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 Woman in the Window
Paying homage to the title of the1944 Fritz Lang noir masterpiece and easily working on the concept of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, Joe Wright's (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice) A Woman in the Window feels like [...]
Those Who Wish Me Dead
Very much in the vein of a 90s natural disaster or man vs. nature style thriller, one that reminds you of such 90 era action thrillers films like Cliffhanger, The River Wild, Dante's Peak or [...]
Spiral: From the Book of Saw
It all started with a little movie that could. The brainchild of two Australian film grads in James Wan and Leigh Whannell, Saw was a scruffy little thriller that channeled the likes of Dario Argento [...]
2001 Retrospective: The 10 Best Films of 2001
With 2021 upon us, I figured it was the right time to look back at the year 2001 and the great pieces of cinema that were released. This list runs down my favorite films from [...]
Mainstream
Gia Coppola's sophomore follow-up Mainstream in some aspects reminds me of Sidney Lumet's 1976 masterpiece Network; both works are scathing media satires and are hyperreal in tone and approach--although Network warned where culture was going [...]
The Mitchells vs. The Machines
Now offering six of their own animated productions each year, the Netflix team has taken the animated feature into a new terrain of impressive and narrative design that is now highly competitive with Disney and [...]
Wrath of Man
Just before the pandemic hit, one of the freshest surprises to hits screens in some time was Guy Ritchie's return to smaller scale filmmaking with the highly clever The Gentlemen. Ritchie's much-needed return to the [...]
The Human Voice
A darkly comedic and equally melancholic dramatic short film, Pedro Almodóvar''s The Human Voice is a deeply compelling one-person show featuring the great Tilda Swinton, clocking in at only 30 mins it's a complicated film [...]
Things Heard & Seen
After just pulling off a truly stellar Oscar-nominated performance as Marion Davies in David Fincher's Mank, Amanda Seyfried returns with a very emotionally wrenching performance as an agonizing wife confined in a decaying marriage. The [...]
32 Best Picture Nominees That Deserved to Win the Oscar
32 Best Picture Nominees That Deserved to Win the Best Picture Oscar. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has a long history of overlooking the greatest films ever made for Best Picture. Down [...]
93rd Academy Awards (2021)
Here is the full list of 2021 Oscar nominations, along with picks and predictions. This year's Oscars are going to be quite unpredictable and it can go so many different ways. Films released between January [...]
Mortal Kombat
With video game movies getting a slightly better reputation in recent years, it makes sense to revisit the classic game franchise that also helped usher in "video game movies" as a genre. The newest big [...]
Jakob’s Wife
Having made her cinematic resurgence with the 2013 sleeper hit You're Next, horror icon (don't call her a scream queen) Barbara Crampton has made a number of strong appearances in genre films in the years [...]
Shiva Baby
Emma Seligman’s debut feature Shiva Baby, chronicles the day of a nettlesome Shiva family gathering with prudent humor, occasionally fragile drama and plenty of anxiety. At least once in our lifetimes, we've all experienced some [...]
3rd Annual Defacto Film Awards
To celebrate the upcoming Oscars, we are pleased to announce the Best of 2020 nominees and winners in fourteen categories. We selected the top five picks in the following categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best [...]
Godzilla vs Kong
In a time where mega-blockbusters have been sidelined due to the pandemic, Godzilla vs Kong feels like a welcome return to the kind of film destined to be experienced on a massive screen with a [...]
The Courier
Based on historical events, The Courier is a well acted and polished espionage thriller that fails to raise any moral ambiguities and complexities of the Cold War other than following familiar clichés and detours. Ultimately, [...]