Spanish cinema has long thrived on the unsettling and the surreal, from Luis Buñuel's provocations like Land Without Bread to the found-footage horror of [REC]. That thread of unease runs deep in Spanish film culture, producing work that unnerves as often as it moves. See what Macca made of it all below.
Rating: 3.0★
Peter Hujar's Day arrives in 2025 as one of the more unusual entries in recent American independent cinema: a seventy-six minute reconstruction of a single day in the life of a photographer, drawn from an audio recording that had been sitting in an archive for half a
Rating: 4.0★
There is a moment early in Sexy Beast where Gal Dove, retired safecracker, is dozing by his swimming pool in the Spanish sunshine, the very picture of a man who has successfully left his old life behind, and you think: this is going to be a pleasant little film about
Rating: 3.5★
Whisky is a strange one to recommend. On paper, everything about it should be a chore, and yet I found it quietly gripping in a way I did not see coming. That almost never happens to me with films like this, and I am still not entirely sure how it
Rating: 3.5★
There is a moment early on in Vicky Cristina Barcelona that stopped me in my tracks. Vicky and Cristina are in the back of a taxi, and the screen literally splits down the middle, placing them side by side: dark hair on one side, blonde on the other. It is
![[REC]² (2009)](https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w780/4JG5WKfIGD6r7hdbqJVr2WKIxEe.jpg)
Rating: 2.0★
There is a specific kind of frustration that only found-footage horror can produce: staring at a pitch-black screen, squinting into the grain, waiting for a scare that never quite arrives because the night-vision camera is pointing at a wall. Again. [REC] left me a little cold for
Rating: 3.5★
Jackie Chan is genuinely one of the most underrated actors working in cinema, and I'll keep saying it until more people actually believe me. We get so caught up in the sheer, unadulterated spectacle of his physical comedy that we forget he's actually a brilliant, expressive
Rating: 2.5★
There is a very specific moment early in Crumbs where a supposed alien artefact is dramatically revealed, and I'm fairly certain it's just a repainted plastic water pistol. I couldn't tell you whether Miguel Llansó intended that as a joke, a statement, or simply
Rating: 2.0★
I'll be honest with you: I went into La Morte Rouge fully expecting to be floored. Víctor Erice is a legendary name, this short sits on the "They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?" list of the top 1000 films of the 21st century, and I
Rating: 2.0★
There's a moment in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives where a man sits at a dinner table making polite conversation with the ghost of his dead wife and the glowing-eyed spirit of his long-lost son, and everyone just... gets on with it. No
Rating: 1.5★
There's a version of Pacifiction that I would have loved. A French colonial administrator drifting through the bars, beaches and clubs of Tahiti, wielding soft power with a smile, colliding with locals in ways that expose something ugly and true about privilege and empire. That film sounds genuinely
Rating: 3.0★
There's a moment in Josep where the animation itself seems to breathe, where the rough, expressive lines and painterly washes of colour feel less like a stylistic choice and more like a confession. It's the kind of filmmaking that stops you short and reminds you what
Rating: 4.0★
There's a moment in 1917 where a soldier sprints through a ruined town lit only by drifting flares, buildings crumbling around him, figures emerging from the dark, the whole world reduced to noise and shadow and the desperate pump of legs. It lasts just a few minutes, but
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