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.
Country United Kingdom
Craft can carry a film a surprisingly long way, and Aisha Boudjillouli's Eyeliner is a good test of exactly how far. This NFTS stop-motion short is, on a technical level, genuinely lovely, beautifully animated and well voiced, and it is tackling a tender subject with obvious sincerity.
Country United Kingdom
Every so often a film comes along with the courage to trust its audience completely, and These Violent Delights is exactly that. Scottish Ballet's first feature is a wordless, wildly vivid retelling of Romeo and Juliet told entirely through dance, and it is a bold, beautiful and genuinely
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: 3.5★
British cinema has a long habit of finding grace in the unglamorous corners of its own cities, and Scrapper (2023) fits squarely into that tradition. Writer-director Charlotte Regan sets her debut feature in a working-class London suburb, following twelve-year-old Georgie, who has been living alone in
Country United Kingdom
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
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
Country Italy
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
2020s
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
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
Country Western Sahara
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,
Country Bermuda
There is a version of Bermuda that exists almost entirely on postcards, all pink beaches and pastel calm, and part of what makes Bermuda Riots Are Different worthwhile is how firmly it shoves that image aside. Co-directed by Alyson Thompson and Matt Mead, this six-minute documentary short digs
Country United Kingdom
I try to find something to hold onto in everything I watch, some spark of intention or craft even when a film is not working, but Sacha Beeley's Babyface defeated me. It is a six-minute animated short that I found close to unwatchable, an amateurish, charmless little
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