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.
He later went on to 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.
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.
West Side Story
Steven Spielberg has previously dabbled in the visual rhythms of musical theater -- see the opening of Temple of Doom for a prime example -- but has never made a full fledged musical. His adaptation [...]
Drive My Car
A chronicle of grief, healing, and the power of the creative process are all familiar themes we have seen numerous times before, but rarely are they executed with the delicateness, resentment, tenderness, and hope that [...]
Procession
As a trigger warning, this review will cover a documentary purely focused on sexual abuse and assault. Procession, a documentary following a small group of sexual abuse survivors by their own catholic priests, looking to [...]
The Souvenir: Part II
Artistically speaking, The Souvenir: Part II is to The Souvenir what The Godfather: Part II was to The Godfather: a masterful follow-up to an essential masterpiece that is equally great, if not stronger. As written [...]
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City
After six films spanning over 15 years, the Resident Evil film franchise, spearheaded by writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson and star Milla Jovovich reached their designated "Final Chapter", the decision was made to hit the reset [...]
C’mon C’mon
C'mon C'mon, the fourth feature by Mike Mills, represents his most successful film yet, whose often colorfully quirky films and eccentric films have often proved to be overly precious and over directed. Returning to themes [...]
The Power of the Dog
The Power of the Dog is a brilliant, oblique adaptation of Thomas Savage's 1967 novel of the same name. Reinforced by an unpredictable premise, superlative performances, a modern view of weaponized masculinity in the dying [...]
The Humans
Stephen Karams' experience as a playwright and screenwriter (The Seagull, Speech & Debate) delivers him promising directing skills in The Humans, a Thanksgiving family reunion dark comedy that is carried out with caustic humor and [...]
House of Gucci
Following the traditional rise and fall formula, where the main characters of the yarn rise from nothing and fall right after hitting the peak as the narrative unfolds, House of Gucci is a deeply flawed [...]
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
After the unnecessary debacle over the failed 2016 relaunch of Ghostbusters, the decision was made to salvage the franchise by instead following the trend of legacyquels and craft a follow-up to the original two films. [...]
tick, tick…Boom!
Jonathan Larson quickly became one of the defining voices of his generation, and never even lived to witness it. Larson passed away suddenly from an aneurism from marfin’s syndrome the night before the opening day [...]
King Richard
Following his 2018 feature debut, the Sundance police drama "Monsters and Men," Reinaldo Marcus Green makes a huge leap from an indie drama to a studio drama with King Richard, a highly inspiring sports drama [...]
Red Notice
What do the films, Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981), Oceans 11 (2001), and The Hitman’s Bodyguard (2017) have in common? Well, almost nothing except for the fact Netflix’s new action-comedy, [...]
Wes Anderson Retrospective (Film Rankings from Worst to Best)
Wes Anderson's tenth film, The French Dispatch, was just recently released to some polarizing reactions from both critics and audiences, but it still has its champions. The most common question I have been getting from [...]
