‘Angels’ Share’ Director Ken Loach Slams Margaret Thatcher, Launches a Meme, and the End of Capitalism

I was planning on talking about whisky, but Ken Loach was more interested in talking about the end of capitalism.

Loach is a legendary filmmaker in British cinema, known for his gritty, brilliantly crafted dramas like “Kes,” “Poor Cow,” and “My Name is Joe.” He is also an unapologetic leftist, something of a rarity these days. His films are in turns touching, troubling, and occasionally funny, but they are all rigorously from the point of view of the working class.

This week, following the death of Margaret Thatcher, Loach issued a fiery full-throated indictment of Britain’s first female prime minister, which garnered headlines and turned into an Internet meme.

“Margaret Thatcher was the most divisive and destructive Prime Minister of modern times. Mass Unemployment, factory closures, communities destroyed — this is her legacy,” he wrote in a statement.

Indie Roundup: ‘My Brother the Devil’

It’s a story as old as cinema itself: a criminal who struggles to shield his loved ones from the allure and brutal realities of life on the wrong side of the law. You can see it in classic Warner Brothers gangster flicks starring James Cagney and in ‘The Godfather.” Director Sally El Hosaini’s debut feature, “My Brother the Devil,” gives us a bracing new take on this archetypal tale.

‘Upstream Color’ Director Shane Carruth Admits That He’s a ‘Control Freak’

Shane Carruth’s first movie, “Primer,” takes all the paradoxes and mind-bending possibilities of time travel and distills them into one 77-minute-long head trip. If you saw it, you’re probably still trying to figure out what that all was about. Carruth wrote, directed, shot, starred in, and composed the score for the movie, making him easily one of the most independent of all independent filmmakers out there.

Carruth’s follow-up movie, “Upstream Color,” is much stranger and more biological. If David Cronenberg and Terrence Malick ever got together and made a movie, it might just look something like this. The world that Carruth creates is as maddeningly opaque as it is compelling. This is not a flick that is easily summarized, but it centers on Kris (Amy Seitz), a woman who, after suffering a devastating if baffling crime, finds herself seeking out safety and comfort in the equally damaged Jeff (Carruth). But they both seem to be part of a surrealist ecosystem that involves worms — which petty thugs use to create some kind of mind-controlling drug. And there are those menacing blooms of blue organisms. And a band of orchid thieves. And then there’s that pig farmer who may or may not be God. ‘