Drama is the spine of cinema, the genre where performance, script and direction have nowhere to hide. From the courtroom pressure of 12 Angry Men to the generational weight of The Godfather, it has always rewarded patience and attention. See what Macca makes of the best and worst of it below.
Rating: 2.5★
There's something genuinely stirring about sitting down with a film that carries the weight of a nation's entire cinematic identity on its shoulders. The Island of Contenda holds the remarkable distinction of being the very first feature film both set in and produced entirely by native
Rating: 3.5★
Some films hit you like a fist. Soleil O is one of them. Med Hondo's 1970 debut feature follows an educated man from Mauritania who arrives in Paris with every reason to believe in the promise of the colonial "motherland," only to find door after door
Rating: 4.0★
Some films don't just stay with you. They haunt you. Jasmila Žbanić's Quo Vadis, Aida? is one of those films. From its opening scenes, you feel the dread settling in, and it never, ever lifts. This is one of the most gut-wrenching viewing experiences I&
Rating: 4.0★
That final frame. I'm not going to describe it, I'm not going to hint at it, I'm just going to tell you that it stopped me cold. In a single, perfectly held image, A Moment of Innocence earns everything that came before it, including
Rating: 2.0★
There's something genuinely fascinating about the idea of San Marinese cinema. San Marino, for those keeping track, is a tiny landlocked republic nestled inside Italy with a population smaller than a mid-sized English market town. Its cinematic output is, as you might expect, not exactly vast. So
Rating: 3.5★
There's a moment early in I'm Still Here where the warmth of a family home, the laughter, the cluttered kitchen, the sun coming through the windows, feels almost unbearably fragile. You know what's coming. The film knows you know. And Walter Salles lets that
Rating: 2.5★
There's something genuinely exciting about watching a film from Brunei. Not because the country is exotic, but because it's one of those rare moments where world cinema opens a door you didn't even know existed. Brunei barely registers on most people's mental
Rating: 3.5★
"Everything is sacrifice, you just have to make sure you don't sacrifice the wrong thing." That line lands early in My Father's Shadow and it stays with you for the rest of the film's running time, sitting quietly at the back of
Rating: 4.0★
I went into I, Tonya fully expecting to be mildly entertained by a straightforward ice-skating biopic and mildly bored by the bits in between. I was only a toddler when the Nancy Kerrigan incident was dominating global headlines, so my knowledge going in amounted to little more than a
Rating: 3.0★
There's a phrase that gets thrown around a lot in film writing: "you've never seen anything quite like this." Most of the time it's hyperbole. With Youth (original title Dhalinyaro), directed by Lula Ali Ismaïl, it happens to be literally true. This
Rating: 1.0★
Let me be completely straight with you: if you've already sat through Paradise Z, also released under the title Two of Us, then you have already seen Dead Earth. Every single frame of it. This is not a reimagining, not a director's cut, not a fresh
Rating: 3.0★
There's a moment in Joy Ride where a voice crackles out of a CB radio and the temperature in the car drops ten degrees. You don't see a face. You don't get a backstory. You just get Ted Levine, all gravel and quiet menace,
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