Rating: 
Summary: prozac nation, if they could find some!
Review: Just like all of Leigh's films, you commit to them and want to own them. This one however, has no real comic relief and frankly I couldn't shake the mild depression I developed while watching. Be careful, this a great movie but a real downer.
Rating:
Summary: prozac nation, if they could find some!
Review: Just like all of Leigh's films, you commit to them and want to own them. This one however, has no real comic relief and frankly I couldn't shake the mild depression I developed while watching. Be careful, this a great movie but a real downer.
Rating:
Summary: Camus, Kafka, and Mitch Leigh
Review: Mitch Leigh is a filmmaker to watch. He can explode a screen like Baz Luhrman with color and music as in TOPSY TURVY, explore delicate regions of human behavior as in SECRETS AND LIES and can still retain the ability to seek out the slender thread of simply living day to day as is ALL OR NOTHING. For a two hour plus film, Leigh is able to hold our attention like a biologist with a microscope while he slowly follows the impossibly boring vacuum of life that his characters live in this wan, bleak look at life in the working class Brits. Everyone seems alienated from relating to people except on the most raw basis of despair and struggle. The family of focus is four sad creatures with utterly no future until a sudden disruption in their meaningless lives turns on the light of recognition that hppiness occurs only if you find/make it yourself. Leigh has a cast of favorites he continues to use because they are such very fine actors. Timothy Spall finds all the accepted despair and acceptance of a world gone sour in the character of a cab driver who lacks the esteem to support himself in the face of clients who can't pay and a family who can't function beyond minimal requirements of being alive. Lesley Manville as his beleagured wife has internalized any hope that the world in which she is drowning can be any better. Their obese kids are incredibly well defined by James Corden and Alison Garland, and their co-tennants/mates in one of the most depressing housing projects every photographed are cast to a fare-thee-well as families who hold onto life by their own fingernails. There is a degree of psychological salvation offered at the end of the story which, given the arid desert of lives the characters inhabit, springs like a brief mirage of a transitory oasis. This is not a light movie and it does require a lot from an audience to persevere. But then Mitch Leigh is an honest observor and whether we like the slice of life he exposes or not, he does make us look inward to re-evaluate our own priorities. And that is certainly one criterion for films that remain meaningful past the initial viewing.
Rating: 
Summary: Mike Leigh
Review: Sharply acted and finely tunes, "All or Nothing" is another of British director Mike Leigh's look at the lives of the British working class. Plotting here more or less takes a bit of a back seat to character development and a s bleak as some of the goings on can be it is breathtaking and unforgettable when redemption finally kicks in. The film is not always an easy one to watch, and if you are new to Leigh you might want to start with "Secrets and Lies," "Career Girls," or, if you can find a copy, "High Hopes." If, however, you are already a Leigh fan, this one is for you.
Rating:
Summary: Slice of Working-Class Life
Review: This is a movie about working class Brits who speak such cockney I had to view with subtitles in order not to miss the mumbling dialogue. It was worth the time, because it had a very unusual feel. It was very slice of life, as I am told most of Leigh's films are. A London cab driver and his supermarket clerk wife raise two fat kids. The daughter works in an old folks home, the son refuses to do anything but watch TV and eat. The parents are numb. The cabbie is depressed and hardly says anything as the son sasses the mother. Other characters include a girl that is pregnant by a violent boyfriend, her mother who had a similar experience, the neighborhood slut that goes after the violent boyfriend next, and her alcoholic parents. Nobody knows who they are or what they want. Finally, the young boy winds up in the hospital with a heart attack and that sort-of brings the family together. You could call most of the film downbeat. After much worry and tragedy, the film ends on a higher note than it starts, but you don't really feel that their lives have improved. Even though there is a lot of negative emotion, the movie is still compelling like a train wreck. On the strength of this, I would watch any Mike Leigh movie that comes out on DVD.
Rating: 
Summary: to viewer...
Review: Viewer-are you seriously trying to put me down based on the language that I use? My opinion is my voice, as your opinion is yours. I don't think we have to lower ourselves to insults here.
Please be more respectful of people next time you write a review, after all--wouldn't you like to have an accurate range for judgement of whether or not something is worth the effort?
It would seem to me that your disposition MAKES THIS MOVIE PERFECT FOR YOU. ENJOY.
Rating:
Summary: ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod this is just such CRAP!!!!
Review: What the hell?
My new movie is called "Meet The Miserables". What it is is Winter Of Our Discontent with a tacked on ending. It's all about what all these ugly english twits do to screw with their lives--very DRAMATICALLY! (weepy weepy weepy!) Guys-your gals'll love you for watching this movie with em, but by the end, you won't want them to. You won't want to be anywhere near them...
Rating:
Summary: Another gem from Mike Leigh
Review: When you see an Amazon customer review that uses the word (and I used the term loosely) "ohmigod " in it's heading you automatically know that the review is better suited for tripe like "Bad Boys II," "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle," or any number of Adam Sandler or David Spade movies. What a pity for them that Arnold Schwazenegger has quit movies for the foreseeable future. On the plus side, they can take comfort. "Weekend at Bernie's," both I and II are now available on DVD. Indeed, if you are looking for nonstop action, constant special effects and shots that last no more than a few seconds be assured, Mike Leigh is not for you. However, if you are one of the discriminating movie goers who crave serious character development, thoughtful plot development, and absolute top notch acting you can ignore the musings of such reviewers. "All or Nothing" is certainly Mike Leigh's bleakest outing since "Naked" nearly a decade ago, and it isn't an easy watch for everyone. But the characters are on target, the situations are real and, this being a Leigh film after all, the acting is noting less than extraordinary with Timothy Spall, Leslie Manville, and Ruth Sheen (veterans of Leigh movies all) each in top form.
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