Directed by Mike Leigh
(PG-13)
****
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English filmmaker Mike Leigh has crafted “yet another fascinating, meticulous portrait of ordinary people,” said Claudia Puig in USA Today. His latest film, Another Year, chronicles the comings and goings of friends and family who routinely insert themselves into the stable life of a happily married couple, portrayed beautifully by Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen. As usual, Leigh presents his actors with only an outline, relying on improvisation, small details, and lived-in performances to tell his story. Another Year is about nothing more than the wheel of life, yet in Leigh’s hands, the “everyday becomes extraordinary,” said Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. As the seasons change, so do the characters, revealing in each case a “depth and complexity” that only such “unstudied naturalism” could achieve. Even supporting roles, such as the pathetic, perpetually single friend who’s played by Lesley Manville, have “a novelistic amplitude,” said Peter Rainer in The Christian Science Monitor. In Leigh’s hands, the quotidian can morph suddenly “into moments of shattering emotional power.”
