Loach and his screenwriter Paul Lavery are sometimes painfully on-the-nose, borderline parodic, in their contrived kitchen sink sensibilities.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 18, 2024

The final scene of “The Old Oak” reduced me, once again and for the final time, to tears.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 14, 2024

It is unmistakably a Loach film: taciturn yet forthright, examining life in the cracks of a fractured society with deep compassion, plain-spoken anger and, perhaps more so than in the previous two films, a shot of hope.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 3, 2024

It’s a fable that ties up too neatly to be believed, and it’s a story I’m tired of hearing.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 3, 2024

Like with all Ken Loach films, reality is at the center of it.

| Apr 17, 2024

It’s a righteous oeuvre with marvelously strong roots.

| Apr 15, 2024

A fine send-off for workhorse British director Ken Loach, this film is a sort of proudly unsexy piece of social realism portraiture whose delicate blend of poignancy and hopefulness mark it as a welcomely mature work for the remaining cineastes who care.

| Original Score: B | Apr 12, 2024

The parallels Loach makes are obvious, but that doesn’t make the film any less emotionally potent.

| Apr 12, 2024

It's as engrossing, thoughtful, heartfelt, angry, hopeful, and altogether valuable as his best work. If it is indeed Loach's farewell, it's one hell of a fine note to go out on.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 7, 2024

With The Old Oak, Ken Loach goes out with one last, full-throated call for brotherhood and solidarity. It’s the most hopeful the old soldier’s been in years.

| Apr 5, 2024

A poignant and moving coda to a career spent chronicling personal indignities amid broader social ills like poverty and unemployment.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 4, 2024

In place of magical thinking and a happy ending, “The Old Oak” serves up something harder: a meditation on hope.

| Apr 4, 2024

The film isn’t some self-consciously summarizing coda but the latest in a long line of intimately scaled looks at the myriad ills facing Britain’s working class.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 30, 2024

One of the most moving scenes comes when he talks about the day he decided to kill himself, and what stopped him from doing so.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 7, 2023

Loach’s faith in the human capacity for empathy prevails in the end. Best of all, he brings off this optimistic flourish without the taint of sentimentality.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 1, 2023

The final message of hope is resolutely upbeat and desperately needed.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 1, 2023

Perhaps, then, The Old Oak isn’t that “one last great thing”. But it is a testament to a director who has never abandoned his beliefs.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 29, 2023

The film is ... astute in its depiction of a disenfranchised community, ravaged by vulture property speculators and post-industrialisation.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 29, 2023

As you’d expect, it is a compassionate film that is respectful all round but it is also heavy-handed, soapy and sentimental, with a redemptive ending that is unearned.

| Sep 28, 2023

The film unfolds with a fierce crackle. And a wide lens is in play alongside the micro close-up.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 28, 2023