About six or seven years ago, I developed a minor obsession with the work of Ken Loach, the iconoclastic English director of acclaimed films like Kes, Looks and Smiles, Raining Stones, My Name is Joe, Sweet Sixteen and The Wind that Shakes the Barley. Back then, I watched a number of these in quick succession.…Read more Film Review: I, Daniel Blake (2016)
Ken Loach
Film Review: Sweet Sixteen (2002)
Adolescence has rarely looked bleaker than in Ken Loach‘s grimy, grim coming of age film from 2002, the ironically titled Sweet Sixteen. Bizarrely described on its Netflix casing as a “…heartwarming…” story, Loach’s film is a powerful albeit somewhat conventional portrait of blighted lives, hopelessness and the allure of criminality in a crumbling, washed-out Scotland.…Read more Film Review: Sweet Sixteen (2002)
Film Review: The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)
Thematically complex, emotionally powerful and brutally un-romanticized, Ken Loach‘s The Wind That Shakes the Barely is a towering portrait of the Irish War of Independence and is one of the prolific director’s best films. While hardly objective in its treatment of history (all of the British figures are defined only by their anonymity or their…Read more Film Review: The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)
Film Review: Looks and Smiles (1981)
Some films are made solely for entertainment value and require only a passive level of involvement. Ken Loach does not make those kind of movies. It would be difficult to find someone ready to describe any of Ken Loach’s films as rip-roaring entertainment. Many of his films are stark, minimalistic affairs, shot either in tight, unforgiving interior locations or out…Read more Film Review: Looks and Smiles (1981)
Adam Mohrbacher 