ShangLuda
Admirable film.
PiraBit
if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.
BelSports
This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
Raj Doctor
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
The_late_Buddy_Ryan
"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.
sergepesic
There are very few filmmakers like Mike Leigh these days. It is all about pretty people pretending to be interesting, and failing at it miserably. Mike Leigh hires magnificent character actors that Great Britain seems to have an abundance of, and simply tells a story. Ordinary people with ordinary lives, loving and hating, laughing and aching,living and dying." Another Year" is just a big slice of life. Four seasons of lives of several people. All very simple, at first sight, but rich and fragrant and truly complex, as meaningful things usually are. And actors...Absolutely perfect every single one of them. But Lesley Manville stands out in a role of needy drunken friend Mary. If there was ever an actor deserving an Oscar-this women is. Precise, irritating and heartbreaking. A masterpiece...
Mary Jo Rhodes
Many, many years ago, as a young single woman, I saw a counselor, who helped me, and who I thought of as a friend. When I married my husband, I invited her to the wedding. She declined, telling me our relationship was professional only. So when, at the end of this movie, the therapist Gerri tells the disturbed Mary, who thought she was a friend of 20 years duration, to see a therapist, I had a different reaction to this movie than many others.This movie, about the happy middle-class couple Tom and Gerri, is more a cautionary tale that "friends" are not the same as family, and that therapy and friendship evidently cannot mix. The therapist Gerri's "friend" Mary is a middle-aged, lonely, depressed co-worker who has been a frequent visitor to Tom and Gerri's home for 20 years. There are jokes that she was an "auntie" to the 30-year-old son, who, in an excruciating episode, she drunkenly hits on. When she encounters the truth that the son has a girlfriend, Mary is "inappropriate" and rude. Even worse, she is revealed as of a lower professional caste from the girlfriend, who rather irritatingly fits in beautifully with the middle-class professions of Tom and Gerri.So Mary is a family "auntie" no longer and we learn in the final segment that she has not seen Gerri for some time outside work since the episode with the girlfriend. When she shows up at the house uninvited, Gerri and Tom are surprised to see her. We see them staring at her through the sitting room door, and I thought the expressions on their faces was so cold and even chilling. These were not the faces of friends who would normally be concerned for a friend who has come to them because of some trouble. This is when I first realized that the friendship of Tom and Gerri for Mary was only an illusion; that to them, Mary was just a person who had drifted into their orbit but who was welcome only when invited. Gerri tells Mary that Mary has "let her down" and that Gerri has had to put family first. She tells Mary that Mary should seek professional therapy for her problems. This speech is delivered in a professional voice. Gerri, who is supposed to be warm and nurturing, is cold to Mary, as cold as she was in her counseling session with Imelda Staunton which starts the movie.At the same time, Tom's brother, Ronnie, who has been widowed, has not been seen at all during the prior year and has not even been mentioned. But he was invited to stay; he is family. In the end, at the final dinner, the camera works its way slowly around the table. The talk among Tom, Gerry, their son Joe and his girlfriend Katie is jovial and cheerful, and, I would think, unbearable for someone who has just days earlier lost his spouse. The camera hits Ronnie, who is still nearly catatonic. And finally the camera focuses on Mary. You see on her face that she has realized that she is not part of the family, she is not the "auntie" nor even really welcome.This movie, I think, is remarkable for eliciting so many responses.
