Ken Loach

A Cinephile’s Guide to Streaming 43/365: The Dragon Painter (William Worthington 1919) (TVTime, YouTube) An antique sample of outsider cinema produced within the American system, this forgotten film emerges as if returning from the underworld, where lost films are ordinarily consigned to flames. A gentle, unpretentious fable about a crazy…

“You calling me a prick? I’m a married man with six kids!” — Chris Coleman, former Sunderland manager In October 2020, the Equality and Human Rights Commission published its investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party. …

A Cinephile’s Guide to Streaming 323/365: Laila (George Schneevoigt, 1929) (Vimeo, Kanopy, Fandor, Amazon) A majestic Norwegian epic set entirely in Sapmi, the northern Scandinavian areas occupied by the nomadic Sami (otherwise and derogatorily known as Lapps), this stirring, muscly silent melodrama recalls and bests contemporaneous sagas from Griffith and…

“I am not a client, a customer, nor a service user. I am not a shirker, a scrounger, a beggar nor a thief. I am not a national insurance number or a blip on the screen. I paid my dues, never a penny short and am proud to do so.” …

(To be read in a West Midlands accent) “A man who beyond the age of 26, finds himself on the bus can count himself as a failure”. But the bus is expensive, so I walk through the park. From the greens, blues, reds and yellows I have always loved the change of seasons I ave. None more than October. For the falling leaves always hide the stench and crunch beneath your feet. I continue in my stride and eventually turn and face the thick wet patch of green separating me from home. The mist, ive always thought, never liked clean clothes.

Ken Loach’s damnation of crippling bureaucracy and its burden on the common man comes to Criterion — Since the ‘60s, Ken Loach has made a name for himself, not just as an independent filmmaker, but as a voice for the downtrodden, with observations on class and political commentary providing the bedrock for the stories he tells. His latest, and thought to be final, film was the 2016…

Ken Loach’s in-house storyteller is an (inter)national treasure. — I recently caught The Olive Tree, a stratospherically terrific gem that’ll likely bypass most critics’ end-of-year lists purely because, well, no one really knew it was coming out. A downright shame; its emotional intelligence and levity deserves to be seen by everyone. Fundamentally a family drama and road movie smushed…

A middle-aged carpenter ends up on benefits after a heart attack, before meeting a single mother in a similar situation… — ✭✭✭✩✩ by Andy Partington. I, Daniel Blake is iconic director Ken Loach’s latest attempt to capture the gritty reality of British society for the screen. …