Article
Seann William Scott at 50: The Essential Films
Marking Seann William Scott at 50: a look back across Seann's career through the films I've reviewed.
Latest
Country United Kingdom
The Devil Is In Me (2026)
There is a good gag at the centre of Tia Salisbury's The Devil Is In Me, and a couple of genuinely funny moments scattered through it, but this surreal little period comedy never quite adds up to more than the sum of its odd parts. It is a
Country United Kingdom
Dance of the Spirits (2026)
Every so often a film stops me in my tracks on the strength of its images alone, and Andreea-Lorena Florea's Dance of the Spirits is one of the rare ones. It is a six-minute animated short that is, visually, among the most beautiful things I have
Rating: 3.5★
The Princess and the Frog (2009)
By 2009, Walt Disney Animation Studios had spent the better part of a decade in something of an identity crisis. The golden run of the late 1980s and 1990s, the period critics tend to call the Disney Renaissance, had petered out, and the studio had spent the intervening years releasing
Article
The Best Iranian Films to Stream
If you ask me where the best cinema on Earth is being made, Iran is always somewhere near the top of my answer. For decades now, often working under censorship, travel bans and the constant threat of arrest, Iranian film-makers have produced some of the most humane, morally searching
Country Italy
The Clouds of Odessa (2026)
There is a lovely, aching idea at the heart of The Clouds of Odessa, and it is almost enough to carry the film on its own. Luca Arcangeli's thirteen-minute animated short follows a Ukrainian film-maker dreaming of a love story she longs to put on screen
Rating: 3.0★
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002)
Released in 2002, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron arrived at an interesting crossroads for DreamWorks Animation. The studio had spent the previous few years carving out its identity in opposition to Disney, leaning on irreverence, celebrity voices and knowing winks to the audience. Spirit is none of those things. Co-
Rating: 3.5★
A Town Called Panic (2009)
A Town Called Panic arrives from a corner of European animation that rarely gets much attention on this side of the Channel: the Belgian tradition of wilfully odd, low-budget, high-energy filmmaking that seems entirely unbothered by what anyone else is doing. The film grew out of a television
2020s
Buckskin (2026)
Every so often a documentary short comes along that reminds you how much can be achieved in under twenty minutes when a film-maker knows exactly what they are reaching for. Mars Verrone's Buckskin is one of those: a tender, beautiful and quietly educational portrait of the director&
Country Tunisia
The Bird's Placebo (2026)
There is a lot that is admirable about Rami Jarboui's The Bird's Placebo, a twenty-minute animated short from Tunisia with a genuinely novel story and a real heart to it. It is the sort of film I want to champion, and yet when I step
Rating: 4.0★
HyperNormalisation (2016)
There is a particular kind of documentary that does not simply report on the world but attempts to reframe the entire way you perceive it. Adam Curtis has spent the better part of four decades making exactly that kind of film, and HyperNormalisation, released by the BBC in October 2016,
Country Western Sahara
Between Us and the World (2026)
I have a real soft spot for films from Western Sahara, one of the rarest and most politically charged corners of world cinema, so I came to Wallace Minchong Li's Between Us and the World keen to like it. And there is a good deal to admire here,