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
A Magnificent Life
The third animated feature from French writer/director Sylvain Chomet, A Magnificent Life doesn't quite reach the emotional impact or narrative innovation of his previous masterpieces, The Triplets of Belleville and The Illusionist. While the 2D [...]
Reminders of Him
Author Colleen Hoover seems to be the new "it" author to adapt in Hollywood. After the smash hit success of her novel adaptation It Ends With Us -- that's before all the ongoing behind-the-scenes legal [...]
Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere
Louis Theroux: Inside The Manosphere is another presentation from the British documentarian and journalist. This time, he tackles not Jimmy Saville or any single notorious figure, but a movement, and set of ideas, through exploration [...]
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
Reuniting directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett with writer Guy Busick, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come dives back into bloody chaos. It carries the unenviable burden of following a cult-favorite horror-comedy celebrated for its [...]
Project Hail Mary
Author Andy Weir's 2021 novel Project Hail Mary has become one of the most popular best-selling books of this decade. The author's previous novel The Martian was adapted by director Ridley Scott in 2015 to [...]
8th Annual DeFacto Film Awards
Welcome to the 8th annual De Facto Film Awards! In honor of the Oscars airing on March 15th, we ended up tabulating our personal picks, as voted on by our own writers. This year our [...]
The Bride!
The Bride! is the new film from Maggie Gyllenhaal. While the film is at times visually audacious, this is a work that could have benefited from less “lets just do it” instead of giving in [...]
Wuthering Heights
Like the newest Dracula film by Luc Besson, the latest Wuthering Heights seeks to reinvent a timeless classic novel that has spawned countless film and television adaptations, each tackling different aspects of the dense source material. Admittedly, I [...]
The Moment
Pop star Charli XCX was catapulted into the mainstream with the release of her spectacular 2024 album "brat". Having worked in the industry for over a decade, Charli's mainstream success felt like a long time [...]
Calle Malaga
Some films can get by on visual splendor, and others on character. Some, of course, manage through plot or pure nerve. Calle Malaga is none of these. It is a lovely looking film but never takes [...]
A Private Life
Co-writer and director Rebecca Zlotowski revisits the whole American in Paris trope in her recent black comedy mystery thriller A Private Life, about a highly regarded psychiatrist, Lilian Steiner (Jodie Foster), who fosters her own [...]
