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
Insidious: The Red Door
The first Insidious was a major sleeper hit back in 2011. Director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell launched themselves to stardom with the first Saw film, but the filmmakers struggled to find much success [...]
The Lesson
While adaptations of novels often serve as the basis of films, there are also many occasions where a writer themselves, whether real or fictional, has been the subject of a film. While the act of [...]
The Best Films of 2023 so far…
With half of the year already gone, it's now becoming standard for many publications and film buffs to share their choices midway through the year. It opens the gates for many films to carry on [...]
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Indiana Jones, one of the 20th century's great iconic film characters, has given generations of audiences lasting thrills and an influence over cinema that cannot be overstated. Birthed by George Lucas after his love for [...]
Prisoner’s Daughter
Estranged or dysfunctional families have been a source of inspiration for storytelling since the dawn of storytelling. Because we all have had at least some family, these stories are often very relatable. But because of [...]
The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster
From the first minute, the most noticeable aspect of The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster is the freshness it brings to an overdone premise. Mary Shelley's groundbreaking novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, and [...]
No Hard Feelings
The R-rated studio comedy has become one of the larger victims to the streaming era. The days of big, successful studio comedies like Bridesmaids, Girls Trip and The Hangover have severely diminished when streaming services [...]
Asteroid City
Sophisticated, meta, and deadpan, Asteroid City finds world-renowned auteur Wes Anderson recapturing a similar story as he has in the past but working on a much larger canvas where he gets to experiment more with [...]
Past Lives
From David Lean's Brief Encounter to Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love, Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, and Richard Linklater's Before Trilogy, there have been a substantial number of films released in the [...]
Extraction 2
In the current cinematic climate, packed to the gills with overblown action movies, one rarely stands out, and 2020's Extraction is hardly the exception. However, its impressive one-take scene, consistently explosive action sequences, and Chris [...]
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
Michael Bay's Transformers franchise was once, for better or for worse, a franchise that largely marched to the beat of its own drum. Guided by Bay's distinct filmmaking approach, the franchise was an undeniable trendsetter for [...]
Brooklyn 45
The World War II era has been fertile ground for filmmakers for decades. It lends itself to a very wide spectrum of genre and tone, which is likely why it has remained so used for [...]
The Boogeyman
Rob Savage's breakthrough debut film Host was one of the few projects to emerge early on in the Pandemic that utilized the made the most of its resources, delivering a terrifying film set entirely over [...]
1998 Retrospective: The Best Films of 1998
Even in 1998, people were claiming cinema was dying. As I recall, I was told this as I had a VHS copy of The Big Lebowski in my hand, and a local film buff neighbor [...]