Although clearly a man of the left, Leigh (like Dickens) is less interested in society than human nature. Some of his ...

In Hard Truths Mike Leigh, one of Britain’s greatest living ... Michele Austin is a welcome contrast as Chantelle, Pansy’s sister, a happy-go-lucky outlier. Like contemporary Ken Loach, ...

Since English filmmaker Leigh wrote and directed 2008’s wonderful Happy-Go-Lucky, which starred Sally Hawkins as the most positive woman in London, I should’ve known a movie about the most ...

That’s what Mike Leigh, the 82-year-old director of ... When we got to that stage with Happy-Go-Lucky, I said, “You know, it’s somehow primary colors.” He said, “Okay, I’ll think ...

She’s the focus of Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths – a vessel of formless rage ... Fletcher in Naked (1993), or the boundless cheer of Sally Hawkins’s Poppy in Happy-Go-Lucky (2008). And when we talk about ...

“Filming with [Mike Leigh], you only know what your characters ... “Quite a lot of people have said that Hard Truths is the flip-side of Happy-Go-Lucky and Pansy is the reverse of Poppy ...

Mike Leigh famously says his method of filmmaking is to “devise and direct,” meaning, his actors devise their characters ...

SATURDAY NIGHT (15) 109 mins ★★★★☆ ONCE you’ve seen the first ever Saturday Night Live sketch you’ll wonder how the show ...

Re-entering Mike Leigh’s stomping ground in Hard Truths ... As a character piece, the film is effectively a counterpoint to Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), which thrived on the sunny-side ...