I’m linking to this Top 20 Films of 2010 list on In Review Online for several reasons. Because I really like the site. Because I really like the list. Because I’m one of the writers they polled to create the list. Because their number one is perfect. And because they were kind enough to invite me to write up Mike Leigh’s “Another Year” (their #19) for the feature. I already had my say on the film way back at Cannes, but since US audience are only now seeing the film for themselves, it seemed a good time to add a few words:
Stately and considered where its predecessor felt spiky and garrulous, “Another Year” was labelled by many a critic upon its Cannes debut as Mike Leigh’s antidote of sorts to his 2008 character study “Happy-Go-Lucky.” That’s a misjudgment made purely on the basis of tone, given that the two films, perhaps more than any other pair in the Leigh oeuvre, are clear sister works—both comedies of manners examining the effort that goes into the construction of happiness, divided only by which side of the Thames their particular gaggle of chirpy middle-class Londoners reside.
More, plus the rest of the list, here.
[Photo: Sony Pictures Classics]