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
Wicked Little Letters
“We worship a messiah who suffered, so by suffering, don’t we move closer to Heaven?” “...No, I don’t think so.” This exchange, between the devout Edith Swan (Olivia Colman) and her father Edward (Timothy Spall), [...]
Monkey Man
There is no doubt that John Wick's dynamic, revenge-fueled action odyssey alongside international martial arts spectacles, including The Raid and Ong Bak, have together metamorphized a once-stagnant genre into something that continues to shock, awe, [...]
The First Omen
Religious horror is going through a bit of a boom at the moment. From last month's sleeper success, the Sydney Sweeney-starring/produced Immaculate, and now this prequel to the 1976 classic The Omen, the genre has [...]
The Listener
The Listener, from director Steve Buscemi, is an unusual film in the sense that it has only one onscreen character, a woman calling herself “Beth” who works for an unnamed company, where various, and random, [...]
Coup de Chance
Familiar elements, themes, and plot mechanics go full circle in Woody Allen's Coup de Chance, a compelling study of a love affair in crises that expands on familiar Woody Allen themes dating back to his [...]
Problemista
The endlessly screwed-up immigration and economic exploitation that make the American immigration experience challenging are on full display in Problemista. Writer-director and co-star Julio Torres creates a messy, uneven piece of work, capturing the struggling [...]
The Truth vs. Alex Jones
The Truth vs. Alex Jones, an HBO release, which debuted at South by Southwest on March 11, 2024, is the latest in a long line of strong HBO documentaries, including the Spike Lee works, 4 [...]
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
Winter may still be an annoying pest here in Michigan, but big blockbusters like Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire are a telltale sign of the arriving spring and summer seasons. At this point, the [...]
1994 Retrospective: The Best Films of 1994
The year 1994 was undeniably a remarkable year for cinema. It was also the year I started to get into film. Even at age 12, my parents were kind enough to get me my own [...]
Road House (2024)
Director Doug Liman (Swingers, Go, The Bourne Identity) does not have a track record that indicates he would know better than to have remade Road House, the 1989 cult classic starring the late Patrick Swayze. [...]
Immaculate
The newest religious horror film on the block is pretty respectable, but its sin is failing to do enough to stand out in a highly competitive modern cinematic landscape. The movie in question is director [...]
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
The main characters from the old and the new Ghostbusters films find themselves once again squaring off against ghosts, ghouls, and red-tape bureaucracy in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. After Ghostbusters: Afterlife improved upon Paul Feig’s passable [...]
Late Night with the Devil
A descendant of the Found Footage sub genre, the latest film from Australian filmmaking duo Cameron & Colin Cairnes is the kind of indie gem that makes horror such an exciting genre. A cheeky throwback [...]
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
Nearly 20 years after the Romania New Wave took international cinema by storm with such titles as The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, and 12:08 East of Bucharest, Romanian [...]
Hundreds of Beavers
Hundreds of Beavers is certainly a film. Is it a good film, or an enjoyable one? That may depend on many factors, including your tolerance for the bizarre, zany, and downright, at times, hallucinogenic work on [...]
Love Lies Bleeding
Director Rose Glass’ feature directorial debut Saint Maud became a casualty of the pandemic, seeing its release delayed and delayed, ultimately dumped in early 2021 with little fanfare. The religious horror thriller showed great potential [...]