Film Review | Another Year (2010)

My experience of Mike Leigh prior to Another Year is decidedly (and, perhaps, shamefully) scarce - I've seen Abigail's Party, albeit about ten years ago, and that's about it. Leigh is, seemingly in equal measure, considered a pillar of British cinema and a heinous purveyor of anti-feminist trash depending on who you're speaking to. Either way, he has established himself as a immovable fixture of modern film-making.

Leigh's latest follows Tom Hepple (Jim Broadbent) and his wife Gerri (Ruth Sheen) throughout a year of their life, and their encounters with various friends and family members, most prominently Mary (Lesley Manville) who works with Gerri, as well as their son Joe (Oliver Maltman).

To relate the plot of Another Year is a tricky task, because in many ways nothing unusual really happens. Tom and Gerri's lives are pretty ordinary - he a geologist, she a counsellor, both nearing retirement - and the things that happen to them are just as ordinary. But it's the people who surround them and move in and out of their lives that makes Another Year such compelling viewing. Leigh's handling of what in the hands of many could seem positively humdrum is so skilled and authentic that you can't help but get drawn into the Hepples' world.

Thanks in no small part to Broadbent and Sheen's sublime performances opposite each other, by the end of the film Tom and Gerri feel like old friends. The couple are happy, as in genuinely happy. They love and trust each other, they support each other, and they can communicate to each other with a glance or a word (more than once Gerri reins in Tom's slightly more outspoken side with a carefully intoned utterance of his first name). Together, Broadbent and Sheen create one of the most authentic married couples seen on screen in recent memory.

Tom and Gerri are in many ways the calm eye of a constantly simmering storm around them, as the friends and family orbiting the couple generate much of the drama seen throughout the film. Many of the characters are seen for only one segment of the whole film, such as Tom's old university friend Ken (Peter Wight), a pitiable man refusing to retire and seemingly eating and drinking himself to death, and Ronnie, Tom's brother, played by David Bradley in a understated turn a world away from his role as Filch in the Harry Potter films. In fact, it is often the characters who are only seen briefly who create the greatest impact; Imelda Staunton as a patient of Gerri in the opening scenes encapsulates many of the film's recurring themes - growing old, loneliness and the concept of happiness - in a startlingly blunt performance. Martin Savage, too, as Ronnie's wayward son Carl, immediately generates tenseness, unease and even threat, telling a story that began years before the timeframe of the film in only a handful of scenes.

It is Manville, as the alternately pathetic and sympathetic Mary, whose performance is likely to stick in your mind long after the gentle acoustic guitar music plays over the film's closing credits. Beginning the film as almost a caricature of middle-aged spinsterhood - drinking too much and retelling the same tired jokes her friends obligingly smile through - Mary becomes Tom and Gerri's most constant opposite. As her actions become increasingly ill-advised and symptomatic of somebody not wholly in balance, Manville's performance firmly steers Mary away from what many may have seen as a one-dimensional misogynistic diatribe of a character from Leigh, creating a complex and human creature both seriously flawed and impossible to hate.

In fact, this may be Leigh's greatest achievement in Another Year. Tom and Gerri at the centre may be the only stable characters here; but despite this, Leigh allows us to like everyone we meet throughout. Nobody is inherently bad, just suffering from a lack of happiness in some way (even Carl, whose actions are almost entirely reprehensible, comes across as troubled rather than evil). Whilst we might not agree with everything the characters do, they are always relatable and, Leigh suggests, both capable and worthy of redemption.

There are occasions when Another Year slows down a little too much for its own good, and there are segments which possibly go on a little longer than they should. But the film is largely a great success for Leigh and his immensely strong cast. The imbibing of wine is a common activity throughout the film, and it may be that Another Year is a film that, like a fine wine, will get even better with age. Or maybe it is I, a mere twentysomething, that needs to continue aging before all aspects of the film truly hit home to me. Either way, Leigh has created a compelling character-driven drama of both quality and heart.

8/10

Film Review | Attack The Block (2011)

The comparisons between director Joe Cornish's Attack The Block and Wright and Pegg's modern classic Shaun Of The Dead are possibly an overly simplistic way of evaluating the more recent film. Both are the major feature directorial debut of a name primarily made in TV comedy, both blend action, sci fi, horror and comedy genres, and both transport these genres to unlikely locations from domestic Britain. Edgar Wright (SOTD co-writer and director) serves as executive producer of ATB. Oh, and both have Nick Frost in them. But, despite the two fims' similarities, it's not fair to simply rate Cornish's film on the "Shaun-ometer".

Attack The Block follows the exploits of a gang of teenagers living in a run-down council estate in London. After mugging nurse Sam (Jodie Whittaker), the group encounter an alien entity which gang leader Moses (John Boyega) quickly decides to kill after it wounds his face. However, life on the estate quickly becomes more and more dangerous as larger and fiercer aliens soon arrive.

In many ways, Cornish doesn't make life easy for himself in making ATB a success. Within the first five minutes of the film, the group that we follow are set up as violent criminals; they rob a young woman at knifepoint, and their first instinct upon discovering what they quickly realise is an alien lifeform is to kill it, seemingly to teach it a lesson and just because it will entertain them for a while. The gang also associate with local drug dealer Ron (Frost) and his gangster boss Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter). This does make the group difficult to root for once under siege from the alien threat, but also provides intrigue as to how, if at all, the gang members can redeem themselves before the credits roll.

It's to Cornish's credit that most (but not all) of the gang do manage that redemption. He shows us snapshots of their everyday lives - single parent families, living with grandparents, brief shouted conversations between rooms - as well as doing his utmost to make them more than just mindless hoodies hanging around on street corners. One of the most poignant moments of the script is delivered by Moses in a moment of respite against the alien threat, where he considers whether the government is sending in "monsters" to kill them. "We ain't killing each other fast enough" he ponders, "so they decided to speed up the process".

As the film progresses, it becomes clearer and clearer that Cornish is just as concerned with tackling why life on "the block" is the way it is as he is with extra-terrestrial action. That's not to say that the action takes second place to the social commentary. Cornish proves himself to be a dab hand at creating both fast paced fight sequences and tense set pieces that provide genuine scares. The alien creatures too, whilst clearly in part a product of a relatively small budget, provide ample threat and mystery throughout.

Moses slowly but surely takes his place as the film's primary protagonist, with Boyega's performance proving the most satisfying of the whole film. Having made Moses such an unlikable character at the start of the film, it is to his credit that Boyega bestows the role with depth and authenticity, so that when the story truly calls for it, we are fully behind him. Moses' home life is also one of the most hard-hitting, reminding us just why some teenagers fall into lives of delinquency. By the halfway point, Boyega owns each scene he's in, making his turn one to remember - his is a name that deserves to stick around for a good while in British cinema.

Whittaker's turn as recently qualified nurse Sam is also commendable, although the way her relationship with the gang who attacked her at the start of the night unfolds sometimes feels a bit too unlikely. I was also impressed with Hunter, who brought genuine menace and arrogance to local gangster Hi-Hatz.

Unfortunately (perhaps inevitably) not all the characters come off so well. Nick Frost as Ron the drug dealer and his upper-middle-class-trying-desperately-to-fit-in-with-gang-culture client Brewis (Luke Treadaway) provide some laughs, but never become more than one-dimensional caricatures. Within the teenage gang itself, not all members become sympathetic enough; Pest (Alex Esmail), for example, never shows much regret for his criminal indiscretions or understanding for his victims' feelings, essentially coming across as selfish and making it very hard to feel any connection to him at any point.

Attack The Block is ultimately a successful and enjoyable film that should please fans of horror and sci-fi, as well as anyone looking for decent homegrown British cinema. It's not without its faults, and doesn't succeed in everything it attempts, but Cornish's ambition and genuine talent as a writer and director deserves high praise - it's easy to forget when watching that this is his feature debut. Is it the next Shaun Of The Dead? No. But it doesn't need to be, nor does it try to be. What it definitely is, however, is a very promising start for a host of fresh British cinematic talent.

7/10