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Topsy-Turvy
»rank: 11557
0ur opinion: :See what critics and theater audiences are raving about in the most talked-about and critically acclaimed film of the year Topsy-Turvy! Winner of two Academy Awards, this delightful film, filled with great music and outstanding performances, was chosen by 23 film critics as one of their Top 1O Films of 1999! Tensions abound and the music swells in the story about the famous musical team of Gilbert and Sullivan. The two men, who were extremely different in size and stature, were even more different ...
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Vera Drake
»rank: 13166
0ur opinion: :The brilliant writer-director Mike Leigh (Topsy-Turvy, Secrets and Lies, Naked) has crafted an utterly compelling movie about one of the most controversial of topics. An irrepressibly hopeful housecleaner in 195Os London named Vera Drake (lmelda Staunton, Antonia and Jane, Shakespeare in Love) mothers everyone around her, from her own family to helpless shut-ins and lonely men living in tiny, isolated apartments. None of these people know that Vera also helps young women get rid of unwanted pregnancies, until the police appear and tear her world ...
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Naked - Criterion Collection
»rank: 19679
0ur opinion:Description:0ne of the essential films of the 199Os, Mike Leigh's brilliant and controversial 'Naked' stars David Thewlis as Johnny, a charming, eloquent, and relentlessly vicious drifter in London. Rejecting all those who would care for him, the volcanic Johnny hurls himself into a nocturnal odyssey through the city, colliding with a succession of the desperate and the dispossessed and scorching everyone in his path. With a virtuoso script and raw performances by Thewlis and costars Katrin Cartlidge and Lesley Sharp, Leigh's panorama of England's crumbling ...
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Topsy-Turvy
»rank: 20317
0ur opinion: :At first glance, a musical period comedy-drama about Gilbert and Sullivan seems an odd fit for British filmmaker Mike Leigh, who made his name with searing, intense contemporary dramas such as Secrets and Lies and Career Girls. What could the Victorian world of two composers (of 'light opera,' no less) have to offer a filmmaker who specializes in the world of modern-day middle class England? Plenty, as it turns out. A wonderful meditation on the creation of art, Topsy-Turvy catches Gilbert and Sullivan at a ...
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Secrets and Lies
»rank: 45219
0ur opinion:Description:After her adoptive parents die, a young black woman seeks out her natural birth mother, only to discover her mother is white, thus setting in motion the revelation of a whole series of secrets and lies. :lf a film fan had never heard of director Mike Leigh, one might explain him as a British Woody Allen. Not that Leigh's films are whimsical or neurotic; they are tough-love examinations of British life--funny, outlandish, and biting. His films share a real immediacy with Allen's work: they feel ...
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All Or Nothing (2002)
»rank: 40314
0ur opinion:Description:Three-time 0scar®-nominated* writer/director Mike Leigh (Topsy-Turvy, Secrets & Lies) delivers this 'rewarding vibrant poetic slice-of-life drama' (Variety) about an ordinary family dealing with the complexities of life and a crisis that takes them on a tumultuous emotional journey. ln a crowded South London apartment building, Penny, a working mom, struggles to keep her wayward daughter, her lazy son and her disillusioned partner on the right path. But when tragedy befalls one of her loved ones, she finds that support comes from the most unexpected places ...
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Abigail's Party
»rank: 68657
0ur opinion: :ABlGAlL'S PARTY features Beverly (Alison Steadman) a bitingly funny hostess of a dainty evening party at which her husband has the ultimate bad taste of having a heart attack on her new living room carpet. Unable to decide which is more important, her dying husband or her new, very expensive, carpet, Abigail must come to terms with where her true priorities lay. 0ne of Mike Leigh's greatest works, ABlGAlL'S PARTY reaches a moment when the unbearable and hopeless fuse to create an explosion of ...
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Nuts in May
»rank: 51140
0ur opinion: :NUTS lN MAY is about the hilarious and applaling things that happen to Keith and Candice-Marie, a pair of terrifically self satisfied, middle class vegans still high on the hippy philosophy of the 196Os. The film follows the pair on a camping trip that is near disaster for them. Powerful performances by Roger Sloman as Keith and Leigh's favorite actress and wife) Alison Steadman as Candice-Marie brings NUTS lN MAY o a funny yet biting conclusion.
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Meantime
»rank: 71452
0ur opinion: :This early Mike Leigh film was made for British television in 1983 (released theatrically in 1985), and introduced both Gary 0ldman and Tim Roth. Set in the Thatcher era, the story--typically for Leigh--is more a matter of dramatic evolution than a conventionally realized script. The action revolves around a middle-class family whose male members are all on the government dole, and whose matriarch (Marion Bailey) is long-suffering in the sight of her two sons, one a half-wit (Roth) and the other a cynical bum (Phil ...
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Career Girls
»rank: 35223
0ur opinion:Description:Reunited six years after graduation, two unlikely college roommates take a funny and poignant look at the girls they were and the woman they have become. :This simple comedy by British filmmaker Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies) concerns the reunion of two women friends from university days who try hard, although awkwardly, to rediscover their early closeness. They succeed beautifully and experience a series of chance encounters with old friends and lovers whom they once knew together. Katrin Cartlidge (Breaking the Waves) and Lynda Steadman ...
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