Another Year

This weekend we watched Mike Leigh's most recent film, Another Year. While the film can be a bit difficult to watch as much of the screen time is occupied by a couple of alcoholics who are friends and colleagues of the protagonists, one of whom is pretty much an open and bottomless wound, it is, in the end, a Mike Leigh film, which is a good thing.  Leigh has a vision which is infinitely more human than most of the rest of the directors over the course of cinema history, and all he cares about is people.

And it is, moreover, a film warmed by the presence of Jim Broadbent, who is really one of the great actors of our time.  It wasn't until I looked at his IMDB page that I realized just how omnipresent the guy is, he's really the Morgan Freeman of Great Britain, the moral center so many directors call on.  And apparently he's done 7 films with Mike Leigh, and I haven't seen all of them.  I'll be fixing that.