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
Fire Island
Over the years, LGBTQ+ representation has widened and become more mainstream in the world of cinema, which is remarkable. Films that have garnered the bulk of popularity include Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, [...]
Benediction
Terrence Davies' skillful direction and the engaging storytelling of Siegfried Sassoon's life are just some of the highlights in this luminous biographical drama. From an original screenplay by Davies based on the events of Sasson's [...]
Crimes of the Future
A dystopian planet where the human population is nearly extinct and human autonomy is transforming, or rather mutating, is just the starting point for David Cronenberg's provocative and effectively grotesque body-horror sci-fi thriller. More in [...]
Hit the Road
The first feature from Panah Panahi holds some of the same cinematic traits and sensibilities as his father, Jafar Panahi. Like his father, the film also delivers some subtle modern insights into the current state [...]
The Bob’s Burgers Movie
The jump to television to the big screen has proven highly successful for such animated shows as South Park and The Simpsons, which makes all the sense in the world that Bob's Burgers, the Fox [...]
Montana Story
In case you were wondering, Montana Story is in fact an American independent drama that's setting is, well, in Montana. It's smaller scale than the series Yellowstone, with just a few characters that take part [...]
Top Gun: Maverick
Top Gun: Maverick elevates nostalgia, and similar to its predecessor, this energetic and witty follow-up to the 1986 Bruckheimer produced/late Tony Scott directed action movie classic titled Top Gun delivers breathtaking set-pieces and thrilling action [...]
Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers
I'm not sure I would have ever guessed Akiva Schaffer and Andy Samberg, two of the three members of The Lonely Island, the comedic rap group that began on Saturday Night Live with now-classic comedic [...]
Lux Æterna
With Lux Æterna, it's as if Argentine French filmmaker Gaspar Noe wanted to willfully be more experimental and playful (even his most playful is still brooding) and appears to have produced and directed this film [...]
1992 Retrospective: The Best Films of 1992
Continuing our year-by-year retrospectives of the best films depending on the dates, I now introduce to you 1992. This was the year when the US Supreme Court reaffirmed the right to abortion, four officers were [...]
In Front of Your Face
In the indie and international worlds, films about sibling reunions are common ground, but In Front of Your Face stands out with its delicate writing and superb performances by Korean veteran theater and film actress [...]
Firestarter
You might recall the poster or DVD artwork of Drew Barrymore as a child standing with a look of anxiety with flames behind her in the 1984 horror-thriller titled Firestarter or recall reading the original [...]
On the Count of Three
The despairing, bittersweet, and adequately directed film by stand-up comedian and actor Jerrod Carmichael serves him well in his directorial feature film debut in On the Count of Three, an uneven but deeply layered two-handler [...]
