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
The Beta Test
What is it about Jim Cummings and PJ McCabe’s, The Beta Test, that lures and attracts audiences into the psychological disarray that it is? Perhaps it’s the dreamscape-esque environment the film takes place in that [...]
Wife of A Spy
Once again succeeding on a artistic level, Wife of A Spy, which is acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshsi Kurosawa's 23rd film which was released on Japanese Television last year during the pandemic, but released theatrically here [...]
The Harder They Fall
Attempting to reinvent and create a refreshing twist to a century-old genre is quite the challenge, especially when it comes to westerns. And yet Jeymes Samuel takes that challenge and runs with it, crafting decently [...]
Mogul Mowgli
In his sophomore effort, the dramatic film Mogul Mowgli, Pakistani filmmaker Bassam Tariq holds a lot of promise as a co-writer and director with his first attempt at narrative filmmaking. After making a splash on [...]
Last Night in Soho
After years of making acclaimed genre comedies, filmmaker Edgar Wright finally struck commercial gold with his fifth feature film, Baby Driver, earning both universal critical acclaim and over $200 million at the worldwide box office. [...]
The French Dispatch
It's no surprise to find that Wes Anderson returns to his singular style and traits that he is celebrated for with The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel being his highlights, yet his distinctive [...]
The Rescue
In 2018, news that a Thailand soccer team consisting of 12 adolescent boys and their coach were trapped in a flooded cave was heard worldwide. Day after day, updates would be made about the well-being [...]
Mulholland Drive (Spotlight Review) 20th Anniversary!
The cautionary tale of Hollywood and what lies beneath the surface of all the glitz, glamour, and stardom underlies a very dark, seedy, and cutthroat world. 20 years later, David Lynch's 2001 masterpiece is every [...]
There’s Someone Inside Your House
With Halloween around the corner, slashers and thrillers are being released at their usual pace this time of year. And with Netflix keeping their promise to release a film every week, a brand new slasher [...]
Possession (Spotlight Review) 40th Anniversary!
Now being re-released theatrically with a pristine 4k restoration in celebration of its 40th anniversary by Metrograph Pictures, the cult following of Andrzej Zulawski's 1981 psychological horror film Possession should reach an even wider audience [...]
The Velvet Underground
A innovative, often informative chronicle of the iconic rock band The Velvet Underground who gained notoriety during the 1960s counterculture movement, The Velvet Underground is the first documentary (and tenth feature) by auteur filmmaker Todd [...]
Bergman Island
Mia Hansen-Løve follows up her acclaimed and artful French dramas Things to Come, Eden, and Goodbye First Love, with Bergman Island, another ambiguous, clever, dreamy, and meta-driven script she also wrote, that's setting is on [...]
Halloween Kills
Delivering on its amusingly blunt title, Halloween Kills does exactly that; it kills, and quite brutally. Through all the previous eleven films in the franchise -- ten, if you exclude Season of the Witch -- [...]