Life is Sweet: Criterion Collection
June 10, 2013
For many years, Mike Leigh has been a brilliant and consistent chronicler of the British lower middle working class in cinema. Life is Sweet (1990) was his breakthrough film having cut his teeth previously on plays and television movies where he honed...
Topsy-Turvy: Criterion Collection
March 31, 2011
You have to hand it to Mike Leigh, a filmmaker who has the confidence to make a $20 million period musical with limited commercial appeal. In 1999, he released Topsy-Turvy, a musical drama chronicling W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s creation of The...
Naked
February 13, 2006
It has been said that there is a fine line between genius and madness and this is certainly epitomized by the protagonist of Mike Leigh’s Naked (1993), a scathing, uncompromising portrait of an angry young man. Does genius preclude or cause madness?...
Career Girls
February 4, 2006
One of the hallmarks of Mike Leigh’s cinema is that he has always been an astute observer of human behaviour and relationships that borders on cinema verite. He’s a fantastic observer of life, the way people talk, act and interact with one another...
