Video Review: 'Ladybird Ladybird' (1995)

Using the powerful and ugly concrete blocks of real life, the great humanist director Ken Loach has fashioned a riveting contemporary epic. In Manchester, England, Maggie (the extraordinary Crissy Rock), a single mother with a tendency toward abusive relationships, loses her desperately loved children just as she finds a gentle man to deliver her from the past. Although based on a true story, Ladybird Ladybird is also a parable of how government's giant cogs sometimes crush individuals and never miss a turn. Loach puts us where we can hear the people crying. A