My Name Is Joe (1998)

IMDb plot summary: Two thirtysomethings, unemployed former alcoholic Joe and community health worker Sarah, start a romantic relationship in the one of the toughest Glasgow neighbourhoods.
Directed by Ken Loach. Starring Peter Mullan, Louise Goodall, David McKay, and Anne-Marie Kennedy.

I sought out this movie because earlier this year I fell in love with Kes, also from director Ken Loach. I'd never seen any of Loach's films before, so I hunted up this one, the next-ranked on Flickchart. While I'm less invested in this central character than I was in our young protagonist from Kes, it does an extraordinary job of humanizing the person at the center of all the drama -- in this case, crime and drugs drama. My complaint about crime movies is so often that they are all the same, but this one really manages to dig into its main character's personality, life, and heart, and it ends up much the better for it. And, much like Kes, the movie ends before I'm quite ready for it to, but in hindsight feels like the only ending it could have had. It's overall quite a good movie, even if I wasn't as emotionally connected to it as I was with the previous Loach film I'd seen.

How it entered my Flickchart:
My Name Is Joe > Mad Max
My Name Is Joe > A Grand Day Out with Wallace and Gromit
My Name Is Joe < Big Hero 6
My Name Is Joe < Beetlejuice
My Name Is Joe > National Lampoon's Vacation
My Name Is Joe < The Sting
My Name Is Joe < Bernie
My Name Is Joe < The Great Race
My Name Is Joe < The African Queen
My Name Is Joe > Dust
My Name Is Joe < Jack Goes Boating
Final spot: #641 out of 2946.