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
My Old School
A stranger-than-fiction type of documentary that could easily be made into a narrative feature, My Old School is a bizarre documentary by Jono McLeod about Scotland's most notorious high school scandal, which was about a [...]
The Gray Man
Since their release of Marvel’s Captain America: Winter Soldier in 2014, the Russo Brothers have been on quite the marathon of directing large-budgeted films. With 4 significant credits stemming from Marvel properties and not to [...]
The Sea Beast
As the years press on, it seems as if film mediums are becoming less creative and more of a cash grab in order to rake in profits or stream clicks rather than develop a story [...]
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris
The place is London, and the time is twelve years after the end of World War II. Ada Harris (Lesley Manville) works as a cleaning woman and lives alone in a small basement flat. When [...]
The Deer King
In a nation in the process of healing from the ravages of war, the ravages of a returning illness are coming to the forefront. The illness appears to be mystical in origin, but one doctor [...]
Where the Crawdads Sing
The 2018 bestselling novel, Where the Crawdads Sing, written by Delia Owens, was a beachside page-turner that captured a youthfulness in the hearts of its readers. Spending over 150 weeks on the New York Times [...]
Fire of Love
A true found footage documentary that could also be easily labeled as a natural disaster film or even an offbeat love story—only this is real and doesn't rely on special effects or actors pretending to [...]
The Forgiven
Sharply scripted and ripped with satire about class, privilege, and broken fidelity, John Michael McDonagh's latest film certainly channels some older classics like Michael Curtiz's Casablanca or Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much [...]
Thor: Love and Thunder
When filmmaker Taika Waititi, known for quirky, heartfelt indies such as Hunt for the Wilderpeople and What We Do in the Shadows, joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it felt like a perfect match. His Thor: [...]
Both Sides of the Blade (Fire)
A highly engaging, ultimately intimate drama about a middle-aged woman who is caught in love with two men in her life, Both Sides of the Blade (also titled Fire) is a return to a more conventional [...]
The Innocents
It’s not often you find hidden gems under the large stockpile of films today, but when you do, it's astonishingly satisfying. These days, we are in the Golden Age of superhero filmmaking, whether it be [...]
Minions: The Rise of Gru
Illumination's Despicable Me franchise has dominated the culture since the very first film, released in 2010. The story of likable supervillain with a heart of gold, Gru, and his adoptive daughters has spawned two sequels [...]
The Best Films of 2022…So Far
It's 2022 and regular moviegoing feels normalized again, only back from a long, 2-year pandemic, but so are many superlative blockbusters that are pulling in audiences, with such box-office spectacles as Top Gun: Maverick, Dr. [...]
Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe
Before Mike Judge struck gold with his biggest creative endeavor, King of The Hill, it’s predecessor, Beavis and Butt-Head was a hit on MTV. The show first aired on March 8th, 1993 and the two [...]
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
As charming as any Pixar or Hollywood family film, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is the feature film version of the 2010 successful You Tube short film of the same title. This is the [...]
Neptune Frost
Saul Willliams teams up with Rwandan playwright and actress Anisia Uzeyman for their directorial debut, titled Neptune Frost, an otherworldly but partly successful film that blends sci-fi with musical numbers. Think of Claire Denis's White [...]