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
Blade Runner 2049
Blade Runner 2049 (2017, USA, d. Denis Villeneuve, 163 minutes) 3.5/4 Stars 1982’s Blade Runner has become one of the most polarizing and discussed films of the past several decades. From numerous re-edits [...]
TIFF 2017 Review: I, Tonya
I, Tonya (2017, USA, d. Craig Gillespie, 119 minutes) 3.5/4 Stars Anyone who was alive in the early 90’s remembers the giant scandal involving figure skater, Tonya Harding, and the vicious attack against [...]
TIFF 2017 Review: mother!
mother! (2017 USA, d. Darren Aronofsky, 121 minutes) 4/4 Stars To quote TIFF Artistic Director, Cameron Bailey, mother! essentially begins where Black Swan ends. If that doesn’t intrigue you at all, then this [...]
Tulip Fever
Tulip Fever (2017, USA, UK, d. Justin Chadwick, 107 minutes) 1.5/4 Stars Tulip Fever is a hot mess, there’s no way of getting around it. As a film that has sat on the [...]
War for the Planet of the Apes
War for the Planet of the Apes (2017, USA, d. Matt Reeves, 140 minutes) 3.5/4 Stars The modern Apes trilogy has proven that prequels aren’t always a bad thing. In fact, they can [...]
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017, USA, d. Jon Watts, 133 minutes) 3.5/4 Stars As someone who fondly remembers seeing the original Sam Raimi Spider-Man film at just five years old, the character of Spider-Man has been a [...]
Bye Bye Man
The Bye Bye Man (2017, USA, d. Stacy Title, 96 minutes) by Noah Damron It wouldn’t be January without a C-level horror film and this year is no different. From the director [...]
Live By Night
Live By Night (2016, USA, d. Ben Affleck, 128 minutes) by Noah Damron As the poster child for career comebacks, Ben Affleck has proved himself to one of the best Directors working [...]
La La Land
La La Land (2016 USA, d. Damien Chazelle, 128 minutes) by Noah Damron There is so much to say about La La Land and yet, also very little. La La Land is [...]
Top 10 Films of 2016
by Robert Joseph Butler 2016 will be a year that will be remembered for its long list of celebrity deaths and for being a polarizing election year. While we are living in very polarizing times [...]
10 Cloverfield Lane
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016, USA, d. Dan Trachtenberg, 103 Minutes) by Jesse Stringer 10 Cloverfield Lane came into the public consciousness as abruptly as a new Beyoncé album. About midway through January, a [...]
Out of Which Past?
by Barry Germansky Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko (2001) proves that genre does not exist outside the enterprise of convenient label-making. Due to the malleability of language, any work of art can fit the description [...]
Invasion of the Adulthood Snatchers
by Barry Germansky The adult world is polymorphously corrupt and lacks the imagination to recognize that "The Way Things Are" is merely a byproduct of a deteriorating sense of possibility, an epistemological rejection of [...]