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
Knock at the Cabin
The lone cabin in the woods has become something of a hoary horror device. Most famous in the Evil Dead films, it has become enough of a formula that it was parodied in films like [...]
Infinity Pool
With Infinity Pool, his third and boldest film thus far, Canadian filmmaker Brandon Cronenberg, proves yet again he can produce and direct another original screenplay that not only carries on the same sensibilities of Possessor, [...]
Shotgun Wedding
Since the release of the critical and commercial 2019 hit Hustlers that found star Jennifer Lopez horrifically snubbed of a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, the hope would be that J. Lo would continue to [...]
Women Talking
Since the #MeToo movement, many women have come forward to reveal unflattering details about the abuse they have endured and suffered from, which has been covered up for years by many institutions and individuals. Women [...]
Alice, Darling
By channeling the tropes of psychological thrillers that are about romantic obsession, Mary Nighy's directorial debut Alice, Darling is gender-reversed like the 1996 iconic thriller Fear, but it ends up defying expectations and ends up [...]
When You Finish Saving the World
When You Finish Saving the World is a familiar, offbeat Sundance family comedy-drama about family neuroses and mother-son dynamics from actor-turned filmmaker Jesse Eisenberg in his feature-length directorial debut. The film is a darkly comedic, [...]
The Best Films of 2022-Editors’ Picks
Coming off the two most turbulent years in our recent history, 2022 proved that one of the many ways to unite the world is, as corny as it sounds, through the power of cinema. As [...]
Skinamarink
Skinamarink, will certainly draw comparisons to stripped down ultra-low budget horror movies like Paranormal Activity, The Blair Witch, Open Water, or even David Lynch's Eraserhead. The horror in the film is mostly muted, deeply atmospheric, [...]
The Pale Blue Eye
While their era of handing out massive blank checks may be coming to a close, Netflix is still dolling out hefty sums of cash for creatives when they're not cancelling dozens of beloved shows. Writer/director [...]
Saint Omer
While the film holds all the striking realism of a documentary, the emotional depth displayed by French filmmaker Alice Diop bounces between a courtroom drama and a cinema verité chamber piece with emotionally charged results. [...]
A Man Called Otto
It's now been seven years since the Swedish comedy-drama A Man Called Ove (2015) became an Oscar nominee for Best International Film and Best Makeup, and it was a critical and commercial success as it generated [...]
This Place Rules
Largely constructed in the form of his Channel 5 (formerly All Gas No Brakes) content, journalist turned documentary filmmaker Andrew Callaghan gives us his directorial debut with This Place Rules; a collection of footage and interviews that Andrew and [...]
The Best Films of 2022-Robert Butler
What will be said about 2022 in cinema? Week after week, we continue to hear about dour box office numbers and that theaters are in crisis. Certain columns claim the state of cinema is dying. [...]