Another Year 2010

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: Everything is fully realized and superbly crafted; the sense of intimacy Leigh creates as writer and director is never broken, for better and for worse. Read more

Glenn Kenny, MSN Movies: The acting is ... uniformly terrific, and Manville as Mary is particularly outstanding. It's virtuoso work in every sense. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: To quote Paul McCartney, another great British artist who is almost exactly Mr. Leigh's age: Where do they all come from? Where do they all belong? Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: These characters are more than what we see on the surface, and it's thanks to Leigh's rigorous yet generous eye that we never just gawk at the drama. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Another year, another Mike Leigh gem... Read more

Tasha Robinson, AV Club: The performances are winning, the story is surprising without relying on unlikely twists, and the relationships are the richest and most nuanced since Leigh's Secrets & Lies. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: Mike Leigh creates complete little universes in his films, lived-in worlds populated by naturalistic characters who behave not like people in movies behave, but the way people in real life behave. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: Leigh has found yet another way to express certain incompatibilities of class by framing them as emotional conflicts. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Another Year continues in the vein of Leigh's last feature, Happy-Go-Lucky, considering characters who've made peace with their lives and others who are still at war (and losing). Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Leigh does not set these people apart from us. They are us. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Another marvel of perfectly drawn, fully realized characters created from the ground up and brought to aching and glorious life. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: What a challenge it must be to mine our ordinary lives in ways that reveal and revel in the quietly meaningful. It is a challenge British writer-director Mike Leigh meets in Another Year. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Desperation and fulfillment, anxiety and warmth, pain and contentment -- all come together in the darkly splendid Another Year. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: The film has precious little in the way of didactic working-class nobility or cheap gags aimed at the peanut gallery. What it does have is an overwhelming bittersweet melancholy... Read more

Laremy Legel, Film.com: Makes you appreciate that there are still a few people out there for whom film is still a worthy artistic expression. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: It may sound commonplace, but in the hands of master filmmaker Mike Leigh, the everyday becomes extraordinary. Read more

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: [Leigh] may well have made his happiest - and best - movie. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: See it at your own risk -- but don't miss it. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: Perhaps no one but Leigh could make such a character so sympathetic; perhaps no one but Leigh would then weave an entire movie around someone so tiresome. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: The perfect haven from the cheap ironies and cruel indifference we all have to field both in life and, far too often, at the movies. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: It illuminates profoundly in matters of class, age, family, friendship, economics and even nationality. Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: It all comes down to affirmation vs. denial. Leigh chooses affirmation. And the result is life-affirming. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Not quite every year brings a new Mike Leigh film, but the years that do are blessed with his sympathy, penetrating observation, and instinct for human comedy. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Mike Leigh's films are one of a kind. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: "Another Year" is a gutsy movie, in that Leigh says something about life that nobody really wants to believe, and he says it forcefully: There is such a thing as "too late." Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: It's a core sample of human experience in an average, regular year from spring through winter, with life and death and hope and disappointment layered atop one another. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: This humane movie is an ode to joy, albeit of the mature sort. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Extracting big drama out of small events is Mike Leigh's forte, and with his latest little masterpiece, Another Year, the English director pushes himself to the extreme. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Another Year, a terrific new Mike Leigh movie, assesses that moment in every thinking person's life when the question "what now?" exceeds physical survival. Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Initially, it doesn't seem as if much is going on, but the casual details, nuanced performances and clever dialogue are hard to shake from memory. Read more

Leslie Felperin, Variety: Mike Leigh's latest... is almost about nothing at all, and yet it gently juxtaposes the big issues of everyday life: loneliness and love, selfishness and kindness, birth and death. Read more

Karina Longworth, Village Voice: I haven't seen a film this year that so openly invited me to revile each and every one of its characters -- and I reviewed The Human Centipede. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: Only Leigh could find so much pathos in ripe, rounded happiness... Read more