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
Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Another essential and revelatory work from the American independent film arena, "Never Rarely Sometimes Always," the third feature of Eliza Hittman, explores the traumas of two young women who must travel to New York City [...]
Corpus Christi
Polish filmmaker Jan Komasa's "Corpus Christi" is an engaging film about an enigmatic convict named Daniel (Bartosz Bielenia), haunted by internal conflict and past trauma and the shadow of his uncertain future after usurping as [...]
2000 Retrospective: The 10 Best Films of 2000
With 2020 upon us, we are mostly staying in to help to stop the spread of COVID-19, I figured it was a good time to reflect back on the essential films the new millennium has [...]
Defacto Podcast Appearances
Our podcast appearances on MPI Crew Call is now on iHeart Radio. Give it a listen as podcast host Sara Mahmood along with Defacto film reviewers Noah Damron and Robert Butler talk about some of [...]
The Jesus Rolls
The Coen Brothers' hilarious 1998 cult classic about mistaken identity and deceit, "The Big Lebowski", is given a loose updating and spin-off with "The Jesus Rolls", a frenzied, unremarkable remake to the 1974 Bertrand Blier [...]
Weekend Box Office Report: “Onward” Stumbles Forth!
Disney/Pixar's latest offering Onward opened to a relatively soft $40.4 million. Given Pixar's stellar track record, stars Chris Pratt & Tom Holland and industry projections aiming the animated flick to open near the $50 million [...]
The Way Back
Director Gavin O'Connor has been one of the most consistent humanist filmmakers in mainstream cinema for well over a decade. Known for acclaimed dramas such as 2004's "Miracle" and 2011's "Warrior", O'Connor has always found [...]
The Last Thing He Wanted
Another Netflix-acquired Sundance film, "The Last Thing He Wanted "from director Dee Rees, is one of this year’s most tiresome movies. The story is adopted from the Joan Didion novel of the same name and [...]
Weekend Box Office Report: “Invisible Man” Snatches Away $29 Million!
After a recent lull from disappointing genre flicks, Universal's re-imagining of The Invisible Man managed overcome said lull, delivering a solid $29 million at the weekend box office. Certainly benefitting from extremely positive critical reactions [...]
The Invisible Man
by Ben Rothrock Right from the beginning, The Invisible Man isn’t setting out to be just another reboot. Most modern reboots, especially ones based on well known properties, try to get by on a half-baked [...]
Young Ahmed
They are the modern masters of cinematic parables and social realism, the Belgium filmmaking sibling duo known as the Dardenne brothers continue their empathetic and emotionally raw sensibilities with their latest film "Young Ahmed". A [...]
Weekend Box Office Report: “Hedgehog” Stays Ahead Of The Pack!
In a much tighter-than-expected race, Paramount's video game adaptation Sonic the Hedgehog managed to fend off Disney/20th Century's The Call of the Wild. Barely hanging on to the top spot, Sonic dipped 55% from last weekend's surprise $58 [...]
Brahms: The Boy 2
"The Boy", released in January of 2016, was something of a moderate sleeper hit opening to a decent $10 million before continuing to gross nearly $75 million worldwide. The film, while nothing substantial, was a [...]