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 Last Shift
We all need money. Every one of us is stuck in this system, whether we like it or not. And a lot of people are stuck in dead end jobs, where they are barely getting [...]
10 Essential Political Documentaries To Stream Now! 2020 Election
Ever since the success of Michael Moore's 2004 documentary masterpiece "Fahrenheit 9/11," many filmmakers since have went onto to direct many political documentaries all in hopes of shaping the election, but in the 2016 election [...]
The Empty Man
There's a strong likelihood that you've never heard of Disney/20th Century's newest release, The Empty Man, at least until a week ago when the first trailer was released. All signs would point to this film [...]
Dick Johnson Is Dead
Have you ever wanted to kill your parents? Throw them down a flight of stairs? Hit their neck with a two by four and let them bleed out? Or maybe drop an air conditioner directly [...]
The 40-Year-Old Version
The title is obviously a play on the Steve Carrell starring film from 2005 and it does share some of the same elements of comedy, but the similarities end there. The title of the film [...]
The Trial of the Chicago 7
Aaron Sorkin's second directorial feature, The Trial of the Chicago 7, dramatizes the aftermath of the riots at the 1968 Democratic Nation Convention. Led by the Justice Department, newly under the Nixon administration, seven different [...]
Kajillionaire
Miranda July’s third feature “Kajillionaire” is one of the most affecting and visionary films of the year. A film of great sadness that delivers affirming joy and bittersweet empathy. July continues her distinctive and idiosyncratic [...]
Totally Under Control
Urgent and certainly essential during the tragic COVID-19 era, "Totally Under Control" unfolds less like a documentary and more like a riveting cable news story. Still there is no doubt this film should be commended [...]
The Boys in the Band
Ryan Murphy has built up a quite the resume over the past decade or so. With television hits like American Horror Story, Pose and American Crime Story, the mega Producer was signed by Netflix in [...]
The Glorias
Easily her most passionate and personal film to date, “The Glorias,” Julie Taymors' fifth feature, is an overstuffed but highly enjoyable chronicle on the life and times of journalist and women's rights activist Gloria Steinem. [...]
Feels Good Man
Remember when Pepe the Frog was charming and innocent before the popular meme character was turned into a hate symbol? This would have been in the mid- late 2000s, and you would have been on [...]
Sofia Coppola Retrospective (Film Rankings from Worst to Best)
Sofia Coppola is one of the most artful and creative filmmakers working today, her work has a wide range of different genres and tones that always end up transcending itself into something treasurable and memorable. [...]
On the Rocks
Sophisticated and charming, "On the Rocks," Sofia Coppola's appealing feature is her most lighthearted and accessible film to date, a bittersweet screwball comedy told consistently from the point of view of a married woman attempting [...]
Antebellum
Antebellum, the directorial debut from filmmaking duo Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, opens with a quote from William Faulkner; "The past is never dead. It's not even past." A fitting quote for a film also [...]
The Devil All the Time
Antonio Campos's "The Devil All the Time" is his fifth feature, following the critically acclaimed "Christine" and the artfully made, "Simon Killer." This is without a doubt Campos's most ambitious film to date. An adaptation [...]
Lingua Franca
Authentic transgender driven films are rarely featured as genuine or as honestly as Isabel Sandoval's "Lingua Franca", the latest intimate and emotionally raw indie film which is one of the strongest and most complex films [...]
I’m Thinking of Ending Things
Easily the most cerebral, misanthropic, slightly flawed, yet liberating of Charlie Kaufman's work, "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" blends the limits of surrealism and horror into a feature-length drama that actually echoes the work of [...]