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
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, [...]
Zack Snyder’s Justice League
Clocking in at over 20 minutes longer than The Ten Commandments and 14 minutes longer than Lawrence of Arabia is the much-prophesized Zack Snyder's Justice League. Once believed to be nothing short of a pipedream, [...]
Review Round Up 3/18
The past few weeks have been a bit hectic, and some films reviews have fallen by the wayside. So to make up for it, I figured why not cover some of them in smaller, truncated [...]
The Father
A truly devastating and shattering drama about dementia, director and co-adapted by Florian Zeller based on his own play. The Father holds some Bergmanesque moments to chronicle the life of a father Anthony (Anthony Hopkins), [...]
Mirror (Spotlight Review)
When discussing the most important filmmakers who ever lived, the name Andrei Tarkovsky will come up rather quickly. In a career that spanned 30 years, Tarkovsky only made 7 films; but each of them has [...]
Coming 2 America
Now being released 33 years after the 1988 comedic gem Coming to America, this sequel Coming 2 America fails to live up to the comedic momentum and feels like a retread. The film returns to [...]
Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry
We've seen pop stars come and go with varying degrees of success and pop culture impact throughout the past, but never have we seen one come in the form of Billie Eilish. The 18 year-old [...]
The United States vs. Billie Holiday
The melodramatic detours and pokey pacing in The United States vs. Billie Holiday certainly speaks to Lee Daniels sensibilities, overwrought and overstuffed with many raw emotions, and is conventional to the demise from fame, and [...]
I Care a Lot
Another satire on capitalism and the corruption of the American dream, I Care a Lot is a playful, but deliberately mean-spirited dark comedy about greed and determination that defies audience expectations. A film that examines [...]
Test Pattern
We just recently had the highly acclaimed Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Eliza Hittman's small-budget indie masterpiece that also explored women reproductive rights, for Test Pattern, the film also explores women's healthcare challenges and is every [...]
Happy Valentine’s Day from Defacto–55 Great Films About Human Connection
Covid has been very difficult for single people, as I'm sure some of you can imagine. If anything, it has probably created many to feel even more alone as we are now living in times [...]
Judas and the Black Messiah
The story of the Black Panthers, particularly that of its Illinois Chairman Fred Hampton, hasn't been as well-publicized in recent decades as it should. Take this writer for example, a white millennial (admittedly a year [...]
Duck You Sucker (Spotlight Review) 50th Anniversary!
One of the Best Film of 1971!! Sergio Leone's final western, the 1971 saga "Duck You Sucker," also known as "A Fistful of Dynamite" is a triumphant masterpiece that features perhaps the most stellar casting, [...]
Malcolm & Marie
Malcolm (John David Washington), an up-and-coming film director, and his girlfriend, Marie (Zendaya) a former actress, return home late after a successful film premiere. Off the high of strong buzz and acclaim, Malcolm feels on [...]