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
Left-Handed Girl
Left-Handed Girl is the first solo feature from director and co-writer Shih-Chin Tsou, who has mostly been a producer. This time, she is joined by Sean Baker, whom she has produced several films for, and [...]
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
With the Knives Out films, writer and director Rian Johnson has created a nice franchise for himself and Daniel Craig, who stars as detective Benoit Blanc. The first film was a straight up cozy mystery, while the [...]
The Secret Agent
Most spy movies are overwhelmed with severe plotting and are multi-layered with an objective amount of espionage that often contains double-crosses, betrayal, and twists and turns. Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho, who helmed the instant [...]
Come See Me in the Good Light
Some films tell a simple story, and others a very complex one. Some are done with lots of feeling but very little style. Others, all style and no substance. Rarely do documentaries manage to succeed [...]
The Alabama Solution
The Alabama Solution is a vital work of investigation and advocation. Concerned with the prison system in the United States, though centered on the Alabama Department of Corrections-and specifically, on a set of inmates in that [...]
The Perfect Neighbor
Documentary is a tricky thing to do, and it is easy to completely destroy a topic and argument by offering too much or too little. Sometimes, this involves heavy editorializing when simply letting the facts [...]
Ballad of a Small Player
Edward Berger is a talented director, as demonstrated by his Academy Award-winning All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave. Colin Farrell is one of our finest actors, able to pull off comedy and drama with equal aplomb. Ballad [...]
1995 Retrospective: The Best Films of 1995
The 1990s will always be perceived as a superlative decade for cinema. Especially 1995, a year where so many films brewed into classics as the years went by. From game-changing animation with Toy Story to [...]
Wicked: For Good
Last year's Wicked was a sensational adaptation of one of modern pop culture's most influential and defining musicals. Splitting the 2003 Broadway musical into two parts, Part One was both an irresistible and dazzling smash [...]
Rental Family
Rental Family is an often-maudlin work with an awkward Brendan Fraser at the center, yet that awkwardness is what keeps this from falling apart. It is a film that may irk a viewer early on, [...]
Train Dreams
Train Dreams, based on the novella by Denis Johnson, is a deeply moving, lyrical and intelligent film about pain, loss, time, beauty and connection. Blessed with a stand out cast, featuring William H Macy, Joel [...]
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
Little Amelie or the Character of Rain is an unusual and deeply moving animated film based on an unlikely source. Amelie Nothomb is a Belgian novelist who wrote Metaphysiques des tubes, which in English was known as The [...]
Peter Hujar’s Day
Peter Hujar was a photographer in New York, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. Before dying, as far too many artists of that era did, of AIDS, he left behind an unusual project, recorded [...]
Sentimental Value
One of the most emotionally charged films of the year is also one of the most rewarding. Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value might appear to be another backstage drama about filmmaking that becomes meta, but at [...]
The Running Man (2025)
What a year it has been for Stephen King adaptations. This summer's The Life of Chuck was a moving and life-affirming story of a man's life told in reverse. The HBO series It: Welcome To [...]
