The 2000s were defined by franchise ambition and digital transformation, with studios betting big on serialised spectacle while world cinema found new urgency in films like City of God. It was a decade that rewarded patience, building stories across years and sequels. See what Macca made of it all in the reviews below.
![[REC]² (2009)](https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w780/4JG5WKfIGD6r7hdbqJVr2WKIxEe.jpg)
Rating: 2.0★
When [REC] arrived in 2007, it hit British horror audiences like a freight train. Directed by the Barcelona-based partnership of Paco Plaza and Jaume Balagueró, the original film took the found-footage format, by then already well worn after a decade of Blair Witch imitators, and gave it a
Rating: 2.5★
There is a certain category of micro-budget indie film that arrives without fanfare, circulates quietly among festival programmers and curious cinephiles, and then lodges itself in the cultural memory of the country where it was shot more than the one that produced it. Blondes in the Jungle, a 48-
Rating: 4.0★
There is a particular kind of short film that does not announce itself loudly, does not rely on spectacle or plot machinery, and simply asks you to sit with a feeling for a few minutes. Father and Daughter, made in 2000 by Dutch-British animator Michael Dudok de Wit, is
Rating: 2.5★
Mariya Saakyan's The Lighthouse (original title: Mayak) arrived in 2006 as something of a quiet outlier in post-Soviet cinema, a short, low-key Armenian drama that found its way onto the festival circuit without ever threatening mainstream attention. Its subject matter sits at the unresolved, painful edges
Rating: 2.5★
Before Sunset arrives as the middle chapter of Richard Linklater's trilogy following two strangers whose paths cross briefly and, it turns out, unforgettably. If you've read our review of Before Sunrise, you'll already know the setup: in 1995, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie
Rating: 2.5★
Guy Maddin occupies a peculiar corner of world cinema, one that most audiences stumble into by accident and leave either thoroughly enchanted or mildly baffled. The Canadian director built his reputation across the 1980s and 1990s making films that look as though they were pulled from a vault that nobody
Rating: 0.5★
Peter Tscherkassky is one of the more singular figures working in European experimental cinema, and not especially easy to place if you came to film through mainstream channels. The Austrian filmmaker has spent the bulk of his career working with found footage and physical celluloid manipulation, building a body of
Rating: 3.0★
By the late 1990s, the slasher genre had made a full commercial comeback. Wes Craven's Scream (1996) had revived interest in masked killers and self-aware horror, and the wave that followed, from I Know What You Did Last Summer to Urban Legend, kept the formula ticking over
Rating: 1.0★
Robert Breer is not a name that comes up often in casual film conversation, and that is, in its own way, rather telling. Born in Detroit in 1926, Breer spent decades working at the margins of mainstream cinema, producing short experimental films that sat comfortably in the world of gallery
Rating: 3.0★
Time travel has been a fixture of science fiction storytelling since at least H.G. Wells, and by the early 2000s Hollywood had well and truly made it its own, serving up glossy, effects-heavy productions that prioritised spectacle over rigour. Into that landscape arrived Primer in 2004, a film
Rating: 3.0★
Jean-Marie Straub is not a filmmaker who makes concessions to comfort, either his own or the audience's. Working for decades alongside his wife and creative partner Danièle Huillet, the Franco-German director built a body of work defined by rigorous formalism, political seriousness, and an almost confrontational
Rating: 2.0★
Víctor Erice is the sort of filmmaker whose name gets spoken in hushed, reverential tones in certain corners of the film world, and not without good reason. The Spanish director made his feature debut with The Spirit of the Beehive in 1973, a film that became one of the defining
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