It's a Free World....

"Beginning this weekend, the Brooklyn Academy of Music will pay tribute to IFC Films," notes Martin Tsai in the New York Sun. "Aside from highlighting sneak previews of upcoming films from Gus Van Sant, Claude Chabrol, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Christophe Honoré, the series will feature the American premiere of Ken Loach's It's a Free World..., which will apparently skip the usual IFC Center pit stop and head straight to video on demand under IFC Films's new Festival Direct banner."

"This being a Loach film, it's also a cruel world, populated by capitalist tools and fools, schemers and dreamers of every stripe, accent and ethnicity," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "In It's a Free World... it's the war of all against all yet again, this time with fistfuls of filthy pound notes and mouths crammed with speeches and broken promises."

"The problem with It's A Free World..., as with a lot of Loach films of late, is that in spite of strong performances and a taut narrative, the whole endeavor plays more like a position paper than a movie," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club. "Still, It's A Free World...'s dilemmas are undeniably thought-provoking. When [Kierston] Wareing is forced to tell a group of workers that they have to keep working for no pay or risk never getting paid at all, the situation is overly pointed. It's also true."

In the L Magazine, Benjamin H Sutton gives it four Ls.

Earlier: Reviews from Venice.

Posted by dwhudson at February 29, 2008 8:40 AM