Tag Archives: Ken Loach

‘Looking For Eric’ – Movie Review

I’ve been a bit worried about myself lately. I’m not generally easy to please…but I’ve been frothing ecstatic over virtually every movie I see. Could I be on some sort of manic-depressive upswing, I wondered. Worse – could I be going soft? Fark!

Incriminating evidence is right here in this very blog: see my reviews of Balibo, $9.99 and Anvil! – The Story Of Anvil. Then there was the haunting Samson and Delilah, which I saw too late to bother about reviewing – and just as well, for I would have grappled to pin that one down. I probably would have babbled on about a rare poetic quality that set it apart from anything else I’ve seen…a new cinematic dialect. And that would have been unfortunate, because I know I’d be put off a film that inspired that sorta rave in those sortsa terms (not to mention the reviewer).

Well, me of little faith. I should have known it wouldn’t last…and it didn’t. No sir. Shit detector fully functioning, I’m pleased to report. And bugger me, did Ken Loach give it a good workout at the Luna on Thursday night, with his new ‘comedy’ Looking For Eric.

I have to say, I’ve never been a fan of politically-driven stuff like Loach’s. I don’t go for that ‘social realist’ style of movie-making that directors like he and fellow misery-guts Mike Leigh specialise in. Why does championing the oppressed pommy working class have to be so fucking dreary? And longwinded? And why do they all have to be sorta grubby looking, unshaven and toss-haired, and look like they’d stink? Not to mention eternally grumpy and glum and living in self-imposed squalor and clutter? Know wha’ I mean, guv? Continue reading ‘Looking For Eric’ – Movie Review