Cinema in the 2020s has been defined by disruption: streaming upended theatrical habits, the pandemic forced a rethink of what a film release even means, and audiences have increasingly embraced subtitled films like How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies alongside big animation and documentary work. Macca's reviews from the decade reflect that breadth. Browse what he's made of it below.
Rating: 4.0★
There are certain sporting figures from the 1990s who lodge themselves in the cultural memory not just because of what they achieved, but because of how they achieved it. Prince Naseem Hamed was one of those figures. The Sheffield-born featherweight, son of Yemeni immigrants, rose from the steel city&
Rating: 3.0★
If you've spent any time in the more obscure corners of the internet, you may already have encountered Wakaliwood, the lo-fi Ugandan film studio that operates out of the Wakaliga slum in Kampala and somehow manages to produce feature-length action films on budgets that wouldn'
Rating: 2.0★
Pokémon has been a cultural institution for the better part of three decades now. What began in 1996 as a pair of Game Boy role-playing games from Nintendo and Game Freak, built around the simple but irresistible idea of collecting and battling pocket monsters, became one of the most
Rating: 3.0★
Universal's "Dark Universe" was, depending on your perspective, either a bold swing at creating a shared monster mythology or one of Hollywood's more spectacular misfires. After the 2017 The Mummy reboot collapsed under the weight of its own franchise ambitions, Universal quietly shelved the
Rating: 2.5★
Japan's corporate working culture has been a subject of genuine international concern for decades. The phenomenon of karoshi, death by overwork, entered official Japanese government vocabulary in the 1980s, yet the conditions that produce it have proved extraordinarily resistant to change. The salaryman, that suited, briefcase-carrying archetype
Rating: 3.5★
The Aesop fable that gives this documentary its title sets up a neat moral framework: those who prepare and labour will survive, while those who idle will suffer the consequences. Raj Patel and Zak Piper invert that logic in uncomfortable fashion. Their 2021 film follows Anita Chitaya, a community organiser
Rating: 3.5★
Godzilla has been stomping through Japanese cinema since 1954, when Ishiro Honda's original Gojira gave the world its most enduring monster metaphor. Born from the anxieties of a nation that had survived atomic devastation, the character has since accumulated thirty-odd official entries across Japanese and American productions,
Rating: 3.0★
Every now and then a documentary arrives that makes you wonder how nobody thought to make it sooner. The Golden Spurtle (2025) trains its camera on Carrbridge, a small Highland village in the Cairngorms, which has hosted the World Porridge Making Championship since 1994. The competition is as straightforward and
Rating: 3.5★
Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 novel Im Westen nichts Neues is one of those books that has never really been out of print, and for good reason. Written from the ground level of the German trenches, it was one of the first major works to push back against the
Rating: 2.0★
Arab cinema covers an enormous range of tones and registers, from the unflinching social realism of Capernaum (2018) to lighter, crowd-pleasing fare aimed squarely at regional multiplex audiences. Honeymoonish (2024) plants itself firmly in the latter camp: a Kuwait-Lebanon co-production that pitches itself as a breezy opposites-
Rating: 2.0★
The Pokémon franchise has been producing theatrical films since 1998, and at this point the formula is about as well-worn as an old pair of trainers. What began with the genuinely affecting Pokémon: The First Movie has expanded into a long-running series of largely standalone adventures, each built
Rating: 2.0★
The question of what happens to cultural heritage stolen under colonialism is one that museums across Europe have been forced to sit with, uncomfortably, for decades. Nowhere is that discomfort more pointed than in the case of the royal treasures of Dahomey, a powerful West African kingdom (roughly corresponding to
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