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
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is a film that does not have as important a reason for existing as it seems to believe. Jeremy Allen White, superb as a tormented chef on The Bear, is [...]
Frankenstein
Wintry, chilling, and captivating, Guillermo Del Toro's adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a breathtaking retelling of the classic two-century-old novel; it's a horror movie that feels Shakespearian in just how dramatically charged it is. [...]
Mr. Scorsese
Martin Scorsese has been making feature films since 1967. He had been dabbling in short films since his teen years. This is a long and, despite the reputation, a rather diverse career. It is no [...]
After the Hunt
Director Luca Guadagnino's exceptional and dramatically charged double features from last year, Challengers and Queer, were both skillfully made films that didn't quite get the year-end movie push as they deserved, resulting in major subs [...]
Black Phone 2
The Black Phone, based off a short story by author Joe Hill, was a surprise hit in its summer 2022 release. Directed by Scott Derrickson and co-written alongside C. Robert Cargill -- a former film [...]
The Mastermind
The Mastermind, written and directed by Kelly Reichardt, is a seeming change of pace for the gifted film maker. An art heist crime caper is not her usual domain, yet here, Reichardt explores many of [...]
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Actress and filmmaker Mary Bronstein who is the wife of frequent Safdie Bros collaborator Ronald Bronstein directs her first film since her 2008 film Yeast, that co-stars Greta Gerwig. Based on Bronstein's own life experiences [...]
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Kiss of the Spider Woman is the new adaptation of the 1992/93 musical based on Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel, which had in 1986 been turned into an Oscar winning film from Hector Babenco. This version [...]
Tron: Ares
The original 1982 Tron film was released amidst arguably the greatest summer movie season ever for the sci-fi genre, wedged in between E.T., John Carpenter's The Thing, Blade Runner and Star Trek 2: The Wrath [...]
John Candy: I Like Me
John Candy: I Like Me, from director Colin Hanks, produced by his father, Tom, is a sprawling and at times, near hagiographic look at the actor and comedian, John Candy. This is one of the [...]
The Lost Bus
The Lost Bus is the latest film from director and co-writer Paul Greengrass. Based on Lizzie Johnson’s non-fiction 2021 book Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire, this is the tale of Kevin McKay, a [...]
A House of Dynamite
Kathryn Bigelow's taut, engrossing docudrama A House of Dynamite uses a hypothetical narrative approach as it dives deep in its real time duration of three points of views that involves the world on the verge [...]
The Smashing Machine
Dwayne Johnson has been in the public eye for more than 25 years now, first debuting in the WWF as Rocky Maivia before emerging as The Rock. He quickly became one of the most famous [...]
P.T. Anderson Retrospective (Film Rankings from Worst to Best)
Easily one of the most extraordinary and gifted visionaries working today, Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the world's most celebrated and renowned filmmakers of our era. With the release of his latest film, titled [...]