Romance at its best is less about happy endings than about the ache of longing, the film holding you in suspense over whether two people will ever close the distance between them. From the bittersweet workplace yearning of The Apartment to the lush, dangerous desire of The Handmaiden, the genre rewards directors brave enough to let feeling do the heavy lifting. See what Macca made of these and more below.
Rating: 2.5★
There's a version of watching The Heart of the World where you sit back, jaw slightly open, genuinely dazzled by what Guy Maddin has pulled off in six frantic minutes. And then there's the version where you resurface afterwards, blinking, and wonder what on earth you
Rating: 3.0★
There's a distinct, sun-drenched charm to the 16mm aesthetic of 1970s cinema, and Pim de la Parra's 1976 drama One People captures that era's visual texture about as well as anything I've seen from the period. I have a real soft
Rating: 2.0★
There's a moment in Lost in Paradise when actual pirates show up, and honestly, that tells you everything you need to know about this film. You're settled in, you've got your tea, you've accepted the cosy, predictable rhythm of a stranded-on-
Rating: 2.5★
There's a moment in Ali and Nino where the sweeping score swells, the landscape opens up, and you think: yes, this is exactly what historical epic romance is supposed to feel like. Then the scene ends, and you remember that the two people at the centre of it
Rating: 3.0★
There are films you enjoy, and then there are films you survive. Babygirl falls squarely into the second category, and I mean that as something close to a compliment. Halina Reijn's erotic thriller is arguably one of the most uncomfortable films I've sat through in years,
Rating: 3.0★
There's a moment early in And Then We Danced where a veteran instructor tells the young dancers that traditional Georgian dance contains no love, no sensuality, no individual feeling. It should be rigid, precise, masculine. And you immediately understand the trap that the film is setting, because everything
Macca's Must Watch
I'll go out on a limb right here and say that Y Tu Mamá También might just be one of the best films ever made. And I don't throw that around lightly. This is a film you don't just watch. You feel it, somewhere
Rating: 3.0★
There's a specific kind of shame that comes with admitting your thirteen-year-old self got something badly wrong. I first watched Gurinder Chadha's Bend It Like Beckham back in 2002, and my overwhelming memory of it was that it felt cheap, almost like a British
Rating: 2.5★
There's something genuinely lovely about seeing a Golden Age Disney animation back on a screen, even if the film in question isn't quite the studio's finest hour. Sleeping Beauty has bags of charm, no question about it, and as a piece of animation history
Rating: 3.0★
There are some films you feel like you already know before you've even sat down to watch them, and Disney's Cinderella is the textbook example of that. The rags-to-riches fairy tale, the glass slipper, the pumpkin carriage, the wicked stepmother, and that Fairy Godmother
Rating: 3.5★
There's a moment in Touki Bouki where you feel the whole film snap into focus: two young lovers on a motorbike adorned with a cow's skull, tearing through the streets of Dakar with nothing but nerve and a half-formed plan, dreaming of Paris like it&
Rating: 3.0★
My fiancée absolutely loves this film. It sits near the very top of her all-time favourites list, and so I went into it with a certain amount of pressure to feel the same way. I didn't, quite, but I can absolutely see what she sees in it,
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