Reviewed Five Ways: All or Nothing

Last weekend I saw Mike Leigh’s new film, All or Nothing and that Bond-for-a-Pepsi-Generation stunt-fest XXX. The latter is not worth discussing (with the exception, perhaps, of the hotness that is Asia Argento), but here is the former reviewed five ways:

1. Mike Leigh’s films are hard to watch. They’re populated by desperate, often unappealing characters stuck in tragically dull lives. When good things happen to them, we are relieved. When bad things happen to them, we are also relieved.
2. Timothy Spall and Mike Leigh go together like Toshiro Mifune and Akira Kurosawa. Spall’s preternatural patheticness makes him the perfect fit for the sad, tiny worlds that Leigh constructs.
3. Mike Leigh and his actors spend months shaping characters before he begins filming. So, it’s not surprising that his films seem so natural. They’re like watching a documentary, but entirely forgetting about the camera.
4. There’s a minor lesson for filmmakers in Mike Leigh’s All of Nothing. Subplots–don’t discard them like yesterday’s undies. One of my few complaints about the film is that we become interested in secondary characters just as they are dispensed with. Sure, the main plot needs all the inertia it can get, but spare a little screen time to address (if not wrap up) the secondary plotlines.
5. I remember watching Leigh’s Secrets and Lies and just suffering through that lengthy, climactic emotional scene. I remembered that about two-thirds of the way through All or Nothing, and wasn’t surprised to be shifting uneasily in my seat when a similar scene occurred.