 feature, Inside Out, is everything a sequel should be and more. It takes the characters and situations in new directions, growing them naturally and giving us [...]
Banel and Adama
Banel and Adama is a finely shot film of wonderful vistas and dreamlike images, concerning a young couple from Senegal. The man, Adama, is destined to be the chief of the village, and has taken a [...]
Jim Henson Idea Man
Jim Henson Idea Man, is a sparkling new documentary, courtesy of director Ron Howard, who has done many feature films, but is building a reputation as a fine documentarian. His work, Julia, on the life of [...]
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
The third entry in the Bad Boys franchise, Bad Boys For Life, the last major blockbuster released before the Pandemic shut the world down, felt like a breath of fresh air in how it successfully [...]
The Watchers
The Watchers is an ambitious, perplexing journey into the wild forests of Ireland, and an acceptable debut from Ishana Night Shyamalan.
Robot Dreams
Robot Dreams, based on the 2007 Sara Varon novel of the same name, and directed by Pablo Berger, is an independent animated wonder.
Young Woman and the Sea
Familiar but engaging, Joachim Rønning's biographical sports drama, about the taxing journey of swimmer Trudy Ederle and how she was the first swimmer to swim across the English Channel, certainly holds a lot of sports [...]
The Commandant’s Shadow
Many thoughts occurred to this reviewer while watching The Commandant’s Shadow, not the least of which was why has there not been a bigger push to market this film? This is one of the best, most [...]