David Bradley is utterly authentic as Billy...

| Aug 14, 2023

There's a satisfaction to be found in the sereneness of the boy and his bird, contrasting with the harsh realities of growing pains.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Aug 30, 2020

It is a genuine, resolute little film.

| Nov 11, 2018

... a lovely and touching film.

| Nov 11, 2018

One of the most powerful coming-of-age stories ever told, containing passages of great beauty.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 29, 2015

Kes, admirably photographed by Chris Menges (who was camera operator on Poor Cow) is not to be lightly dismissed; and Loach's success with young players especially makes one eager to see his forthcoming film for the Save the Children Fund.

| Mar 16, 2015

One of the nation's finest film-makers at an early peak.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 16, 2015

Ken Loach seems to acquire a surer mastery of his art with each picture, yet this, one of his earliest features, is still one of his best.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 16, 2015

Imagine The 400 Blows reconfigured around a working class English boy living in a grimy industrial town and you get some idea of the emotional power of this bleakly realistic film.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 16, 2015

Kes is one of the most astute, engaged films about education and what it takes for kids to be excited about learning or passionate about anything, really, whether in the classroom or roaming the fields with a feathered friend.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 14, 2015

The politics of the schoolyard are more important than the politics of London in Kes, and though he finds himself continuously ridiculed, Billy can always come back to his beloved kestrel.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 21, 2015

The only Loach film I rate more highly is his Spanish civil war picture, Land and Freedom.

| Sep 11, 2011

Seen today, it still cries its authentic song of rage. It still cuts like a knife.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 9, 2011

A film that captures Loach's ability to find the extraordinary drama in ordinary lives.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 9, 2011

Jaunty, sad, poetic, Kes is so humane it makes you tremble.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 9, 2011

Loach's beady eye catches it all, but it's the casting of Bradley that was his masterstroke.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 9, 2011

A rich film of flesh and blood.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 8, 2011

Funny, sad, bitingly authentic, Kes resonates with Loach's anger at the way many kids grow up into narrow, option-free lives.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 6, 2011

Loach and his cinematographer Chris Menges opt for a realistic, grainy, rough documentary look, which makes us in the audience feel as though we are voyeurs, bearing witness to what Godard had famously proclaimed cinema to be: truth 24 times a second.

| Original Score: 87/100 | Aug 15, 2011

Throbs with a simple truthfulness...Loach shows his complimentary interest in documentary-influenced social realism and the improvisational search for the authentic. [Blu-ray]

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 10, 2011