In 1892, Ruth Belville took up the family business. It was a trade inherited from her mother, first founded by her father. He had…
Hard Truths Six years ago, Mike Leigh produced his first war film, Peterloo, in which domestic unrest in 1819 led British troops to slaughter…
In the commentary track to Grown-Ups (1980), one of eight television films Mike Leigh made for the BBC, the director remarks that many of…
It might open on a funeral, but Secrets & Lies is quietly one of the warmest and most optimistic entries in Mike Leigh’s vaunted…
In 1987, Margaret Thatcher made her infamous assertion that “there is no such thing as society” in order to espouse her doctrine of methodological…
OK, so things don’t really vanish anymore: even the most limited film release will (most likely, eventually) find its way onto some streaming service or into…
Over his 30-plus year career, Mike Leigh has incisively observed human interactions and dissected the various factors (upbringing, education, religion, etc.) that define those relations.…