Director: Christopher Smith
Writers: Christopher Smith, Laurie Cook
Stars: Jena Malone, Danny Huston, Will Keen

Synopsis: After the alleged suicide of her priest brother, Grace travels to the remote Scottish convent where he fell to his death. Distrusting the Church’s account, she uncovers murder, sacrilege and a disturbing truth about herself.

Non-believer Grace (Jenna Malone) travels to an isolated Scottish convent for answers upon the suspicious death of her priestly brother – leading to warped discoveries about Grace’s own past, more disturbing deaths, and rituals to contain the evil responsible in director Christopher Smith’s (Black Death) 2023 nunsploitation thriller, Consecration.

Unfortunately, Consecration gets off on the wrong foot thanks to opening narrations about guardian angels, ophthalmology bad news, and home alone ominous with flickering lights, rattling walls, and a figure in the hallway that makes viewers wonder where this is all going. The police phone with news about the murder-suicide, but Grace insists her faithful brother would not kill himself or anyone else. His extreme fire and brimstone order, however, has nuns seeing the devil and cutting out their eyes while the Mother Superior claims a demon is responsible. Local inspectors are worried about treading lightly in Vatican jurisdiction, but Grace defies the police tape across the abbey ruins and goes to the rocky shoals where the bodies were found for herself before coroner examinations and visions of the deceased. Again the audience’s attention is drawn to why incoherent fainting spells and other’s arguments outside Grace’s point of view are supposed to be significant amid meandering flashes of past warnings, childhood memories of masks and stone circles, and medieval dreams of knights on horseback.

Explanations about her mother being dead and her father being in prison for having killed her mother are better to the point than unnecessary phone calls to her doctor mentor, and Grace sees the cliffside ruins restored with plummeting initiates in white. The nuns say the battle between God and Satan is more important than what’s considered a crime, but brief existential interrogations cut away to reflections that aren’t there, Grace’s nonsensical playing detective, and her brother’s phantom voiceovers about how special she is. She explains his journal is written in their childhood code, saying that he discovered the convent previously tried to adopt them – yet the viewer never saw this research amid numerous walking around the chapel exposition scenes and a nun popping up to say peekaboo. Convenient flashes within flashes and dream transitions happen as rumors of knightly treasures and earthquakes revealing secret crypts are tossed on top of the brotherly MacGuffins. Trips to the dark basement for more contrived visions, violence inducing car accidents, and reading montages of mystical tomes; of course written in their childhood code. Talk of bumping bellies with a dirty man once and seeing visions of black snakes with him lead to slit wrist suicides so the sin will leave you, yet Consecration has no real religious horror or church commentary. A humorous one eyed nun trying to stab people compounds the inexplicable, largely absent inspectors and insufferable characterizations as realizations the audience already knew happen instantly for those now humble and willing to be cleansed. The ineffectual police finally bother to do something but the nuns so active in the crowd surfing ritual minutes before,  cower as the evil whooshes and cool flashes show how it was all done complete with blind patients healed by evil and a gun toting nun hit by a car. Unlike Christopher Smith’s most impressive Triangle, the cockeyed Interstellar twists here are reduced to embarrassing silliness.

Father Danny Huston (The Proposition) is called in from The Vatican to investigate but he has two sins: cake and coffee. Though obviously a seemingly ominous figure with young nuns scurrying away in his wake, Father Romero appears reasonable, willingly sharing church history and admitting that the lack of transparency is a constant stain on the institution. He offers Grace their full support and cooperation yet shouts at the nuns in Latin that it is God, then him, in that order, and he will decide Grace’s fate. Romero admonishes creepy Mother Superior Janet Suzman (Nicholas and Alexandra) for trying to fool police and attacking Grace when they need to gain her trust. While there he’s to reconsecrate the grounds, but Father Romero says they’re better off getting rid of all the relics and rumors that give the church a bad reputation – and he’ll do what must be done. It’s more humorous than sinister, however, that he has to shoo away the one eyed nun who’s always underfoot, and our Mother Superior gets more pissy with Grace’s every objection. She runs a harsh regime because we must face the devil and the darkness lest we come under his grip, but what could have been an interesting theological debate grows laughable as our Mother meddles with the police and chants in her jail cell while the peekaboo nun sings.

Forced to dress in their novice white, Grace stomps about the crosses and statuary shouting, for as a woman of science, she doesn’t believe in miracles or backward steps to forgive sins. Jena Malone (Love Lies Bleeding) has an uphill battle as our kind of/sort of doctor cum amateur investigator. She refuses to accept the circumstances of her brother’s death, doesn’t believe in demons, and won’t apologize for her know it all behavior. Grace demands no one pray for her and intrudes upon the convent for an explanation even when told the twelfth century church history. It’s apparent to the audience almost immediately why Grace is so unlikable, and we have no sympathy as the deaths around her escalate. She still wears the white habit when she goes to see her dad in prison, and this scene should have come much sooner upon learning of her brother’s death, perhaps opening the film. Unlike all the flashbacks, the backstory is compelling here. Her dad says she is the devil, asking her what it’s like to bring death everywhere she goes. He caged Grace so she could do no harm, but Grace still doesn’t consider she may be the problem, and therein is what’s wrong with Consecration.

This scene is the core of the story, and the rest of the movie is padding while Grace gets a clue. The nuns lay her on the chapel floor in their absolution ritual as the film unravels further by intercutting everything at once, tying Grace’s entire story from medieval times to being found on the beach wet and looping back to the beginning – hitting the viewer over the head too many times with what we already easily deduced. Because of the unintended humor, Consecration also lacks a certain gothic, ecclesiastic atmosphere with no sense of the ancient good versus evil despite the arches, robes, and chapels. Brief daytime scenes of nuns in white hoods going in circles while singing in Latin lend an inkling of the weird and medieval, however the poorly lit dark filming and contemporary blue gradient negates the Isle of Skye ruins and rustic Scottish locales. When pausing at one point, the screen looked entirely black; tight camera shots and frustrating, tough to see scenes make Consecration feel rushed and low budget. The distorted, fuzzy point of view haze and darkness manifested coloring may be a deliberate metaphor, but we aren’t always in the same viewpoint, calling the audience’s attention to how we would structure the picture differently. Despite lengthy end credits meaning this is less than its listed ninety minutes, Consecration is over long, going round and round in a surprisingly insipid mess with inexplicable editing and poor narrative flow exacerbating the windblown story.

Grade: F

Please see my much more positive review of Christopher Smith’s The Banishing

Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gilletti
Writers: Stephen Shields, Guy Busick
Stars: Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Alisha Weir

Synopsis: After a group of criminals kidnap the ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, they retreat to an isolated mansion, unaware that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.

Along with its three free reservations per week, waived online booking fees, rewards system, and snack discounts, an AMC Stubs A List membership also promises a con amidst its many pros: You’ll have to see the same trailers over and over again. Despite there being plenty of titles to be excited about — especially as we inch closer to a summer season that, while noticeably strike-impacted, remains populated with buzzy must-sees — one can only watch the trailer for A Quiet Place: Day One so many times. Audiences around the world could be heard collectively groaning late last year every time previews for Argylle, Madame Web, and Bob Marley: One Love played in excruciating succession; perhaps it’s no coincidence that those three films are among the worst this year has offered.

Thankfully, the trailer for the third entry in the A Quiet Place saga is relatively wordless, much like its predecessors, so its preview doesn’t reveal too much beyond the Day One’s basic prequel setup. The same can’t be said for most horror trailers, partially because it’s hard to get mainstream audiences to buy in on an original genre film without massive stars, and also because the hook for most horror films is the twist. That doesn’t make it any less frustrating when the trailer for Universal’s Speak No Evil, an upcoming remake of a Danish hit from 2022, includes a number of the original’s most unsettling revelations in its ostensible “preview” for a movie filled with twists. It’s not something you’d clock if you haven’t seen the new film’s source text, but it may become a cause for irritation once you’ve purchased a ticket.

Such is a common grievance when it comes to Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s Abigail, though I’m not sure the same sort of criticisms apply. Let’s just get it out of the way: Abigail (Alisha Weir) is a vampire. That “wrinkle” revealed in the film’s trailer, a terrifying stumper for the band of would-be crooks who thought they’d merely abducted a 12-year-old ballerina with an uber rich father from whom they’d demand millions in ransom money. No, this motley crew of criminals, given Rat Pack-inspired nicknames by their boss for the night, Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito), has seemingly been tasked with a chore that is much more ominous than meets the eye. Not only must they keep this preteen alive for 24 hours until her billionaire daddy’s check clears, but they, too, must survive. Not quite the smash-and-grab job they all had in mind.

Sure, the idea of Joey (Melissa Barrera), Frank (Dan Stevens), Sammy (Kathryn Newton), Peter (Kevin Durand), Rickles (Will Catlett), and Dean (the late Angus Cloud) kidnapping a little girl and drinking their way through an evening that will result in the swelling of each of their bank accounts isn’t much of a sell. But there are a few back channels I wish Abigail’s promotional campaign would have considered taking. For one, the soft-if-unsurprising tease that the members of this crew do, indeed, mysteriously killed off, one by one, “mysteriously” being the operative word. Sure, an amateur detective likely could have deduced that the titular kidnapee might have something to do with it, but the “how” doesn’t need to be unveiled so easily. It’s worth noting that the movie’s big, vampirical reveal doesn’t arrive until it’s one-third of the way over, a choice that undoubtedly works on those unfamiliar with the film’s ads, but leaves AMC’s most dutiful soldiers wondering, “Hey, when’s this kid gonna bare her fangs?”

Part of the problem with this extended prologue is its overly general build-up, one that is frustratingly summarized in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it monologue from Joey, who pins down the defining characteristics of her fellow conspirators with startling immediacy (Not that the script Barrera is working with does her any favors in this department). Joey ascertains that Frank is a former cop turned corrupt criminal; Sammy is a hacker, but a teenage runaway first and foremost; Peter is all muscle, but his bulk hides an emotionally-stunted interior; Rickles is ex-military, the soulful type; and Dean is a driver, but he’s hardly a pro. Frank does his part by reading Joey like a book, spotting a candy affectation that screams “ex-junkie,” and her matronly ways with Abigail, the sign of a mother itching to get the child she abandoned back. We spend so much time on exposition that its feather-light delivery — and its contrived callbacks later in the film — make it all feel a bit wasteful. 

Thankfully, the fun is right around the corner, handcuffed in the other room. Once Abigail makes her intentions (and abilities) clear, Abigail delivers on the comedically-gory promises that Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett have been cashing in on ever since 2019’s Ready or Not launched them into this overdone genre hybrid’s pantheon. Though the duo, known professionally as “Radio Silence”, started out by contributing to the original V/H/S anthology in 2012, it was Ready or Not that branded them with the reputation for mastering the blend between humor and horror without relying too heavily on either element. Now, for better or for worse, they’re saddled with it, and while Abigail occasionally seems to be hell-bent on recreating the laughs and scares of Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s 2019 hit — not to mention its hide-and-seek elements — it does just enough to pave a way of its own.

Much of that is due to how game its central players are to take part in its hijinks, even if the schtick inches its way towards being tiresome after a while. Barrera and Stevens, top-billed and thus getting the most time to cook here, are perfectly fine foils for one another; Joey’s earnest, level temperament contrasts nicely with the brash, albeit grating style of Frank’s alpha mentality. Plus, in addition to their trademark genre-fusion, Abigail’s directing partners have a knack for infusing their heroines with an offscreen arc that narrowly escapes universality, Joey’s being her aforementioned hopes to rebuild a relationship with her son. Newton and Durand take on their roles in an “Odd Couple” pairing that goes down with a refreshing zest; imagine Jerry remaining a mouse while Tom took the form of a lion. But it’s Weir’s show, a performance as… well, as campy as mainstream horror tends to offer these days, as if M3GAN’s titular robot spent her whole movie twirling around in that hallway.

That a portion of this review turned its attention to the film’s mismarketing — er, its over-marketing — is no fault of Radio Silence, nor their collaborators. What they have with Abigail is a crowd-pleaser coated in blood and guts, overflowing with likable misfits, and carrying enough emotional weight to interest those less interested in seeing heads roll. What I wish their studio had trusted them to do is another story, similar to the one Bettinelli-Olpin, Gillett, and co. are telling here: Gathering a group of strangers in a dark place with one common goal, only to watch them discover, one by one, and to their surprise, that something sinister is afoot. What a concept.

Grade: C+

Director: Uberto Pasolini
Writer: Uberto Pasolini
Stars: James Norton, Daniel Lamont, Carol Moore

Synopsis: When John, a thirty-five-year-old window cleaner, is given only a few months to live, he attempts to find a new, perfect family for his three-year-old son, determined to shield him from the terrible reality of the situation.

Uberto Pasolini’s Nowhere Special could have fallen into many “poverty tourism” traps. Yet through sheer sincerity, boundless love, and the strength of community which surrounds John (James Norton) and his precious son Michael (Daniel Lamont), the film makes every tear shed a diamond.

John is a window washer and single father. His life is looking into worlds he has no access to. Apartments he could never afford. Shops filled with goods which are beyond his financial reach. Most significantly, a kind of life he is trying to imagine for his four-year-old son. John is only thirty-four, but he is dying of an aggressive brain stem cancer. A child of foster homes himself and without family, he is Michael’s entire world. And soon he will be gone.

Nowhere Special takes place over the space of approximately eight weeks. John’s sudden diagnosis and circumstances pushed him to the front of the line with social services and the foster and adoption system in Belfast. He needs to find Michael a home — a forever home, ideally with two parents. John wants what he didn’t have, an opportunity for a better life. While that is essentially what many parents wish for their children, they don’t have a clock ticking forcing them to make what they perceive as life altering decisions for their child.

The focus is on John’s relationship with Michael — played with a naturalism which proves that James Norton and Daniel Lamont formed a bond during filming which carries over onto the screen. Never for a moment does the audience doubt that the pair are father and son. John is tender, emotionally present, and filled with pride for his boy. He is also getting increasingly weak and although he is trying to hide his illness from Michael, he is aware that the sensitive youngster is acting out because he knows something isn’t right.

Over a series of meetings in which social worker Shona (Eileen O’Higgins) acts as a quiet intermediary, John introduces Michael to potential adoptive parents. From a well-to-do couple who could provide Michael with a grand house and private education, to working class people who feel they have room in their hearts and homes for a child. John is dragging his feet on making a decision because he believed he would be able to distinguish almost immediately who the right people would be. Is it the blended family with a raucous household filled with other adopted and fostered children? Or is it a single woman, Ella (Valerie O’Connor) who was forced to give up her own baby at the age of sixteen and due to complications with that pregnancy was unable to have another child?

As much as John feels he is carrying the sole  burden of choice for Michael, he is not left alone to emotionally deal with what his impending death means. His elderly friend Rosemary (Stella McCusker) speaks of her own grief in losing her husband of fifty years. Her wisdom about how we are never truly without the ones we love when they are gone gives John the vocabulary to speak to Michael about what is happening. 

Trying to balance the toughness of his upbringing with the tenderness he feels for Michael, John believes that when he breaks down with exhaustion, grief, and frustration he has failed. Rosemary reminds him, “That’s not weakness, my angel, it’s love.”

When anyone asks John what he would like Michael to remember of him he baulks at the question. His answers range from “I’m just a window cleaner,” to “I created him but robbed him of a family.” Michael’s birth mother left to return to Russia months after he was born leaving no forwarding address. In John’s mind, he doesn’t want Michael to remember him at all. To do so would mean Michael would have to confront the kind of continual abandonment John felt through his life. 

Uberto Pasolini’s screenplay and direction eschews cheap and manipulative sentiment. John and Michael’s small house is already a shrine to their love for each other. On almost every wall Michael’s art takes pride of place. Michael mirrors his father. Drawing texta tattoos on his skin to be like Dad. Bedtime reading, discussions of puppies, a birthday party just for two, cutting grapes so they will be exactly right, a temper tantrum about the wrong pajamas, a child quietly and instinctively nursing his father. Laughter and adoration create a halo of warmth.

James Norton is an under-the-radar talent, and Nowhere Special proves his versatility and commitment to imbuing the right role with exactly what is required to make the character unforgettable. Every time the camera moves to John’s point of view, the audience experiences his own grief. John is angry he is dying because he will not be there to watch his son grow. Every family he sees, often through windows, has time — the one commodity no one can buy nor bank. 

Daniel Lamont as Michael is a revelation. Films about the relationship between child and parent often live or die on the performance of the child in question. Daniel’s rapport with James is perfect. Daniel’s eyes searching for answers but also hiding from them are once again windows into an infinite world — that of what a small boy knows.

Ably supported by O’Higgins, McCusker, and O’Connor; Norton and Lamont are placed inside a drama which doesn’t shy from just how arbitrary and unfair life can be. Despite the melancholy of the situation, Nowhere Special is celebrating the people whose contributions to a life, or lives, are filled with kindness. There are people who leave little behind but blurred and sometimes bad memories — but there are also those who continue to exist in the air, the water, the sun which warms you, or an evocative sense memory.

Nowhere Special is a masterpiece. Pasolini along with his cast and crew earn every moment of investment in John and Michael’s story. A profoundly compassionate film which is both heartbreaking and hopeful.

Grade: A+

Director: Ken Loach
Writer: Paul Laverty
Stars: Dave Turner, Elba Mari, Claire Rodgerson

Synopsis: The future for the last remaining pub, The Old Oak, in a village of Northeast England, where people are leaving the land as the mines are closed. Houses are cheap and available, thus making it an ideal location for Syrian refugees.

Ken Loach is the United Kingdom’s most steadfast social realist. He is, at his core, the master of documenting the working class. He understands their contradictions, their fear, and their material and psychological oppression. His position has always been that being poor is not a moral failure but being cruel is. The Old Oak is a distillation of his decades-long themes. 

Set in a Durham mining town which has suffered years of neglect from the powers that be, the film explores blue-collar xenophobia. A Brexit Tory driven divided kingdom where people don’t know where to direct their resentment, disappointment, and social disenfranchisement.

When a group of Syrian refugees are housed in the town it creates a schism between the “locals” and the newcomers. The site of the battleground is TJ Ballantyne’s (Dave Turner) pub – The Old Oak and it’s also social media. Ken Loach and his regular collaborator Paul Laverty send out an ardent plea for empathy and openness.

It is 2016 and already the country is divided by the upcoming referendum. The film begins with angry voices – and via Robbie Ryan’s incredible cinematography, photographs of the people who are yelling. They are pounding at the windows of a bus wherein a group of traumatized and exhausted refugees are being dropped off to their new homes. The photographs are being taken by Yara (Ebla Mari) who, with her mother and three siblings, has made it out of the camps and has finally been granted asylum in the United Kingdom.

The rabble are shouting “You ragheads, you shot my mate in Iraq.” For the Durham locals the Middle East is a monoculture. Syria supported Iran at the time which tangentially made them allies to Britain. Their knowledge of the oppression faced by people under Bashar al-Assad is limited. For a mining town that has been perpetually screwed over by the Tories, and where many people live below the poverty line, solidarity is less important than when they will be able to buy a steak.

The Old Oak is the last public house. In many ways it is the final remnant of a dying community. Due to unscrupulous overseas investment conglomerates buying up the houses, the generational families are trapped in their terraces. There is little to no work and people can’t sell up and leave. They are victims of economic and social neglect. People who have known each other all their lives are fighting each other for scraps – and no one is winning. What they worked for so they would be secure has become a prison.

TJ is at heart a good man, but he is defeated and no longer brave. He has made mistakes, mostly stemming from increased depression and emotional absence. He lost his father to an offshore accident. His mother is gone. His wife and son are gone and although he loves his lad, he is hated by him. Friends have left. The only thing that keeps him going is the routine of caring for his beloved dog who rescued him in a time of desperation.

When Yara enters his life with her clear eyes and silent pain, he sees a kindred soul. Her camera was broken that first day by a hooligan and she needs to get it fixed. Not replaced but fixed. TJ realizes it has a particular meaning to her. It is the last thing she has of her father who was swept up by the secret police. He allows her into the closed off back room of the pub which was once the social and political hub for the miners and their families but has since fallen into disrepair.

Inside, there are pictures covering the history of the community. From the Easington Colliery tragedy to the 1984-1985 miner’s strike where everyone rallied together to ensure they could down tools and survive with no income. “When you eat together, you stick together” is a motto on the wall written by TJ’s mum. The principles died as the mine closed. Yara and TJ tentatively share their own “war stories.” TJ realizes that, along with his friend Laura (Claire Rodgerson) and his bartender Maggie (Jen Patterson), the pair can bring people together under the auspices of “Solidarity, not charity.”

However, in doing so TJ will risk estranging his regulars. If he loses the pub, he has nothing. TJ sees the grace that the Syrian community bring and their generosity considering they have nothing beyond a few cobbled together items they were able to keep while in the camps and charity donations he helps Laura deliver. Adversity taught them to share. Adversity has taught TJ to say “nowt.”

Little by little, members of the community embrace Yara with her honest concern for others. She helps Linda (Ruby Bratton), a pre-teen who is at risk of delinquency. Linda is mouthy and putting up a good front, but her home life is a shambles. When Linda passes out from hunger Yara takes her to her house. She is shocked to see that there is nothing in the cupboard and Linda’s diet is packets of crisps and cheap candy. 

There are stalwarts who refuse to interact with Yara and the refugees. They are the drunken and nasty Vic (Chris McGlade), Eddy, Garry, and Charlie (Trevor Fox) – his friend since childhood. Charlie and TJ were “marra” (the mining term for the one who will forever have your back and ensure your safety). TJ has become the butt of jokes from Vic and the others, and he is watching Charlie airing his legitimate concerns about his future and that of his sick wife turn into group-think hatred. 

When TJ decides to not open the back room for them to hold a community meeting about how they feel their town has become a dumping ground for what the toffs in Chelsea don’t want to look at – he makes a mistake. In their minds, he has turned traitor.

The fatal mauling of his little scrappy mutt, unexpectedly named Marra, reopens up his deep well of grief. Yara and Fatima (Anna Al Ali) bring him food. “Sometimes there is no need for words. Only food.” He feels ashamed. “There is no shame in loss, Mr. Ballantyne. We understand loss.”

Everyone in the film understands loss of some kind. A loss of confidence, connection, culture, and dignity. The people of the forgotten town have become beggars in their own country. When the spark of alliance reignites through a blending of the two communities via sustenance it is snuffed out by antipathy.

TJ takes Yara to Durham Cathedral – a wonder of Norman architecture and a farrago of evolving styles. The hymns of William Byrd and Thomas Tallis echo – and TJ explains just a small part of the history of the cathedral, a history which was created by the hands of stonemasons. Yara talks about the loss of her country’s history to ceaseless wars and occupations. Syria is nestled in the ancient cradle of civilization – “Built by the Romans, destroyed by the regime. When I see a place like this, I feel hope. When the world does nothing, that’s when the regime wins. It takes strength to hope. It takes faith to hope. I have a friend who calls hope obscene. Maybe she’s right. But if I stop hoping my heart will stop beating.”

Yara’s hope is her photographs. She documents the people of the village and shows that they are worthy of being seen. She shows images of Syria accompanied by music written and performed by Saied Silback. It is a moment of cinematic reflection from Loach whose films have seen him politically blacklisted in certain places or winning Palme D’ors and career honorariums.

Loach is a proletarian filmmaker who chooses non-professional actors to populate many of his films. He gets to street level in his contemporary work. By filming in real locations he has created an archive where the unseen are seen.

The Syrians honor  their new neighbors by creating an intricate Miner’s Banner combining their heritages – the town is healing until a betrayal brings it tumbling down. TJ feels he has let people down by making promises he couldn’t keep. But it wasn’t him that broke the trust. A conversation TJ has with Charlie gets straight to the point. “Whenever our life goes to shit, we never look up, we only look down. Blame the poor bastards beneath us. It’s always their fault. That makes it easier to stamp on the poor bastards’ faces, doesn’t it?”

Yet, The Old Oak chooses not to judge the people but the system. Despite the misinformation and hatred being amplified in online echo chambers, there is offline shared humanity. There is camaraderie born out of looking into the eyes of people who are targets of mistrust and hatred and changing the point of view. Molly (Michelle Bell) goes from chasing Yara out of her home, to introducing her to women at a hair salon where she photographs the clients. Bashir (Yazan Al Sheteiwi), who was cruelly beaten at school where Max (Alex White) was a bystander, ensures the penitent lad has food from the Old Oak dining room. 

At eighty-seven The Old Oak is expected to be Loach’s last film and completes a loose trilogy containing I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You. The Old Oak uses dialogue and stories given to Laverty and Loach and showcases a version of the Durham Miners Gala where the insults that opened the film convert into pride filled cheers. 

The final signatures on Loach’s long petition for betterment are bold. Hope is not obscene. Hope is what will keep the heart of the United Kingdom beating. Shukran, comrade Loach. The Old Oak is an acorn seeding united growth.

Grade: A