The Mike Leigh Poll

Still haven't gotten around to Happy Go-Lucky, but out of the eight I've seen it has to be Naked. Only one I'd go out of my way to see again.

That's the first one I saw, and it's a bit taxing.

It's definitely taxing, but Thewlis' performance...

Just thinking about it gives me uncomfortable shivers.

I love that movie. It sticks out a bit among Leigh's films I think. Its concerns are... harder to pin down, more esoteric, loftier, something like that.

Naked may be my favorite movie that I would never ever claim as my favorite movie. Because what is one to make of that information?

It's brilliant, though.

Thewlis' performance...

Somewhere up there with Brando in Streetcar, it's that good. No, I'm serious!

leigh is a miserable old bastard, no doubt but i would have to say Naked is amazing. Happy Go Lucky is really worth a watch too, almost 'feelgood' dare i say it. he's gotten some incredible performances from some actors/actresses.....jane horrocks in 'life is sweet'.

Have to say Secrets & Lies, though I'm not quite sure why.

It doesn't seem to be available on DVD, wonder why.

Naked

It doesn't seem to be available on DVD, wonder why.

I just watched it tonight.

i've seen the run from high hopes through topsy-turvy, i think naked had the biggest impact on me, but all of them are worthwhile except for career girls

Seen Meantime and then High Hopes on. Lots of good stuff here, but I think I'd need to re-watch some of these to confirm any sort of order (Life is Sweet I've not seen since it came for example--but I recall really liking it then.) Instinct says it's probably between Topsy-Turvy and Naked (which really couldn't be more different, could they?)

Secrets & Lies without question.

I can't think of a performance in recent memory that could so easily have been as awful as Brenda Blethyn's in Secrets & Lies.

I think the same could be said of Thewlis' role in Naked.

Leigh has lots of a good stuff (and a very consistent basic level of quality)
it's between Naked and the crazy-funny Life is Sweet for me. gonna vote for the latter, Naked will win anyway :)
High Hopes is one of his most depressing. Secrets & Lies has a couple of amazing magical moments.

"I can't think of a performance in recent memory that could so easily have been as awful as Brenda Blethyn's in Secrets & Lies."

Awfully realistic. I've met that woman.

One more reason to hate the iMdB! It made my favorite of his TV films, the hysterically funny Home Sweet Home, invisible to Alfred... because it's an "episode" (95 mins.) of an anthology series!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084082/

Anyway, Naked of course. Followed by HSH and Topsy-Turvy.

I got it from Wikipedia!

Naked was made for you, Morbs. What's HSH?

Voted Meantime, just ahead of Nuts in May. Much underated - in a perfect world it'd be quoted as much as Withnail & I ('have we got ants?', 'and one for Ron - later 'on' etc etc).

And, proof that for all his faults Leigh has an eye for the coming actor - Gary Oldman, Phil Daniels and Tim Roth all in their first big roles...

HSH = Home Sweet Home. Tim Spall plays a stupendously dense mailman. obv Wiki took it from iMdb.

yes, Johnny wd've been SB'd.

xxp uh pretty sure Phil Daniels had big roles prior to 1983 or 1981 (whichever Meantime actually came out in.)

I'm voting for the excruciating Grown-Ups though the first two are iconic bits of British TV. Blethyn is awful (almost but not quite)beyond belief in this (compliment).

Oh, and you're missing Bleak Moments too - his first feature from 1971 and with much richer photography than his later BBC productions. Apt title, mind. Filmed round where I live in SE London.

yes, Wiki sucks.

Happy-Go-Lucky was one of the most daring, moving films I've seen in ages, and it has an incredible lead performance by Sally Hawkins, so I gotta got for that. I'm probably exactly the kind of viewer it was targeted for, though, because the whole movie is a big anti-cynicist manifesto, and I'm a big anti-cynic.

I voted Nuts in May because it's funny as fuck and I never get tired of doing Candice Marie impressions and because it's the single best thing Leigh ever did so BOOM.

I do love

Oops. I do love Naked and it's probably his "best" film but Topsy-Turvy is just so much fun, so i voted for that.

You've also missed Hard Labour, another early 70s piece of Play for Today grimness. It was shown on BBC4 recently as past of a Liz Smith night.

Happy-Go-Lucky was one of the most daring, moving films I've seen in ages, and it has an incredible lead performance by Sally Hawkins, so I gotta got for that. I'm probably exactly the kind of viewer it was targeted for, though, because the whole movie is a big anti-cynicist manifesto, and I'm a big anti-cynic.

I wonder about this...There is a reading of this film that Sally Hawkins's 'happy go luckyness' is just as manic in its own way as David Thewlis in Naked. So in a sense it's a mirror image of Naked - the flip manic side to Naked's depressive side.

I am cynical about its alleged anti-cynicism manifesto - and don't think you should necessarily take what Mike Leigh says at face value. But then I'm a big cynic.

On another Mike Leigh thread, I'm still waiting for more views on this film - not enough people commented on it.

I posted a few herehere.

i vote for nuts in may! finally just saw it last month and i loved it. omg, the scene where they make that poor guy sing along to their song...words fail me.

Just thought of two more that are missing: Four Days In July (set in the Falls Road area of Belfast) and The Permissive Society. Neither of which were likely to garner any votes anyway.

re-poll

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a82/bobbysixer/cheerupmate.jpg

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Super hard to choose. Voted Life Is Sweet for partly sentimental reasons (it was my first Mike Leigh).

Also, RIP Katrin Cartlidge ;_;

Lots of good choices here, but I can think of few theatrical experiences equal to the first time I saw "Topsy-Turvy." Utterly enthralled.

little-known fact: I own a Career Girls t shirt

Soft spot for Abigail's Party. Would love to see it again... is there a quality difference between the us or uk dvd?

Haven't seen the last two yet for some reason.

"Life is Sweet" is the King of Mike Leigh movies. Next I would go for "Naked" and then for "Career Girls" as a distant third.
The only one that doesn't really fit into his works for me is Topsy-Turvy. It's sort of like his "Gosford Park," for me--the exception that proves the work.

Abigail's Party

everyone, just say what you think

Life is Sweet was the first Mike Leigh movie I saw, and I have more affection for it than his other movies even though some of them are technically "better" for one reason or another.

Don't know much Leigh but for me, 'Topsy Turvy' just beats out 'Naked', as fond as I am of that film.

Err... Nut in May I guess. Don't like this guy's output tbh. Naked is such a stupid, stupid film.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

yay bitter nihilist antihero!

you laughed at that scene as well?

no no I'm just startled we disagree so hard

me too man! I'm confused!

when he is good, he is very very good.
But when he is bad he is awful.

I'm not sure his good ones are not awful either, fwiw. Secrets and Lies and Vera Drake have some awful stuff about them. Abigail's Party does but it was written as a play so the too-big-stuff about it is excusable. Some people like Nuts in May, after al and I'll never understand that. Career Girls, same. I know Katrin Cartlidge died tragically young but still.

Didn't notice any bad CG, don't be such a fucking gearhead tosser.

I still own a Career Girls t shirt.

in life, people explain what they are going to do quite often

While okay and great Leigh is hard to distinguish, it's hard to think of awful in the last 20 years. Can you give me, jed, examples of awful writing or direction?

(Not an assignment, just genuinely curious!)

Career Girls and Nuts in May are two films I will never tire of.

when he is good, he is very very good.
But when he is bad he is awful.

Ken Loach

Career Girls and Nuts in May are two films I will never tire of.

Nuts in May is untouchable. I wonder why jed hates it – maybe because it's too broad a caricture too caricatured – but God it doesn't matter in this case. But talking of caricature, CG is bad ML imo.

As for Peterloo, for some reason I'm reminded of Americans liking Match Point. I haven't seen either!

Nuts in May should've had a Brexit remake

lol I can't stand Match Point. Someone should've clubbed Allen to death with a tennis racket.

Match Point is awful.

Can well imagine people disliking Nuts In May tbh. Not me though.

I get why some people don't like Career Girls, it has the conspicuously affective performance ramped up to 11, but it's all-time for me, really captures a place and a time in a unique way, and has so many brilliant moments - I kind of see it as a companion piece to Naked.

I apologise for tarring Alfred and Eric with the Match Point-appreciating brush.

I was reading this thread on my phone and thinking have I gone through some wormhole where Mike Leigh directed the godawful Match Point. Was very relieved after a frantic IMDB check.

Ha ha. Sorry fo polluting the whole thread.

jed otm itt. Watched this last night and it was sortof enjoyable in a deadeyed bbc way with loads of semi-recognisable actors hamming it up but was complete antithesis of everything I like about topsy turvy (its baggy improvisatory feel, its digressary construction).

worst things:
the score! twee and saccharine and overbearing.
maxine peake and her exposition-spouting family (I usually like maxine peake, although I'm starting to get sick of her playing the exact same character and wearing the exact same hat). There are a number of these 2-dimensional 'noble' characters (such as the guardian journalists excitedly founding theguardian.com at the end) prattling on flatly throughout. They sortof appear every now and then, as if Leigh has been reminded that he needs to connect the plot more explicitly to historical context and often results in tritely presented scenes like the egg bartering at the beginning (we do not remain interested in the household accounts of the maxine peakes, this single egg-buying experience is supposed to account for quite a bit here.). The film seems as bored of these characters as I was but prefers to snigger at the hammy 'characters' in a way I found pretty repulsive and boring.
casual mysogyny: unless you are a saintly pragmatic female main character, you are likely to be an imbecile or a shrew. I find this to be the single most damning thing in leigh's films, and doubly weird that he made such a complex film about the politics of abortion (vera drake) considering how frequently his characterisations of women are so hateful. in this one the 'dimwit maid' character really stood out. How can someone insert characters like that and still be considered (a) interested in realism and (b) to be some sort of figurehead of progressivism in britain*?

Its disappointing because the historical events are interesting, and the contemporary resonances many (the spying on progressive movements, the authoritarianism and paranoia of the british ruling class etc) and at the very least the film seems to have somewhat restored the events to more mainstream knowledge in the uk (hopefully somewhat durably).

*don't answer this one

Fascinating, and I couldn't disagree more strongly.

I suspect that some of the things I find most egregious about Leigh might not be so legible if you haven't spent much time in the UK (especially England), although I think his weird women issues would be obvious to an alien.

Just watched Career Girls for the first time, having seen most of his other films. This seem quite poor. The student year scenes I found excruciatingly bad and the mature years were ok - but not just enough chemistry between Hannah and Annie to make it interesting. The 'coincidences' or meeting former college acquaintances just seemed to be mostly a mess (or a miss).

The acting in the "young" scenes in Career Girls must be some of the worst (or most misguided) ever done by talented actors. I literally could not understand why they were talking and gesturing in such contrived ways. 20 years later, I'm no wiser. Was it meant to show how precocious they were? Were the viewers meant to hate the characters as much as I did?

Didn't expect to read Mr. Turner as an idiosyncratic exegesis on creativity, depression and the anguish that runs through them but by the end I was kinda wrecked by it.

Really need a supercut of Spall's variety of grunts - whether as exclamation, criticism, joy, sadness, or all the nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and conjunctions.

Topsy Turvy was playing on Criterion 247. First time I've seen it since 2000. I forgot how good it is on a scene by scene basis. I need to rewatch some other favorites as it was my best movie experience in months.

haven't seen Career Girls since it was in theaters, still sticks out in my mind as the one real misfire in his filmography( i haven't seen them all) but might be worth a ~rescreen. i adore Katrin Cartlidge so the fail seems even more out of character, maybe i missed something first time around?

i've seen the run from high hopes through topsy-turvy, i think naked had the biggest impact on me, but all of them are worthwhile except for career girls

one of my favorite things about my 20+ year history on this board is i very often will dip into a long running thread to drop a random thought and then i'll scroll back and see me saying a very similar but completely forgotten take 15 years ago.

Career Girls is one of my favourites, think it was the first Mike Leigh film I saw and it has really stuck with me. I can appreciate that it's more cartoonish than his other films but it really captures something about student life in 80s London and how the adult world flattens out your emotions.

yeah i can see if you were in that moment that it depicts it hits harder, to me it just seemed like he worked up a lot of the scenarios with the 2 main actresses and at the end it just wasn't that compelling but i will take another look

I haven't seen CG since I saw it in the theatre the summer it came out but I really liked it. Of course that could be because of the Cure soundtrack but I remember it fondly.

Wonder what it'd be like watching Career Girls and The Souvenir back to back.

Topsy-Turvy felt so very not 1999 when it came out that its warm reception felt a little counterintuitive to the overwhelming "1999: the year that changed movies" hype out there at the time. Glad to see time has more than vindicated it (and Eyes Wide Shut, to cite another example).

Speak for yerself.

At the time of their release, I loved Career Girls and struggled to connect with Topsy Turvy, but I think the period setting of the latter may have been a barrier for college-aged me. The fact that I adored Mr. Turner 15 years later has made me want to revisit TT.

I wish more people had watched Peterloo. If it's his last film, what a bow.

I keep putting it off. Need to rectify that.

xp he's already finished another (though a few years ago he admitted he was having a lot of difficulty finding funding for another project):

https://variety.com/2024/film/global/mike-leigh-hard-truths-marianne-jean-baptiste-first-look-1235910527/

Just saw Nuts in May on Criterion or somewhere, and really enjoyed it... you could see he was already on his path

Mr. Turner has been added to the canon since the poll, what say ye?

Y'all should listen to this This Had Oscar Buzz episode on PETERLOO, a movie I was 100% correct about in 2019:

https://fightinginthewarroom.com/THOB/2024/08/19/305-peterloo-with-fran-hoepfner/

one of his best imo

I thought it was riveting. His period movies are all great imo, but Peterloo has added heft.

I was thinking of starting a thread for misleading trailers but I've got a feeling this is not a genuine trailer and is some kind of spoof.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Llcgzs1jNOM

I'd never seen Meantime before but it was on Talking Pictures, of all channels, on Saturday (straight after Budgie, which seemed appropriate). Tim Roth's entire career has basically been all downhill since and Phil Daniels is absolutely incredible in this film.

A career with The Hit, Vincent & Theo, Reservoir Dogs, Rob Roy, and Bergman Island?

Roth was also ok in Altman's Van Gogh movie, but definitely the most mediocre actor of that generation.

When young people see the dole office scenes in Meantime and Boys From Black Stuff, where the characters are giving backchat and hurling wisecracks + insults at the dhss staff it will seem like another world. Especially now as you can get sanctioned for being a few minutes late for a job centre interview.

sorry, you did mention the Altman one.

unfortunately you also mentioned Reservoir Dogs!

(xxp) OTM tbf though everyone was on the dole in the 80s if they'd sanctioned everyone the whole thing would have ground to halt.