Tag Archives: Ken Loach

The Tough Monthly Review of November 2024

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Some months, I find it easy to know how to title or theme this monthly review. Other times, it’s tough to come up with an idea.

Yeah.

Anyway, on with the regular stuff…



This month’s viewing towards my yearly challenge

#86 Lee (2023) — New Film #10
#87 Inside Out 2 (2024) — New Film #11
#88 The Seventh Victim (1943) — Failure #11
#89 Duel to the Death (1983) — Genre #9
#90 Blitz (2024) — Wildcard #10
#91 The Cranes Are Flying (1957) — Blindspot #11
#92 Dragons Forever (1988) — Genre #10
#93 First Knight (1995) — Rewatch #11


  • I watched 11 feature films I’d never seen before in November.
  • Seven of them counted towards my 100 Films in a Year Challenge, along with one rewatch.
  • I’d hoped to get to #95 this month, which is the maximum I could by the end of November (because five categories have a “one per month” limiter in their rules). Still, only having seven left for December feels manageable.
  • Perhaps more importantly: reaching #90 means I’ve already beaten how far I made it in 2022’s Challenge (which I chose to abandon at #89).
  • And reaching #93 means I’ve also beaten 2023 (which I didn’t consciously abandon, although I stood no serious chance of achieving it at this point that year, when I entered December with 17 films still to go).
  • Shockingly, I almost made it all the way through the Martial Arts Genre category without properly including Jackie Chan (although he did feature in the clip-based documentary I watched as the category’s first film). With hundreds of films to choose from to finish off the category, making sure to include Chan properly seemed as good a deciding factor as any; although Letterboxd’s new list-stats feature showed me even that left 40 films to pick from. I chose Dragons Forever because it co-stars fellow big names Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao, and was the trio’s final collaboration. That seemed like a fitting end-cap for the year.
  • More importantly: this is the first year I’ve actually completed the Genre category! (Though, as a caveat, I did watch 11 (out of 12) films for it in 2022, which would’ve been enough to meet the reduced count of 10 in 2023 and 2024.)
  • After reading ghostof82’s review, I found I had the passion* to make it happen**, and so watched Flashdance. It didn’t qualify for the Challenge, but I felt like mentioning it.***
    * a vague interest that wasn’t there before
    ** watch a film that was available on a streamer I’m already subscribed to
    *** just so I could repeat this quote/footnotes joke from my Letterboxd.
  • This month’s Blindspot film was Russian wartime drama The Cranes Are Flying.
  • No WDYMYHS films this month, even though I should have watched two. I’m at the pointy end of the IMDb Top 250 now, with all the films I’ve not already got round to for one reason or another; usually length or seriousness of subject. Getting through three of those in December — when the vibes are Christmassy joy, and so much time is consumed with family activities — is going to be the most challenging aspect of completing my Challenge.
  • From last month’s “failures” I watched The Seventh Victim.



The 114th Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
There were several strong contenders this month, and several where the difference between “best” and “favourite” may have come into play. Ultimately, I think the answer is probably the same either way, because I’m going to select Russian World War 2 drama The Cranes Are Flying — not the most fun film I watched this month, nor necessarily the one I’d rewatch soonest, but surely the most accomplished.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
I suspect I’m broadly politically aligned with Ken Loach, but that doesn’t mean I enjoyed The Old Oak. Sure, its storylines are worthy and its ultimate perspective correct, but it’s still heavy-handed, borderline amateurish, and occasionally a tough watch (as soon as the cute little dog encountered the barely-controlled bully breeds, I knew where that subplot was going).

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
Since I’ve brought them back (albeit at the current rate of one a month — maybe I’ll manage to increase that in 2025?), film reviews have consistently outshone monthly reviews; and so it is this month too, with my review of Rosemary’s Baby the clear victor from November’s new posts.



Every review posted this month, including new titles and the Archive 5


Will it be third time lucky? I failed my new-style Challenge in its first two years, but this time I’m closer than ever. We’ll find out sometime in the next 31 days…

Cathy Come Home (1966)

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2008 #59
Ken Loach | 77 mins | DVD | PG

Cathy Come HomeTechnically a one-off TV drama from the BBC’s Wednesday Play strand, Cathy Come Home more than deserves consideration as a film in its own right, due to it being an early work of director Ken Loach, the fact that it’s shot largely on film using relatively experimental storytelling techniques, and also considering the huge social impact it had.

The piece tells the story of Cathy, a young woman who leaves behind a comfortable life for the excitement of the big city. There she falls in love with Reg, who she marries and has children with. But, through a series of incidents and accidents — most of them no fault of their own — Cathy, Reg and the children wind up without a house, and then gradually slide down the scale toward homelessness. In this respect the film can remind us of a facet of the ‘good old days’ that is often overlooked when our collective memory of the ’60s is made up of James Bond, the Beatles, and programmes like Mad Men. The drama also had a big impact at the time: 12 million watched, it boosted the newly-formed charity Shelter, led to debates in parliament, and, eventually, changes to the law.

Loach structures the film cleverly: Cathy and Reg’s slide into poverty is all too believable, while at the same time allowing the viewer to see a cross section of the homeless experience. He employs a documentary style throughout, so effectively that it still fools some into believing the whole piece is factual. In fact there’s a mix of interviews with those really suffering such situations, and performed scenes that are shot and cut disjointedly, as if they were observed rather than written. While some of the performances give the game away, they’re never poor enough to really detract. The downside of this style is that the storyline isn’t always clear. I’m still not sure if it was Cathy’s children that died in the caravan fire or someone else’s, just one among a few such examples. While ambiguity is no bad thing — the cruelly unresolved ending being a case in point — it sometimes just seems like a hole in the narrative. However, these moments are relatively minor, and certainly don’t dint the film’s impact.

Cathy Come Home is a powerful piece of work; an undoubted television classic that (bar a few technically-incongruous studio scenes shot on video) wouldn’t look out of place on a big screen. As an important and timely history lesson, a challenge to prejudices that some of us may hold, and a reminder of how close most of us are to such a fate — especially right now — it remains essential viewing. Sadly, I suspect it always will.

5 out of 5