Am I Missing Something?

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Normally I write a movie review immediately after seeing the movie, because it is fresh to recollect the movie. When I was browsing the TV today and saw this movie, I stopped. I remember loving this movie when I had seen for the first time. Then I remembered that I did not write the movie review then. I was myself surprised, and I made it a point to write the review this time. So here it is. The story is beautifully told with passing of four seasons of a year – that is why it is titled ANOTHER YEAR. Tom (Jim Broadbent) a geologist and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) a counselor are older married couple who encounter friends and family with their underlying issues. First one is Mary (Leslie Manville) is a middle-aged divorcée receptionist, heavy alcoholic desperate seeking a new relationship – and eye Tom and Gerri's son Joe (Oliver Maltman) who is much younger - around 30 years old. Second is Ken (Peter Wight), Tom's school friend, who is overweight, a compulsive eater, drinker and smoker. Third is Ronnie (David Bradley) , estranged son of Tom's brother, who arrives late and is angry with everyone for not delaying his mother's funeral ceremony. Through the relationships of these characters, director Mike Leigh beautifully exploits the togetherness and loneliness with warmth, tenderness, kindness, giving, emotional loss, yearnings, and nurturing, growing old together. There are some well executed scenes that resonate with audiences in terms of the assembled cast and crew delivering on the spot improvisation and inventiveness in executing an endearing scene. Mary's drunkenness, Mary's romantic advances towards Joe, Mary's reluctance and rejection of Ken's advances, Mary's hostility towards Joe's girlfriend Katie (Karina Fernandez), Mary's apology to Gerri for her behavior and the last lingering scene where Mary is lost and uncertain on a happy dinner night. It is Mary's under-current role (exit & entry) all the way that weaves this story. It was not a wonder that Leslie Manville won several best actress awards for her brilliant portrayal of this role. A special mention for Director Mike Leigh for writing a script and screenplay that leaves trust and scope for exceptional improvisation to imbibe the flow of scenes and characters. Not many can achieve this finesse. I will go with 7.75 out of 10

"Mike Leigh miserabilism" is definitely a thing—my fearless, insomniac wife warned me about "All or Nothing," the one with Timothy Spall as a bummed-out cabdriver—but "Another Year" is a different story. True, three of the main characters appear to be clinically depressed, one virtually catatonic after the death of his wife, but the film is really about Tom and Gerri, a well-matched, well-adjusted couple in their 60s trying to deal with their friends' (or in Tom's case, brother's—the catatonic one's) impending collapse. The Leigh technique of guided improvisation and many, many runthroughs really makes the big ensemble scenes work; Leslie Manville as self-absorbed, self-medicating Mary is the standout here, though I was grateful for a less fraught scene in which T and G's son turns up with a talkative new girlfriend (she was the fiery flamenco teacher in "Happy-Go-Lucky") and the four of them just have a lively conversation. Interesting that the sane, happy characters all have fulfilling public-sector jobs—psychiatric social worker, physical therapist, legal aid lawyer; Tom's helping to redesign the London sewer system. Jim Broadbent, who plays him, is delightful as always (unless you count "Cloud Atlas"), and though this one may not have the intensity of Leigh's best work, it really connects on an emotional level. Available on disk from Netflix.

First things first - the DVD categorically states that this is director Mike Leigh's 'best film to date'. It isn't and possibly could never be.That's because this is an 'Autumn' film - as is Leigh's career and the age of its chief actors. It glows rather than scowls, which Leigh's best and provocative material did, such as in Secrets and Lies.There's a certain sure-footed predictability about this one and it's best for those who've grown up with and alongside Leigh and his regular gang of improviso actors. I'd also say it's more Radio 4 than 2 with a cheery middle-class turn from a wonderfully rounded (& naturally bearded) Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen. He, as civil engineer, who can mock his own unimportance and she as counsellor attached to a large GP surgery. They're sort of like chalk and cheese but often a chalky cheese and their natural chemistry and dialogue is both comfortable and rewarding.Lesley Manville supplies the humour - as scatty, tippling medical secretary at the Surgery and who decides to buy a car. "What sort?" Tom (Broadbent) asks, "Small - and red" she replies. She admires but can't always respect her friend's rock-solid marriage and underneath, she is lonely, needy and insecure.As always with a Mike Leigh, a small band of lesser characters bolster and add flavour to the mix - depressive insomniac Imelda Staunton who is sent to Gerri (Sheen) for treatment, along with various friends and family, with such notables as Phil Davies providing solid performances.So, over the course of a year, we gently (not TOO gently!) see a death in the family and a birth. As is usual in Leigh's character-led comedy- dramas, it comes to an agreeable end, without fanfare nor finality and we are left subtly satisfied, rather than on a high, or low.I have to admit that I put off buying this film as a DVD until now as it appeared to be too cosy and perhaps taking a direction away from where I prefer Mike Leigh to be. But, the central couple become rather like Aunty and Uncle, totally believable, very human and with some foibles that have to be endured, rather than enjoyed. For any lover of Leigh, it's a must, though that sedate pace and lack of Hollywood (or indeed the typical Brit comedy formula, as in Made in Dagenham, Tamara Drewe or The Full Monty) will put some off.I watched it twice in two days and like a familiar jumper, could ravel myself up in it again, actually quite soon!

Happy-Go-Lucky, Mike Leigh's 10th film from 2008, was a surprising shift in tone for the now 67-year-old Salford-born director. Rather than bleakly dwelling on life's waifs, strays and ne'er-do-wells, it featured a group of well-adjusted and attractive young women cheerily getting on with living and working in north London. In many ways, it was the anti- Mike Leigh, Mike Leigh film, but it still polarised opinion, as most of his films tend to do.Many women found Happy-Go-Lucky's lead character, Pauline 'Poppy' Cross (Sally Hawkins), teeth-gratingly chirpy and thought she gave an unflattering portrayal of a modern, 30-year-old woman. Men, on other hand, tended to be charmed by her wit and warmth. And, let's be honest, many guys fell for Hawkins' watermelon grin and tractor-beam charisma. After the international success of Happy-Go-Lucky (Hawkins received a Golden Globe) and the glowing notices for Mike Leigh's 2004 film, Vera Drake, anticipations are high ahead of this Friday's UK premiere of Leigh's latest offering, Another Year. Although it didn't win the Palme d'Or, Another Year was still one of the most talked about movies at this year's Cannes film festival.Anyone expecting the light (though hardly lightweight) touch of Happy- Go-Lucky could be a tad disappointed. Another Year returns to familiar Leigh territory: gut-wrenching sorrow, frustrated lives, claustrophobic social tensions and excruciating embarrassments. It's all highly watchable rather than unbearable thanks to the compassion Leigh generates for his dysfunctional protagonists, as well as the regular flashes of brilliant, caustic wit. In fact, Another Year features some of Leigh's funniest and most memorable lines since Mean Time or Career Girls.Tom's life-long pal Ken, though, is an altogether lost soul. He makes half-hearted attempts to chat up Mary at Tom and Gerri's summer barbecue, but isn't quite deluded enough to think he stands a chance. A heavy drinker, smoker and eater, any traces of handsomeness have been erased along with his personal hygiene or any pretence to a decent wardrobe. He bemoans how rubbish pubs have become in his native Hull, all redesigned to 'exclude old people like me', and his social networks have closed down one-by-one through friends emigrating or dying. He carries on working for the local council when he could easily retire because he doesn't have anything else to occupy his time. Isolation and loneliness have often hit people late in life, but Leigh is showing how the collapse of any public life in the provinces is making this unfortunate situation more likely for more people.It would be easy, and wrong, to see Tom and Gerri – yes, this awful gag is deliberately played upon from time to time – as a smug couple lording it over their unfortunate friends. Yes, they're allotment-loving greens who fret about climate change, but in lots of ways they don't conform to an easy liberal-leftie stereotype. The couple, like the hapless Ken, benefited from grammar schools and universities worth their name in the late Sixties. They're the first of their respective families to go to university and, as we see from Tom's wider family in Hull, are from unremarkable backgrounds. As Gerri remarks to Tom early in the film, 'we're lucky really', and it's this grounded awareness that informs their compassion, patience and loyalty to their sometimes-trying friends.So would Mary be happier if she found a decent man? It would no doubt help, but it seems her real discontent is rooted in doing a badly paid and unfulfilling clerical job, unable to afford a decent flat or go on holiday. In a fantastic dig at environmentalists, Mary rationalises her poverty through the prism of green thinking: 'I'm the most environmentally friendly person here', she says. 'I don't drive, I don't consume much, I live in a small flat and I don't fly abroad.'In an earlier scene, too, one of Gerri's patients, Janet (Imelda Staunton), responds to the question 'what would make you happy?' with 'how about a new life?' and rightly can't see what a weekly therapy session would do to change that. Nonetheless, Janet is deprived of sleeping pills from a medical doctor until she agrees to weekly psychological probings by Gerri. Gerri's psychobabble also works against her better instincts, as when she falls out with Mary and, rather than work through the squabble as long-time friends should, she coldly advises Mary to 'seek independent professional advice'. Leigh's disdain for the 'happiness agenda', quack therapy and environmentalism is a sly delight throughout the film.At the question-and-answer session that followed the preview screening I attended, Leigh unashamedly said how much he enjoys film-making at the moment. Certainly, his output over the past decade has seen him grow as a director with each new release. Another Year is a beautifully shot, deeply humane and – even by Leigh's standards – minutely observed portrait of the dynamics of life-long friendships. What gives this snapshot an absorbing quality are the unexplained back stories and unspoken hostilities that are palpable amongst the main protagonists. It's a film that keeps you searching for answers long after the credits have rolled.