Country New Zealand

Grounded (2026)

Grounded by Chris Callus (2026)

Grounded, Chris Callus's animated short film, is a perfectly nice little thing that I struggled to feel much about one way or the other. I caught it at the BFI London Film Festival, and it is pleasant, harmless and competently made, which is also just about all I can say for it. Two and a half stars, squarely down the middle.

The story, told without any dialogue, is a simple one aimed at younger viewers. A young ladybird is left behind as all the others take flight around it, grounded and unable to join them, until it discovers that sometimes what you need is a helping hand, or in this case a helping eight, from an unexpected spider. It is a gentle little parable about not being able to do something everyone else can, and finding support from an unlikely quarter, and it carries its small message sweetly enough.

There is a decent backstory to it, too. It apparently began life as a 48-hour film-making challenge entry before being reworked, and for something with those origins it is confidently put together, which goes some way to explaining its run at festivals like Annecy and Tribeca. The animation is clean and the ladybird is cute, and very young children will probably find it charming.

But that is really where it ends for me. There is nothing wrong with it, and nothing especially memorable either. The animation is average, the story slight, and with no dialogue and only four minutes to work with it drifts past pleasantly without ever giving me much to hold onto or get excited about. Two and a half stars. Grounded is a sweet, well-meaning and perfectly watchable little short that does its gentle job and little more, the sort of thing that is absolutely fine for what it is without ever threatening to be anything you will remember for long.

Related on Movies With Macca

More from the 2020s: All That's Left of You (2025), The Whale (2022), Look Back (2024)

More animation: Jabberwocky (1971), Dance of the Spirits (2026), Into the Forest (2026)

Max Vanderspuy on Fishbrain, body horror and turning his award-winning short into a feature

Of all the shorts I caught around this year's BFI London Film Festival, Max Vanderspuy's Fishbrain was the one that lingered longest, a briny, tactile piece of body horror whose practical effects had me thinking of An American Werewolf in London, and which I gave three

Gamera 2: Advent of Legion (1996)

By 1996, the giant monster genre, known in Japan as tokusatsu or, more specifically in this context, kaiju eiga, had spent four decades in Godzilla's considerable shadow. Gamera, the enormous fire-breathing turtle originally created by Daiei Film in 1965, had always occupied a slightly awkward position in

Cavalcade (1933)

There is a particular kind of prestige film that arrives laden with cultural expectation, sweeps the major awards, and then spends the following decades quietly puzzling anyone who actually sits down to watch it. Cavalcade, released by Fox Film Corporation in 1933 and winner of the Academy Award for Best

Depeche Mode: M (2025)

Depeche Mode: M arrives as something of a milestone document. The 2023 Memento Mori Tour, which forms the backbone of this film, was the band's first major run of dates following the death of founding member and keyboardist Andrew Fletcher in May 2022, and the shadow of that

Film images and data courtesy of TMDB. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.

Grounded (2026)

Read more

Max Vanderspuy on Fishbrain, body horror and turning his award-winning short into a feature

Gamera 2: Advent of Legion (1996)

Cavalcade (1933)

Depeche Mode: M (2025)

The films worth your time, once a week.