Jimmy's Hall

Name: Jimmy's Hall
Director: Ken Loach
Released: 2014

Synopsis

Jimmy Gralton returns from New York and reopens his beloved community hall, only to meet opposition from the local parish.

80
Variety
A minor-key but eminently enjoyable work by a master craftsman.
80
Time Out London
Politics and entertainment are never an easy mix, and Jimmy’s Hall is a familiar, slightly unsurprising coming together of the two from Loach and his writer Paul Laverty. Sometimes you can see the joins, but there’s also great warmth, charm and humour among the ideas, and the sense of time and place is especially strong.
75
IndieWire
A minor work by Loach's standards, the movie nevertheless marks his most enjoyable effort in years.
63
Slant Magazine
Ken Loach's staging is so calm and sober that it turns his story into an expertly photographed yet weirdly remote rebellion tale.
63
New York Post
As lovely as Jimmy’s Hall is, Paul Laverty’s script is not so much talky as speech-y. Some conversations play like bullet points about Irish politics and the iron grip of the Catholic Church.
60
Los Angeles Times
A story that might have been alive with messy complexity is instead genial and polite.
50
The Hollywood Reporter
For the first time his ongoing collaboration with scriptwriter Paul Laverty, Loach's studiously safe-hands approach -- typified by regular collaborator George Fenton's near-incessant score -- can't counterbalance fundamental screenplay flaws.
50
The Playlist
It’s a twee and tweedy period “Footloose,” into which Loach’s trademark left wing sympathies are not so much woven as photocopied and stapled onto alternate pages of the script.