movie review another year

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, tea and empathy.

Now streaming on:

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. By that I don't mean “comedy” as in easy laughter. I mean that comedy that wells up from movies and allows us to recognize ourselves in characters both lovable and wretched. Leigh's “Another Year” is like a long, purifying soak in empathy.

He begins with Tom and Gerri, a North London couple who have been happily married for years. Immediately you can see the risks Leigh is prepared to take. A happy marriage? Between two wise and lovable people? Who are intelligent and alert to the real world? Not caricatures, not comforting, not cliches, but simply two people I wish I knew? I'd look forward to them every time I visited their house and be slow to leave.

That's also how Mary (Les­ley Manville) feels. She has worked for years in the office of Gerri, a behavioral counselor. Many people have a friend like Mary: unmarried, not getting any younger, drinking too much, looking for the perfect spouse as a way of holding any real-world relationship at arm's length. Mary drops in on Tom ( Jim Broadbent ) and Gerri ( Ruth Sheen ) a lot. Every time she visits, we're reminded of Robert Frost : Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Mary needs healing. She badly requires sobriety. She wears an invisible sign around her neck: Needy.Tom and Gerri don't lecture. Sometimes they drop gentle hints. “It's a shame,” Tom observes to Gerri after Mary has ended yet another sad visit, and that's all he has to say. No criticisms, no anger, just a factual statement. In their own lives, they're in complete accord. They garden, they work, they feed their friends dinners, they hope their son will find the right girl, they are in love. Remarkably, in this age, their 30-year-old son, Joe ( Oliver Maltman ), loves them and is happy.

Leigh has a gift for scenes involving embarrassment in social situations. We squirm, not because the characters are uneasy, but because we would be, too. Tom and Gerri and their son attend the funeral of Tom's sister-in-law. We have never been to a funeral quite like it, yet it is like many funerals. The uninvolved clergyman, the efficient undertakers, the remote father, the angry son, the handful of neighbors who didn't know the deceased all that well, the family skeletons. Leigh sees the ways people display their anguish without meaning to.

The movie doesn't require this scene. It has no obligatory scenes. Like life, it happens once you plug in the people. Mary lives in a very small world, where it's unlikely she'll find happiness. She buys a car to give her more “freedom,” but no one who drinks like she does will find freedom that way. She fantastically begins to think of their son, Joe, as a possible partner. Joe brings home Katie ( Karina Fernandez ) to meet his parents, and they love her. When Mary meets Katie and understands who she is, it is devastating.

All the actors are pitch-perfect. Lesley Manville is virtuoso in making Mary pathetic and yet never a caricature. Listen to the way her cadences vary with drink. Notice the way Tom and Gerri's responses to her modulate during the course of a visit. Even, for that matter, observe Ken ( Peter Wight ), Tom's friend. Ken is no prize, but might be happy to date Mary and maybe marry her, and after all, could Mary do any better? She persists in the delusion that she could.

Now we come to the matter of the chins, and here we touch on something central to the appeal of Mike Leigh. He is not afraid to star imperfect people. Jim Broadbent has a little too much chin, and Ruth Sheen not quite enough. In most movies, everybody has about the right chinnage. At the risk of offending many of his many actor-collaborators, I'll say that not once in 40 years has Mike Leigh ever starred a conventionally handsome or beautiful movie star type. Instead, he has enriched the British cinema by his use of unconventional types, also including Imelda Staunton , Sally Hawkins , Timothy Spall , Marianne Jean-Baptiste , Brenda Blethyn and David Thewlis .

“Another Year” gave me characters I could love, feel uneasy about, identify with or be appalled by. I see a lot of movies where the characters have no personalities, only attributes. I like James Bond, but I ask you: In what way is he human? Every single character in “Another Year” is human, and some of them all too human. I saw it and was enriched.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Now playing

Apples Never Fall

Cristina escobar.

Dune: Part Two

Brian tallerico.

Kaiya Shunyata

Peter Sobczynski

Ordinary Angels

On the Adamant

Film credits.

Another Year (2011)

Rated PG-13 for some language.

129 minutes

Jim Broadbent as Tom

Ruth Sheen as Gerri

Lesley Manville as Mary

Oliver Maltman as Joe

Peter Wight as Ken

Karina Fernandez as Katie

Cinematographer

• Jon Gregory
• Gary Yershon

Latest blog posts

11:11 - Eleven Reviews by Roger Ebert from 2011 in Remembrance of His Transition 11 Years Ago

A Man Goes to the Movies: An Appreciation of Roger Ebert's Top 10 Lists

Netflix Reimagines Patricia Highsmith's Timeless Character in the Chilling Ripley

The People’s Joker and Six Other Films That Were Stuck in Legal Limbo

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

'Another Year': A Modern Family, Mike Leigh-Style

Ella Taylor

Gerri and Tom, played by Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent, have a wonderfully happy middle-class life and marriage but spend their time entertaining miserable friends -- and worrying about a grown son's failure to settle down. Simon Mein/Sony Pictures Classics hide caption

Another Year

• Director: Mike Leigh
• Genre: Drama
• Running Time: 129 minutes

Rated PG-13 for some language

With: David Bradley, Jim Broadbent, Karina Fernandez, Oliver Maltman, Lesley Manville

Watch Clips

'Had A Wild Night'

Credit: Sony Classics

'It's Obviously Serious'

'How Big Is The Engine?'

Mike Leigh, chronicler in chief of class and family in Britain, has boomer aging on his mind, and on the face of things he's in mellow form -- for him. If his last film, Happy-Go-Lucky , was about how hard it is to remain chipper against stacked odds, his latest centers on a couple who make domestic bliss look effortless.

In Another Year, now showing on many a Top 10 list, Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen play a long-married middle-class London couple heading into early old age. Tom and Gerri (ha!) hold jobs typical of old hippie lefties -- he's a geologist who shores up London's ancient sewage system; she's a counselor at a National Health Service clinic. They like to grow things, then cook and serve them to friends with a nice glass of wine, and the film ambles pleasurably through four seasons of their joint life, marking its contented rhythms and washing their unpretentious suburban home in a welcoming glow.

The only cloud on Tom and Gerri's horizon is that their son, Joe (played by comedian Oliver Maltman), is pushing 30 and lacks a girlfriend. Then again, Joe's single state is a mere blip compared with the misery of a crew of unhappy contemporaries (most of them played by Leigh regulars) who orbit the couple, dropping in for comfort and solace, or to make trouble. A fat childhood friend, Ken (Peter Wight), drowns his loneliness in too much food and drink, while Tom's near-comatose older brother, Ronnie --  played by David Bradley, better known as Argus Filch in the Harry Potter franchise -- has retreated from a wife and children whose unhappiness he probably caused.

But the prize loser of this sorry crew is Gerri's colleague Mary, a clingy, compulsive chatterer who seems to have rushed down every available wrong path by turns, and who never misses an opportunity to hijack a party with boozy, self-pitying monologues about her many burdens and sorrows. We've all met a variant of Mary, and though she's played by Lesley Manville with a show-stopping fervor that many are betting will earn her an Academy Award nomination, Mary made me cringe for all the wrong reasons. And that's to say nothing of Gerri, whose queenly serenity and frequent flights of therapy-speak -- "I'm not angry with you, Mary, but I feel you've let me down" -- would have been savagely lampooned in an early Mike Leigh work like the landmark Abigail ' s Party . Now they're clearly meant to lasso our approval.

Lesley Manville plays the depressed Mary, whose attempts to be cheerful produce much awkward babbling. Simon Mein/Sony Pictures Classics hide caption

Lesley Manville plays the depressed Mary, whose attempts to be cheerful produce much awkward babbling.

For all its softly meditative tone, accessorized with a gentle acoustic score, Another Year is a stacked deck of a movie that draws a harshly unforgiving, sometimes smug line between boomers who've made good and those who've fallen by the wayside. Leigh aims for compassion, but he's always been a bit of a finger-wagger who shakes out his characters into doers he admires and those who just aren't trying hard enough -- Gerri vs. Mary in Another Year , or, in Happy-Go-Lucky , Sally Hawkins' chipper schoolteacher vs. Eddie Marsan's enraged driving instructor. It's a taxonomy that leaves little breathing space for troubled childhoods, honest mistakes or sheer rotten luck.

For a film about a generation that strove to transcend the traditional family, Another Year is also depressingly reactionary. Despite the fond reminiscences of their adventurous youth that punctuate the gatherings around Tom and Gerri's bountiful table, it seems that the choices now boil down to marriage and kids or a lonely old age without benefit of community. Given the wide array of living arrangements that currently shape our world and our movies, that seems anachronistically out of step with the times. Maybe that's Leigh's point.

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Another Year

A look at four seasons in the lives of a happily married couple and their relationships with their family and friends. A look at four seasons in the lives of a happily married couple and their relationships with their family and friends. A look at four seasons in the lives of a happily married couple and their relationships with their family and friends.

• Jim Broadbent
• Lesley Manville
• 168 User reviews
• 255 Critic reviews
• 81 Metascore
• 23 wins & 57 nominations total

• Tom's Colleague

• Mr. Gupta's Friend
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia To simulate the four seasons of a year, cinematographer Dick Pope used four different film stocks, and much attention was paid to details in the props so that the passage of time would appear believable.
• Goofs One of Mary's outlays on her troublesome car was for a new carburettor, but the vehicle in the film had fuel injection.

Mary : You can't go around with a big sign saying don't fall in love with me I'm married.

Tom : Well, most people wear a ring.

Mary : Well he didn't.

• Connections Featured in At the Movies: Cannes Film Festival 2010 (2010)
• Soundtracks All Shook Up Written by Elvis Presley & Otis Blackwell Used by kind permission of Carlin Music Corp & EMI Publishing

User reviews 168

• dharmendrasingh
• Nov 18, 2010
• How long is Another Year? Powered by Alexa
• February 4, 2011 (United States)
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Official site
• Untitled Mike Leigh Project
• Derby, Derbyshire, England, UK
• Thin Man Films
• Focus Features
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $8,000,000 (estimated)
• Jan 2, 2011
• $19,722,766

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 9 minutes
• Dolby Digital

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• See more gaps
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed

Advertisement

Supported by

Movie Review | 'Another Year'

Injustice, British and Otherwise

• Share full article

By A.O. Scott

• Dec. 28, 2010

Class consciousness has frequently played a role in Mike Leigh’s films, and not only because, as a storyteller whose native terrain is modern Britain, he can hardly hope to avoid it. And sure enough, the observant viewer of his splendidly rich and wise new feature, “Another Year,” will notice the shadows that an always-evolving system of social hierarchy casts over the passage of the seasons. (“We’re all graduates,” one character reminds another, with the prickly pride of belonging to the first generation to receive a university education in an era of expanded opportunity.)

But in this movie, as in its immediate precursor, “Happy-Go-Lucky,” Mr. Leigh is also after a more elusive and troubling form of injustice, one that is almost cosmically mysterious even as it penetrates, and sometimes threatens to poison, the relationships that make up everyday life.

Like “Happy-Go-Lucky,” though on a somewhat larger scale, “Another Year” is about the unequal distribution of happiness. Why do some people — like Tom and Gerri, the post-’60s 60-something couple at the center of this episodic story — seem to have an inexhaustible, even superabundant supply, while others seem unable to acquire even the smallest portion? Can happiness be borrowed, stolen or inherited? Is it earned by meritorious works or granted by the obscure operations of grace?

These may sound like silly, abstract questions, but they could hardly be more serious or more relevant. Here in America, after all, the pursuit of happiness has the status of a foundational right, coincident, but not quite identical, with material prosperity. In Britain, where dourness can seem to be as much a part of the stereotypical national character as bad food, foul weather and precise distinctions of status, the assertion of a right to be happy can seem almost revolutionary.

Certainly Poppy, the antically joyful heroine of “Happy-Go-Lucky,” was a radically free spirit, almost violent in her expressions of good feeling. Tom and Gerri, played with uncanny subtlety and tremendous soul by Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen, are much more subdued but no less radiant, and just as extreme in their delight. Their long, comfortable marriage seems to have unfolded without serious friction or disappointment.

Tom is a geologist who lends his expertise to public works projects in London and abroad, and whose professional enthusiasm combines a craftsman’s pride in handiwork with a nerd’s glee at knowing stuff. Gerri is a therapist who counsels patients at a clinic, one of them a lower-middle-class housewife (played by Imelda Staunton, the star of Mr. Leigh’s “Vera Drake”), whose bottomless despair is the complete reverse of Gerri’s fulfillment.

The film’s more complicated and sustained contrast is between Gerri and Mary, her co-worker and longtime friend, played by Lesley Manville with the kind of wrenching, borderline-unbearable lack of self-protective actorly vanity that reminds you that, however gentle it may seem, this is still a Mike Leigh film. In other words, the spectacle of humiliation that takes place when uncomfortable self-consciousness turns into its opposite is never far away. Such mortal embarrassment stalks Mary, who is needy, insecure and prone to drink too much, and also Ken (Peter Wight), an old chum of Tom’s who packs the same traits into a large, shambling masculine frame.

In their company, Tom and Gerri are patient, kind and nonjudgmental, offering advice and encouragement and overlooking behavior that might make less generous spirits cringe. But their goodness is so thorough that it may inspire some unkind thoughts. Do they associate with Mary and Ken out of genuine affection, or because spending time with such miserable types makes them feel (and look) better? Is their tolerant solicitude a form of complacency? And is “Another Year” therefore not a loving portrait of the modern liberal temperament but rather a quietly seething indictment of its nose-in-the-air narcissism?

Either possibility is far too simplistic, partly because Mr. Leigh pays such close attention to the rhythms of Tom and Gerri’s life and to details of their background, Tom’s in particular. In a late section (the story is told in chapters corresponding to the seasons) a death in the family calls him from London back to his hometown, Hull, a sojourn that serves as a reminder of how, in today’s Britain, class divisions often persist in the form of regional disparities.

The light in the North is grim and hard, compared with London’s sunshine, and the existences of Tom’s brother, Ronnie (David Bradley), and his family are bleak and circumscribed. You understand what Tom managed to escape. You also understand that his smiling embrace of every detail of his life with Gerri — the Volvo, the garden, the holidays in Ireland — is a sign not of smugness, but rather of gratitude.

So Tom and Gerri are happy, and “Another Year” is genuinely happy for them and also, eventually, for their son, Joe (Oliver Maltman), a decent chap who genially endures Mary’s increasingly feverish and jealous attention. But sorrow and its implications cannot be banished entirely from this chronicle of their contentment. Ronnie, glum and silent as a wood carving, represents an older Britain of want and resignation, in which people were expected to know their place.

That world has been displaced by a meritocracy, which brings its own discontents. Its citizens are free to rise and to find their own way, but this freedom makes them ultimately responsible for their own satisfaction, branding a sad sack like Ken and a wounded bird like Mary with the stigma of failure. They — Mary, in particular, as the film’s devastating final shot makes plain — are have-nots bereft of the comforts of solidarity and beyond the reach of charity. 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?

“Another Year” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has some profanity, mostly of the respectable middle-class variety.

Ricardo Trêpa in “The Strange Case of Angelica,” a new Portuguese feature by Manoel de Oliveira, who turned 102 this month.

Another Year Opens on Wednesday in Manhattan. Written and directed by Mike Leigh; director of photography, Dick Pope; edited by Jon Gregory; music by Gary Yershon; production design by Simon Beresford; costumes by Jacqueline Durran; produced by Georgina Lowe; released by Sony Pictures Classics. Running time: 2 hours 9 minutes. WITH: Jim Broadbent (Tom), Lesley Manville (Mary), Ruth Sheen (Gerri), Peter Wight (Ken), Oliver Maltman (Joe), David Bradley (Ronnie), Karina Fernandez (Katie), Martin Savage (Carl), Michele Austin (Tanya), Phil Davis (Jack), Stuart McQuarrie (Tom’s colleague) and Imelda Staunton (Janet).

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig have wound in and out of each other’s lives and careers for decades. Now they are both headlining an Apple TV+ comedy of wealth and status .

Nicholas Galitzine, known for playing princes and their modern equivalents, hopes his steamy new drama, “Mary & George,” will change how Hollywood sees him .

Ewan McGregor and Mary Elizabeth met while filming “Fargo” in 2017. Now married, they have reunited onscreen in “A Gentleman in Moscow.”

A reboot of “Gladiators,” the musclebound 1990s staple, has attracted millions of viewers in Britain. Is appointment television back ?

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings   on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime  and Hulu  to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter  to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

Breaking News

Movie review: ‘Another Year’

• Show more sharing options
• Copy Link URL Copied!

“Another Year” is about the turning wheel of life, an examination of the pleasures and jealousies, disappointments and insecurities, destroyed dreams and rekindled hopes that make up our daily existence. It may sound commonplace, but in the hands of master filmmaker Mike Leigh, the everyday becomes extraordinary.

The film is also further proof — if proof is necessary after six Oscar nominations for writing and directing, a Palme d’Or and a best director award from Cannes, and a Golden Lion from Venice — that Leigh’s explorations of human psychology are on a level of their own.

Using a particular method of working with actors that thoroughly involves them in creating characters from the ground up, Leigh goes deeper into individuals than one would have thought possible. The people he and his cast create in this joint venture combine depth and complexity with a kind of unstudied naturalism, so much the better to make audiences complicit in their lives.

The three actors who are the focus of “Another Year” — Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen and an indescribable Lesley Manville — are all veterans of multiple Leigh ventures, and it’s a special pleasure to see them finding their places in this new situation, to watch as Leigh slowly but with impeccable sureness adds character and incident to the mix.

If Leigh’s last film, “ Happy-Go-Lucky,” focused on youthful concerns, “Another Year” shows us life through the lens of people who are older but still trying to connect with one another, still trying to figure out the elusive answer to the human equation.

After a stunning opening vignette featuring Imelda Staunton, “Another Year” introduces its central figures of Tom (Broadbent) and Gerri (Sheen in an especially subtle performance). They are as sane and stable a longtime married couple as Leigh’s films have ever offered. He is a geologist, she a mental health counselor, and together they form an island of steadiness and dependability, underlined by their passion for gardening, that everyone they know clings to and admires.

No one depends more on these two than Mary (Manville), a coworker of Gerri’s who’s been a family friend for close to 20 years. Mary is a little frantic from the first moments we see her, a flighty, live-wire individual who seems to have too much energy for her own good. We notice this but, like Tom and Gerri, we let it go because, well, that’s just the way she is.

“Another Year” is broken up into four sections, each named after a season. Though Tom, Gerri and Mary appear in all of them, each season has its own particular narrative line, kind of like a short story within a themed collection.

The film starts with spring, which provides an intense look at Mary when she comes to Tom and Gerri’s for dinner. Within the context of a single evening, Manville’s superlative acting unself-consciously peels Mary like an onion, revealing her as someone alternately in denial and despair about the unhappiness in her life, uncomfortable in her own skin but unwilling or unable to do anything about it but drink too much too often.

Summer brings a visit from Ken ( Peter Wight), an old childhood friend of Tom’s. Though the motto on Ken’s T-shirt (“less thinking, more drinking”) indicates a possibly dissonant lifestyle choice, the two remain close enough for a wonderful impromptu moment in which Tom jumps on his pal’s shoulders.

Against all reason (isn’t that always the way?), Ken finds himself attracted to Mary, with unsettling results. Even more against reason, autumn brings an intensification of what had seemed a harmless romantic crush on Mary’s part, with even more unsettling results.

The mood darkens in winter, when a funeral brings Tom and Gerri to Tom’s childhood home, where his brother Ronnie (a marvelous David Bradley in his first Leigh film) is coping with his wife’s death and the emotional assaults of his disaffected son, Carl (Martin Savage).

It’s inevitable that some of these individuals have more screen time than others, but Leigh’s methods ensure that everyone brings the same level of intensity and commitment to what he or she does. As “Another Year” and its memorable people prove one more time, there are no small parts in these films. When Leigh says, as he did in Cannes, that “I practice a craft that can’t be copied,” this is what he’s talking about.

‘Another Year’

MPAA rating: PG-13, for some language

Running time: 2 hours, 9 minutes

Playing: At Landmark, Los Angeles; Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Town Center 5, Encino; Westpark 8, Irvine

[email protected]

More to Read

Rebel Wilson’s memoir suffers delays amid Sacha Baron Cohen harassment allegations

April 4, 2024

Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny on the nightmarish ‘Civil War’: ‘No nation is immune’

Review: In ‘One Life,’ a Holocaust hero’s story gets the modest treatment he would have preferred

March 15, 2024

Only good movies

Get the Indie Focus newsletter, Mark Olsen's weekly guide to the world of cinema.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

Kenneth Turan is the former film critic for the Los Angeles Times.

More From the Los Angeles Times

‘Scoop’ depicts Prince Andrew’s infamous interview. These were the women behind it

April 5, 2024

Review: In ‘The Beast,’ two lovers can’t connect — and maybe AI is to blame

Julia Stiles privately welcomed third child while directing her first movie

Review: ‘Kim’s Video’ is a meandering shrine to a shuttered media palace with an afterlife

Why is Christian Science in our name?

Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that.

The Church publishes the Monitor because it sees good journalism as vital to progress in the world. Since 1908, we’ve aimed “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” as our founder, Mary Baker Eddy, put it.

Here, you’ll find award-winning journalism not driven by commercial influences – a news organization that takes seriously its mission to uplift the world by seeking solutions and finding reasons for credible hope.

Your subscription makes our work possible.

We want to bridge divides to reach everyone.

Another Year: movie review

Mike Leigh’s film ‘Another Year’ offers an intimate portrait of the sadness of the middle class.

• By Peter Rainer Film critic

December 29, 2010

On the surface, Mike Leigh makes movies about the humdrum lives of ordinary people, but there’s nothing humdrum about the psychological revelations he brings forth, and his people are far too acutely observed to seem ordinary.

His latest movie, “Another Year,” is a quintessential Mike Leigh performance. It deepens as it goes along until, in the end, in its final close-up, it overwhelms. Leigh’s movies have a way of sneaking up on you. The mundane morphs into moments of shattering emotional power. This is why Leigh is often described in Chekhovian terms. Like Chekhov, Leigh at his best has a resounding feeling for the sorrows and delusions of people who are trying to make it through life without being swallowed up by fate.

In its focus on the sadness of the middle class, “Another Year” may seem like generic Leigh, but there’s a twist here. At its center is, for a change, a happy couple: Tom ( Jim Broadbent ), a geological engineer nearing retirement – “I dig holes!” he explains – and Gerri ( Ruth Sheen ), a psychological counselor in a medical clinic. These two, with their frayed bohemianism, are entirely comfortable with themselves.

Related: Ten best movies of 2010

They spend quality time year-round puttering in their garden, and the film itself takes place over the course of a year, with sections keyed to the four seasons, beginning with spring. Throughout the cycle Tom and Gerri host a succession of friends and family in their comfortably ramshackle North London home. The human interactions require as much weeding and pruning and cultivating as the garden.

Tom and Gerri’s contentment is presented as a given. It is also what attracts the friends and malcontents who enjoy their hospitality. They want to be happy and, without quite realizing it, they look to Tom and Gerri for a key to unlock the dungeon door. (If Leigh had provided Tom and Gerri with a few deep rifts of their own, kept out of sight of their friends, the film would have been even more darkly comic than it is.)

The central guest, who appears in all four sections, is Mary ( Lesley Manville ), a longstanding friend of Gerri’s who works as a receptionist at the clinic. An attractive divorced woman closing in on 50, Mary acts and dresses several decades younger than her age.

Her giggly desperation is transparent. Tom, who is easygoing but not without his quick darts of temper, tolerates her. Gerri is more indulgent. At times she seems to relate to Mary more as a clinical therapist than as a friend, and this gives her a slightly forbidding, unsympathetic aspect. But Tom and Gerri are right to keep some slight distance between themselves and Mary, especially when, midway through the movie, she oversteps the line. In her own flighty way, Mary sucks up the air in the room. (She also sucks up the wine.) She’s as expansively deluded as Blanche DuBois in “ A Streetcar Named Desire .”

Her biggest delusion is that Tom and Gerri’s 30-year-old son, Joe ( Oliver Maltman ), whom she has known since boyhood, is interested in her. Unlike his parents, Joe sees what Mary is up to with him. Her wispy entreaties to meet him for a drink are met with broad, pasty smiles. In his own way, Joe, who is a community lawyer, is as therapeutically inclined as his mother. Despite everything, he has a fondness for Mary, and he indulges her without leading her on.

Manville’s performance at first seems too tricky and cluttered. Compared with the naturalness of the rest of the cast, she appears to bear down on us from behind footlights. But it makes sense that Mary carries on like a distressed diva. She dramatizes her life as a way of investing it with meaning, with complication. Without the tumult she would be ineffably lonely. She is anyway, especially when she is around other people. By the end, she has no more arrows in her perfumed quiver. Leigh gives us a long lingering shot of her, and she is, for the first time in the movie, very still.

Leigh works up his scripts from only the barest of outlines, and films only after months of rehearsal and improvisation, and this perhaps explains why the characters and situations seem so lived-in. People with only minimal amounts of screen time have a novelistic amplitude.

Tom’s childhood friend Ken ( Peter Wight ) is a perfect instance. He bustles his way into the North London home, and immediately we think we know who he is. Chunky and expansive, he wears a T-shirt that says “Less thinking, more drinking.” But he drinks to blot out the dead-endedness of his days, and his woe is so unsheathed that even Tom, who is pacific by nature, recognizes that something must be done. At one point Gerri looks over at Ken and mutters, “Life is not always kind,” and when she says this, it’s as if Leigh was laying a benediction on Ken and all others like him. There is an infinite kindness in how Leigh brings these people to the fore. He doesn’t humiliate them. He respects their pathos.

When Mary, for example, explains away her wayward life by saying, “I blame my big heart,” we can spot her delusion, and yet, she does have a big heart. She tells Gerri that she is “a very good listener,” and what she is really saying is: “Tell me the secret of your happiness.” Who cannot identify with that? Leigh does not set these people apart from us. They are us. Grade: A. (Rated PG-13 for some language.)

Help fund Monitor journalism for $11/ month

Already a subscriber? Login

Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in. We believe news can and should expand a sense of identity and possibility beyond narrow conventional expectations.

Our work isn't possible without your support.

Unlimited digital access $11/month.

Digital subscription includes:

• Unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
• CSMonitor.com archive.
• The Monitor Daily email.
• No advertising.
• Cancel anytime.

Related stories

Share this article.

Link copied.

Subscription expired

Your subscription to The Christian Science Monitor has expired. You can renew your subscription or continue to use the site without a subscription.

Return to the free version of the site

If you have questions about your account, please contact customer service or call us at 1-617-450-2300 .

This message will appear once per week unless you renew or log out.

Session expired

Your session to The Christian Science Monitor has expired. We logged you out.

No subscription

You don’t have a Christian Science Monitor subscription yet.

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

• For Parents
• For Educators
• Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

• Get the app
• Movie Reviews
• Best Movie Lists
• Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

• Best TV Lists
• Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
• Common Sense Selections for TV
• Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

• Book Reviews
• Best Book Lists
• Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

• Game Reviews
• Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

• Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

• Podcast Reviews
• Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

• App Reviews
• Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

• YouTube Channel Reviews
• YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

• Preschoolers (2-4)
• Little Kids (5-7)
• Big Kids (8-9)
• Pre-Teens (10-12)
• Teens (13+)
• Screen Time
• Social Media
• Online Safety
• Identity and Community

Explaining the News to Our Kids

• Family Tech Planners
• Digital Skills
• All Articles
• Latino Culture
• Black Voices
• Asian Stories
• Native Narratives
• LGBTQ+ Pride
• Best of Diverse Representation List

Celebrating Black History Month

Movies and TV Shows with Arab Leads

Celebrate Hip-Hop's 50th Anniversary

Another year, common sense media reviewers.

Drinking and middle-age drama in excellent, complex film.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The movie provides a strong example of a positive

The helpful, tolerant, empathetic, and loving Tom

Adult characters occasionally flirt with one anoth

Language includes very infrequent use of "s--

The main character and one minor character drink h

Parents need to know that this satisfying, emotionally complex drama from acclaimed British filmmaker Mike Leigh ( Vera Drake , Happy-Go-Lucky ) focuses on the lives and troubles of middle-aged characters (the youngest is 30), so it's unlikely that teens will be very interested. But if they are, there&…

Positive Messages

The movie provides a strong example of a positive marriage in Tom and Gerri's solid, loving, supporting relationship. They extend their generosity to many friends and family members, some of whom manage to straighten out their lives and others who need a great deal more help. The couple shows tolerance, empathy, and inclusiveness, and they don't easily give up.

Positive Role Models

The helpful, tolerant, empathetic, and loving Tom and Gerri are positive role models, but the movie focuses more on the trials of Mary, who is nervous, under-confident, needy, and relies on alcohol as a social lubricant. She pays a kind of price for her behavior but never really reaches redemption.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Adult characters occasionally flirt with one another, but nothing comes of it. No kissing or sex.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Language includes very infrequent use of "s--t" and "f--k," plus one use of "piss."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

The main character and one minor character drink heavily (wine and beer) and to excess; it's not made clear whether they're addicted, but they definitely use alcohol to drown their sorrows. Other characters drink wine socially throughout the movie.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this satisfying, emotionally complex drama from acclaimed British filmmaker Mike Leigh ( Vera Drake , Happy-Go-Lucky ) focuses on the lives and troubles of middle-aged characters (the youngest is 30), so it's unlikely that teens will be very interested. But if they are, there's not too much age-inappropriate content to worry about -- In fact, the only significant concern is the characters' frequent drinking; most is social, but one main character relies on alcohol as somewhat of a crutch. Beyond that, expect a bit of uncomfortable flirting and infrequent strong language (including sparing use of "f--k" and "s--t"). To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (3)

Based on 3 parent reviews

A film about heightened loneliness and pain, but with bits of hope that ebbs and flows

What's the story.

Tom ( Jim Broadbent ) and Gerri ( Ruth Sheen ) are a lovely older married couple living in London and spending time working in their allotment garden. Over the course of one year (divided into four seasons), they entertain various friends and family members in their home, including their son, Joe (Oliver Maltman), who breaks a long dry spell by meeting a new girlfriend; Ken (Peter Wight), an overweight working stiff who drinks and complains too much; and Mary ( Lesley Manville ), a nervous, needy secretary who also drinks too much and flirts uncomfortably with Joe. Some of these characters look forward to new futures, some old wounds are opened, and some hard lessons are learned.

Is It Any Good?

On several subtle levels, this is a very accomplished movie. British director Mike Leigh is famous for his working methods, in which he develops his screenplays with the input and improvisation of the actors. It seems to work; he usually ends up with emotionally rich, dramatically complex movies with memorable (and sometimes funny) characters. ANOTHER YEAR is no exception.

That said, there's a bit of a lack of a clear central character. Tom and Gerri are the anchoring characters, and everything revolves around them, but Mary is the most prominent character and the one with the biggest dramatic arc (and, notwithstanding Manville's extraordinary performance, she's not particularly likeable).

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the drinking in this movie. When Mary and Ken drink, they do it almost quickly and furiously. Why are they drinking, and what does it accomplish for them? What messages does the movie send about alcohol? What about the consequences of drinking?

What is the secret of Tom and Gerri's successful marriage? Can you think of other movies that portray positive, happy marriages?

Is Mary redeemed at the end of the movie? What has she learned over the course of the story?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 29, 2010
• On DVD or streaming : June 7, 2011
• Cast : Jim Broadbent , Lesley Manville , Ruth Sheen
• Director : Mike Leigh
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Sony Pictures Classics
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 129 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : some language
• Last updated : September 24, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

Our editors recommend.

Match Point

Love Actually

An Education

Drama movies that tug at the heartstrings, biopic movies.

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

Awesome, you're subscribed!

Thanks for subscribing! Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon!

The best things in life are free.

Sign up for our email to enjoy your city without spending a thing (as well as some options when you’re feeling flush).

Déjà vu! We already have this email. Try another?

By entering your email address you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and consent to receive emails from Time Out about news, events, offers and partner promotions.

Love the mag?

Our newsletter hand-delivers the best bits to your inbox. Sign up to unlock our digital magazines and also receive the latest news, events, offers and partner promotions.

• Things to Do
• Food & Drink
• Arts & Culture
• Time Out Market
• Coca-Cola Foodmarks
• Los Angeles

Get us in your inbox

🙌 Awesome, you're subscribed!

Another Year

• 5 out of 5 stars
• Recommended

Time Out says

Release details.

• Release date: Friday 5 November 2010
• Duration: 129 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Mike Leigh
• Screenwriter: Mike Leigh
• Lesley Manville
• Imelda Staunton
• Jim Broadbent

An email you’ll actually love

Discover Time Out original video

• Press office
• Investor relations
• Work for Time Out
• Editorial guidelines
• Privacy notice
• Do not sell my information
• Cookie policy
• Accessibility statement
• Terms of use
• Modern slavery statement
• Manage cookies
• Advertising

Time Out Worldwide

• All Time Out Locations
• North America
• South America
• South Pacific

Another Year Review

05 Nov 2010

129 minutes

Another Year

It’s a good thing that Mike Leigh has such a consistent track record, since he makes films which would be impossible to pitch to a panel of studio execs. The ‘high concept’ of Another Year is four Sunday afternoons in different seasons, focusing on a still-happy, middle-aged couple and their less well-adjusted friends and relations — and not much actually happening.

It’s all about cups of tea in the kitchen or garden after sessions at the allotment, and the surface dialogue is all about trivia: a saga with a used car which turns out to be a disaster, the fellow with an interesting job who has already bored his friends and family with its details to such an extent that he downgrades himself to a hole-digger, genial reminiscences of wilder youth activities at pop festivals or on the football terraces, long-standing jokes and resentments no-one feels the need to explain but which come round over and over. When someone new to the set-up notices that the central couple are called Tom and Gerri, Gerri (Ruth Sheen) deadpans, “We’ve learned to live with it.” That’s as much of a message as the film runs to, and yet it’s rich in humour, suspense and profundity. Because it seems so uneventful — an old friend visits, the son turns up with a new girlfriend, a sister-in-law dies off screen — every tiny incident, line and even look registers.

Throughout his career, Leigh has worked with a series of outstanding actresses in creating characters who have entered the national consciousness: Bev (Alison Steadman) in Abigail’s Party, Cyn (Brenda Blethyn) in Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton), Poppy (Sally Hawkins) in Happy-Go-Lucky. In Another Year, Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent selflessly underplay as a couple who often don’t need to say more than, “Well…” to each other to convey how they feel, allowing Lesley Manville to deliver the knockout performance. Whether getting tipsy and repeating a joke she’s obviously made before (stamping several times and saying, “That’s my carbon footprint”) or fending off an even more desperate singleton (Peter Wight, looking like a public awareness advert for all the symptoms of early cardiac arrest) or disastrously expressing a small disappointment in cutting words when presented with a better-balanced newcomer to the circle, Manville’s Mary is a vivid, unforgettable character. Like most of Leigh’s women, Mary verges on archetype or caricature, but is entirely alive and ultimately tragic. There’s an emotional rollercoaster in a single, climactic scene in the ‘winter’ section as a near-cracked-up Mary makes an unexpected visit to mend fences with her friends and finds only Tom’s taciturn, just-widowed, almost-ghostly brother Ronnie (David Bradley) at home, then tries desperately to make conversation with the remote, bewildered man. This is the Leigh method in a nutshell: it’s a sitcom set-up in a drably realistic world, and uses the comedy of embarrassment to dig deep into the psyche. With its structure and rigorous look, this evokes some of the autumnal or wintery achievements of Ingmar Bergman, but in its precise details — without ever losing a sense of these characters as individuals, you keep muttering, “How English” — Another Year may be as close as British cinema can get to the Japanese master of seasonal tea ceremonies and dutifully happy families, Yasujirô Ozu.

Related Articles

Movies | 03 11 2010

Movies | 27 09 2010

• facebook-rs

Another Year

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Mike Leigh’s films are one of a kind. They’re artful gifts of observation, humor and bruised humanity. Another Year is up there with the best of them. The script covers four seasons in the life of one British couple, Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen). They’d like to see their lawyer son, Joe (Oliver Maltman), find the right woman. That doesn’t mean Mary (Lesley Manville), Gerri’s co-worker. Mary drinks as hard as she chatters and flirts outrageously with the much younger Joe. Out of a script developed over months with his cast, Leigh creates a universe we can all find a place in. All the actors are sublime. But Manville shines brightest. Never more lonely than when she’s trying to hide it, Mary still musters the courage to fight being reduced to a joke. Just watch the magnificent Manville, in a raw and riveting award-class performance that exposes a grieving heart under siege. Her last scene is quietly devastating. So is this intimate miracle of a movie.

'Sugar' Gives You a Sweetly Hardboiled Colin Farrell and One Sour WTF Twist

• By Alan Sepinwall

Michael J. Fox Says He's Open to Acting Again If He 'Could Figure It Out'

• Back To The Set
• By Emily Zemler

Olivia Wilde to Direct Margot Robbie-Produced 'Avengelyne' Adaptation

• Harley Quinn's New Friend
• By Tomás Mier

Halle Bailey to Sing Opposite Da'Vine Joy Randolph in Pharrell Williams, Michel Gondry Musical

• Atlantis-Bound
• By Kory Grow

Drake Bell Explains Why He Pleaded Guilty to Felony Child Endangerment

• Crimes and Court

Most Popular

Chance perdomo, 'gen v' and 'chilling adventures of sabrina' star, dies at 27, chance perdomo, 'chilling adventures of sabrina' and 'gen v' star, dies at 27, barron trump’s super-rare outing with dad donald may show why we never see them together, partynextdoor reveals nsfw 'partynextdoor 4' album cover, you might also like, angelina jolie’s lawyer alleges brad pitt’s ‘history of physical abuse of jolie started well before’ their 2016 plane altercation, exclusive: lab-grown diamonds land on london’s bond street for the first time, this best-selling under-desk walking pad is over $100 off on amazon today, nicholas galitzine recalls botched ‘dunkirk’ audition: ‘royally screwed up by my team’, nc state booster club, nil collective riding final four gravy train .

Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

Verify it's you

Please log in.

Movie Gazette

• About Movie Gazette
• Terms And Conditions Of Use
• Privacy Policy Statement
• Twitter Feed
• Current competitions
• Past competitions.
• #18963 (no title)
• Search Results
• Cookie Policy

Another Year (2010)

Rating: 8/10

Another worthy but depressing slice of life from Mike Leigh. Do not watch if you’re a depressed singleton (check). Do watch if you want to see quality acting and emotional subjects tackled very well (also check, so not all bad).

Running Time: 129 minutes

US Certificate: PG-13 UK Certificate: 12A

Ah Mike Leigh, the British film industry’s answer to ritalin. Another Year is his latest technically excellent film exploring relationships, the British psyche and social mobility.

Another Year follows Tom (Broadbent) and Gerri (Sheen), a couple who have managed to stay blissfully happy well into middle age.  Over one year they are visited by a menagerie of friends, colleagues and relatives who are suffering some form of sadness that seems to stem from the life chances they were given as children. Throughout the seasons, these unlucky people that visit the smug couple, include Mary (Manville), a lonely and borderline alcoholic fifty-something, and Ken (Wright), who has let himself go and become a bit of a mess both physically and emotionally.

Needless to say, Another Year is not a happy film. Rumour has it that Kurt Cobain, Heath Ledger and even Hitler and company in the bunker, managed to secure advanced copies of the movie to tip themselves over the edge before ending it all in their unique little ways. There’s no heartwarming ending or underlying light comedy (although the characters do have a lot to laugh about between themselves) but this is kind of what you would expect from Mike Leigh. The movie is tender, very well-thought out and emotionally very mature as it deals with deep subjects in a particularly stuffy and non-committal British way.

Given patience, Another Year is a real treat and technically one of the best British films of the last few years. After a good showing at Cannes earlier in the year, it’s very likely to have a few awards rightly lavished upon it.

It's Got: Well realised characters, choice dialogue, nice attention to detail

It Needs: To be watched in the right mood and setting.

Related Forum Posts

Another Year at the IMDB

Monthly Archives

• Competitions (1)
• Out Now (16)
• People (10,928)
• Action (501)
• Adventure (272)
• Animated (94)
• British (312)
• Comedy (681)
• Crime (320)
• Documentary (47)
• Drama (908)
• European (252)
• Family (187)
• Fantasy (210)
• Film Of The Book (1)
• Horror (272)
• Movies (256)
• Musical (62)
• Mystery (157)
• Romance (305)
• Science Fiction (230)
• Thriller (541)
• Westerns (27)

Recent Posts

• Django Unchained
• Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
• Les Misérables

Recent Comments

ANOTHER YEAR

"pro-marriage character study".

What You Need To Know:

(BB, CC, Pa, PC, E, ACap, Ho, LL, AA, DD, MM) Strong moral worldview with overt Christian elements includes positive, moral view of marriage and Christian funeral with Scripture read and prayer in Jesus Christ’s name, but minimized by pagan, politically correct, liberal content such as comments about the environment and leaving a carbon footprint as well as some anti-capitalist statements about big corporations, one brief homosexual joke, some troubled characters, and a brief conversation about smoking marijuana; 11 obscenities (including the British word “bloody”) and two profanities; no violence; no sexual content but man kisses woman on her cheek; no nudity; alcohol use depicted throughout and drunkenness in a few scenes due to reliance on alcohol; cigarette smoking throughout and one brief conversation about smoking marijuana; and, depression depicted in multiple characters.

More Detail:

ANOTHER YEAR follows an aging British couple whose marriage is the stable rock that anchors several of their friends and family members who are all individually weathering storms of unhappiness.

Tom and Gerri have been married more than 30 years. They are just as in love now as the day they wed.

Through a series of seasonal vignettes, the lives of Tom and Gerri’s depressed friends are explored. They include: Mary, a hapless, lonely middle-aged woman who drinks; Ken, a close friend of the family who covers his despondency with alcoholism; Joe, their 30-year-old son who cannot seem to find the right woman; and, Ronnie, Tom’s brother, a grieving widower.

Tom and Gerri’s marriage is the stabilizing force in the lives of everyone around them. Their life is simple, yet their love is a testament to the power of marriage.

ANOTHER YEAR is an episodic, character-driven, slice-of-life story. The movie’s pace, much like the characters of Tom and Gerri, is slow, moving and simple, yet warm and heartfelt. The contrast of Tom and Gerri’s simple, passionate love for one another is well contrasted against the other characters’ lonely and melancholy existences. The contrast of Tom and Gerri’s happiness with everyone else’s sadness is a wonderful, moral testimony to the power of marriage to provide happiness and stability.

The movie is centered on Tom and Gerri, but their characters sometime feel flat and inactive when held up against dynamic characters like Mary, the lonely middle-aged woman. As a matter of fact, Mary’s character often feels like the central character of the movie, and the actress who portrays Mary, Lesley Manville, is brilliant in that role.

ANOTHER YEAR has a positive, morally uplifting view of a good marriage, but it also has some politically correct elements of environmentalism and anti-capitalism as well as one brief homosexual joke. There is also some foul language as well as alcohol use, drunkenness, cigarette smoking throughout, and a brief conversation about marijuana. That said, these objectionable elements are brief, and detract only slightly from the positive, moral content. The movie also has some overt positive Christian content, including a Christian funeral with Scripture read and prayer in Jesus Christ’s name.

Now more than ever we’re bombarded by darkness in media, movies, and TV. Movieguide® has fought back for almost 40 years, working within Hollywood to propel uplifting and positive content. We’re proud to say we’ve collaborated with some of the top industry players to influence and redeem entertainment for Jesus. Still, the most influential person in Hollywood is you. The viewer.

What you listen to, watch, and read has power. Movieguide® wants to give you the resources to empower the good and the beautiful. But we can’t do it alone. We need your support.

You can make a difference with as little as $7. It takes only a moment. If you can, consider supporting our ministry with a monthly gift. Thank you.

Movieguide® is a 501c3 and all donations are tax deductible.

Discovering good movies, one bad movie at a time

Another Year (2010)

All the lonely people, connect with us.

Support The Show

Skip to content , or skip to search .

Search Help Home > Movies > Another Year

• READER REVIEWS

Another Year

Distributor.

Sony Classics

Release Date

Dec 29, 2010

Release Notes

Official website.

• www.sonyclassics.com

A nother year, another Mike Leigh gem, this one called Another Year, a minor-key ensemble drama: four seasons in the life of an aging couple—Tom, a geologist, and Gerri, a medical counselor—played by those wonderful Leigh veterans Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen. They are true Earth People, first seen tending to their vegetable garden a short distance from their suburban London house, comfy together with their graying hair and thickening waists. Their home is roomy and inviting, a place of refuge for lonely people, among them their good-hearted, thirtyish son, Joe (Oliver Maltman), and Tom’s old friend Ken (Peter Wight), who’s in appalling physical shape and getting fatter and more sadly soused by the day. The film’s most epic lost soul is Mary (Lesley Manville), an alcoholic with teased hair and plunging blouses and a desperate eye for a suitable man who will have her—even, at one point, Tom’s broken-down, barely verbal, newly widowed brother (David Bradley).

Leigh fans will be in clover amid all this garrulous despair and grotesquerie. For others, Another Year will test the paradox of Leigh’s work. It’s well known that he presents his actors with characters and a premise rather than a finished script and sends them out to amass details, physical and psychological. When they return with their bounty, he shapes a screenplay and films them indulgently. The more prodigious their misery, the more indulgent he is. The problem is that most viewers spend less time marveling at the actors’ inventiveness than being crushed by the weight of the characters’ suicide-worthy lives. It’s particularly true here: Leigh has given Manville, a frequent collaborator, a monumental pedestal, which means that every admiring close-up of her builds to some cringe-worthy humiliation.

My advice: Steel yourself against the too-muchness, and savor, as if you were a social scientist, the variety of ways in which middle-class English people create edifices in which to house their aloneness. Leigh opens in the office of Gerri’s colleague (Michelle Austin) with a close-up of Imelda Staunton as a woman so utterly depressed and shut down that every scene that follows feels escapist in comparison. (Asked what would improve her life, she murmurs, barely audibly, “Different life …”) With their shared lot, Tom and Gerri are exemplary—and yet their happiness has an aspect of complacency. They know they’ve got this human-isolation thing licked and view Mary and her ilk with a mix of sympathy and condescension: the poor dear. But it’s better to be them than others, which means the lesson of Another Year is: Get busy on that garden. — David Edelstein

Find Family Movies, Movie Ratings and Movie Reviews

Another Year Parent Guide

Without a strong climatic rise or resolution, this british film presents thought-provoking questions rather than high drama..

Tom and Gerri (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen) have been happily married for a long time. Over the course of one particular year the couple finds plenty of opportunities to provide support to their friends and family, who all seem to be struggling to find joy and purpose in their lives.

Release date December 31, 2010

Run Time: 130 minutes

Official Movie Site

Get Content Details

The guide to our grades, parent movie review by kerry bennett.

It isn’t often that a happily married couple serves as the main characters of a movie, much less a presumably well functioning, middle age pair. Yet that is exactly what Tom and Gerri (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen) are. Bearded and graying, he is a geologist. She, also graying and comfortably dowdy, works as a counselor in a medical clinic. But it is their home life that comes under scrutiny in this story.

During the course of a year, they invite a myriad of friends and family into their cozy, comfortable London flat. Most are lost souls seeking an oasis of peace in their troubled lives. One of them is Gerri’s coworker, Mary (Lesley Manville). The single 40-something alcoholic yearns for the kind of love and companionship she witnesses between Tom and Gerri. However her provocative dress and incessant flirting doesn’t attract the type of man she wants. Ken (Peter Wight) another family friend, is an equally lonely soul who satiates himself with alcohol, cigarettes and generous servings at the dinner table. Into this mix comes Tom’s brother Ronnie (David Bradley), an emotionally void man who has a bitter relationship with his grown son Carl (Martin Savage).

Without a strong climatic rise or resolution, this British film presents thought-provoking questions rather than high drama. What is happiness? Why do some people seem to have it and others don’t? Will some people ever find joy? While most children won’t have the patience to sit through this meandering storyline, two strong sexual expletives and alcohol use are the biggest content concerns parents will encounter if their kids choose to watch it. Still, with so many sorrowing people around them, this unassuming, ordinary couple becomes the backbone of their small community and demonstrates the strength that can come from a stable marital relationship.

About author

Kerry Bennett

Another year rating & content info.

Why is Another Year rated PG-13? Another Year is rated PG-13 by the MPAA for some language

Violence: A son verbally attacks his father and a brief argument ensues.

Sexual Content: A woman wears a low cut top.

Language: The script contains at least two strong sexual expletives, some derogatory comments, scatological slang, terms of Deity and brief, mild sexual innuendo.

Alcohol / Drug Use: Characters regularly consume alcohol with some drinking to excess. Smoking is also portrayed on several occasions and adults talk briefly about using illegal drugs.

Page last updated July 17, 2017

Another Year Parents' Guide

What role does the garden play in Gerri and Tom’s life? What significance does it have in the storyline?

What kind of man does Mary want? What do her clothes and actions suggest she is looking for? Why is there a discrepancy between her desires and her appearance?

What would have to happen in order for many of the people in this film to be happy? Is happiness something that is earned? Why do some people seem to prefer to be discontent rather than make changes that would improve their lives?

The most recent home video release of Another Year movie is June 7, 2011. Here are some details…

Another Year releases to home video on June 7, 2011, in a Blu-ray /DVD Combo Pack. Bonus extras include:

- Commentary with Director Mike Leigh & Actress Lesley Manville

- The Making of Another Year

- The Mike Leigh Method

Related home video titles:

Jim Broadbent who plays Tom in this story is a versatile character actor with a long resume including parts in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince , The Damned United , The Young Victoria , Inkheart , Indiana Jones and the Kingdome of the Crystal Skull and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe .

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Monkey Man Link to Monkey Man
• The Beast Link to The Beast
• The Old Oak Link to The Old Oak

New TV Tonight

• Mary & George: Season 1
• Ripley: Season 1
• Star Trek: Discovery: Season 5
• Sugar: Season 1
• American Horror Story: Season 12
• Loot: Season 2
• Parish: Season 1
• Lopez vs Lopez: Season 2
• The Magic Prank Show With Justin Willman: Season 1

Most Popular TV on RT

• 3 Body Problem: Season 1
• A Gentleman in Moscow: Season 1
• Shōgun: Season 1
• We Were the Lucky Ones: Season 1
• The Gentlemen: Season 1
• X-Men '97: Season 1
• Palm Royale: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• Ripley Link to Ripley
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

Pedro Pascal Movies and Series Ranked by Tomatometer

Dwayne Johnson Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Awards Tour

TV Premiere Dates 2024

New Movies & TV Shows Streaming in April 2024: What To Watch on Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, and More

• Trending on RT
• Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire
• Play Movie Trivia

Another Year Reviews

No All Critics reviews for Another Year.

Screen Rant

The first omen review: horror prequel criticizes church corruption in effective franchise entry.

The First Omen contains the scary elements from the classics and creative upgrades, resulting in a hit for the horror genre and The Omen franchise.

• The First Omen goes beyond surface-level storytelling, featuring great visual storytelling.
• Nell Tiger Free delivers a wonderful leading performance in The First Omen .
• The film explores themes of church corruption and womanhood, adding layers to classic horror tactics.

Richard Donner’s The Omen took the world by storm when it first premiered in 1976. It told the story of Damien Thorn, a child believed to be the spawn of Satan who would grow up to be the Antichrist. Since then, several sequels and even a 2006 remake have followed, but they never really amounted to the greatness of the first movie. But that all changed with The First Omen , a prequel to the original.

The First Omen is a horror film from director Arkasha Stevenson that acts as a prequel to the 1976 film The Omen. The film follows a young woman who goes to Rome to become a nun but begins to question her faith after encountering a terrifying darkness that aims to spawn an evil incarnate.

• The First Omen goes beyond surface-level storytelling.
• Nell Tiger Free gives a wonderful leading performance.
• Arkasha Stevenson's feature debut comes with great visual storytelling.
• The editing is a bit jarring at times.

Directed by first-time feature director Arkasha Stevenson, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Keith Thomas and Tim Smith, The First Omen contains the scary elements from the classics and creative upgrades, resulting in a hit for the horror genre and The Omen franchise .

The First Omen Opens With Proper Atmosphere-Building

It sets the tone for the rest of the film and its events.

The First Omen , set in 1971 , starts off with a mysterious and daunting sequence that may produce equal amounts of anxiety and confusion. It’s the perfect beginning to a horror film of this kind, as we’re already familiar with the basics. Yet the mystery surrounding the conversation between Father Brennan (Ralph Ineson) and Father Harris (Charles Dance) is enough to set up the atmosphere. The screenwriters do well by keeping their conversation as vague as possible. And it’s the first reason viewers will focus on the screen and stay glued to their seats.

Where To Watch The First Omen: Showtimes & Streaming Status

Soon after, a young American woman named Margaret (Nell Tiger Free) arrives in Rome, ready to dedicate her life to God by servicing the youth at the Vizzerdeli Orphanage before her vows. In classic horror movie style, most things appear to be normal until she meets Carlita Skianna (Nicole Sorace), an outcast orphan who has been deemed bad by the nuns. Troubling visions and circumstances begin to occur, which sends Margaret on a hunt to uncover the truth. Her investigation unravels a disturbing truth that enables Stevenson to put on a tremendous horror showcase.

The First Omen

The first omen delivers quality themes & entertainment, stevenson's feature debut is a strong one.

The best part about Stevenson’s film is how her directing guides us on a trippy journey that is equally horrifying and emotionally gripping. Even the classic jump scares come with added layers of terror that will leave a lasting picture in your mind. But underneath these standard strategies taken to amplify the mood is a genuinely good story with a theme of church corruption at the center of it all. The script intently focuses on what many people hate about religion: How people use inhumane and violent methods in God’s name even though it goes against His teachings.

Another exceptional theme explored in The First Omen is womanhood, as it relates to body autonomy and purpose. With such a prevalent topic in today’s world, the film could have swayed towards either the offensive or even a half-baked examination. But the team behind this horror film understands their central female lead and gives us a fine character journey worth every second. To that end, Free gives a performance that has already become one of my favorites in the genre. She is a young actress we should all get used to seeing on the big screen.

The team behind this horror film understands their central female lead and gives us a fine character journey worth every second.

Often defying its own genre to borrow from the likes of thriller films, The First Omen is a prequel done right. It contains classic jump scares we all love, with an intensely emotional and frightening story to back it up. With an incredible dissection of church corruption related to evil acts in God’s name, Stevenson’s feature debut boldly uses Margaret to facilitate important dialogue when it comes to religion and understanding one's purpose. And thanks to a great central performance from Free, I wouldn’t be surprised if The First Omen became a favorite of the entire franchise.

• Best Shows on Netflix
• Best Movies on Netflix
• F1 Live Stream
• Stranger Things Season 5
• Best New Movies
• Most Popular Movies on Netflix
• Best Shows on Disney+
• UFC Live Stream
• Best Movies on Disney+
• Entertainment

This underrated sci-fi movie turns 10 this year. Here’s why it’s still worth watching

Jonathan Glazer was recently in the news for several reasons. His latest effort, the discomfortingly immersive The Zone of Interest , earned him rave reviews and a nomination for Best Director at this year’s Academy Awards. When he took the stage to accept the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, his powerful speech attracted both praise and criticism, cementing his reputation as a true outlier living in an industry so notoriously averse to risk and progressive thought.

Under the brain

Under the eye, a most unusual sci-fi movie.

With  The Zone of Interest , Glazer’s art finally entered a more global stage. However, the film that should’ve given him this level of exposure is his 2013 sci-fi masterpiece, Under the Skin . A visceral, puzzling, and striking cinematic experience unlike any other, Under the Skin is possibly the most daring and unforgettable sci-fi movie of the 2010s, which is no small feat considering triumphs like Arrival and Interstellar also came out during this decade. This month marks the film’s 10th anniversary, making it the perfect time to reminisce about this polarizing and underappreciated sci-fi gem that, much like its director, dares to say what very few others will.

During an interview with  The Guardian , Glazer stated he “didn’t want to film the book.” Instead, he “wanted to make the book a film.” This is the key to understanding his approach.

• This underrated action movie inspired Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. Here’s why you should watch it
• Aliens is overrated. Here’s why the James Cameron sequel fails to live up to Alien
• You probably missed this underrated 2010 action movie. Here’s why you should watch it

Under the Skin began its life as a daring dream in Glazer’s brilliant mind. Initially, he meant to shoot it following his feature film debut, Sexy Beast ; however, he actually began developing it after his sophomore effort, the divisive 2004 psychological drama Birth . Glazer spent the better part of a decade trying to bring this singularly uneasy film onto the big screen, with the project going through numerous revisions — Brad Pitt was, at one point, attached to star. Then, after countless screenplays and several years, Glazer found the right angle: to represent a view of our world from an alien’s perspective.

With the tone set, the film moved on to cast its star. Numerous names were mentioned , but in the end, it was Scarlett Johansson who was cast. Johansson’s casting is the sort of situation where the perfect role finds the perfect actress. Indeed, I cannot think of a single example where a role is so dependent not only on an actor’s physical appeal but on the idea that we, the audience, have about them, as Johansson in Under the Skin , except perhaps for Margot Robbie in  Barbie .

Glazer might own  Under the Skin , but Johansson dominates it. No performance in the 21st century captures the very concept of “allure” as effortlessly or as chillingly as Johansson in Under the Skin . In the same Guardian interview, Glazer describes her as “unflinching,” and that’s truly the only word that fits. Even under a ratty wig, she is instantly recognizable yet completely foreign, an impenetrable monolith that’s seductive but deceptive. Her beauty is otherworldly, but it’s her cold, clinical gaze that genuinely mesmerizes.

This is a performance that’s all about precision. Johansson drives her van around Glasgow, scouting for oblivious men who hesitate not once when she looks their way, never questioning their lucky stars as to why they find themselves on the receiving end of her curiosity. The genius of her portrayal lies in her complete understanding of Glazer’s approach. Sitting behind the wheel, the actress is hungry and anxious, analyzing every opportunity; every look is a promise, every encounter a small revolution. The unnamed woman — and, by extension, Johansson herself — devours everything on the screen: men, women, scenery. Even the viewers themselves eventually fall prey to her appetite. She doesn’t just examine; she tears apart.

Ten years later, Under the Skin remains as hypnotizing and eerie as it was in 2014. The film juggles many grand ideas, from human nature to humanity’s place on its own planet and the possibility of alien life walking among us. Yet, its greatest achievement is making us feel like the aliens ourselves. Just like Johansson’s unnamed woman watches the men who’ll eventually become her prey, we, too, watch her cruise and hunt; we’re not quite the hunter, but we’re still complicit in her outings. Glazer would once again adopt this approach in  The Zone of Interest , turning the audience into unwilling participants of the unseen carnage. Just because we don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

This is a recurring element in Glazer’s films, a latent curiosity about humanity’s inherent imperfections, its unique capability for delusion. He is not so much obsessed with it as he is puzzled by it. In the brilliant but underrated Birth , it’s a grieving woman’s willingness to believe the impossible; in Under the Skin , it’s a series of men and the cosmic researcher directing them; in  The Zone of Interest , it’s an entire system becoming increasingly detached from the very idea of humanity. Through it all, the audience is there to witness and, at times, enable this silent and calculated study.

That’s also part of Glazer’s play; we might think ourselves in control — after all, we chose to see the movies. Alas, we’re just playing the game he set up for us. If we’re the male victims, Glazer is the unnamed woman, using his unique gifts to learn from and understand us. He’s not in control, either; if the film reveals anything, it’s that there’s always another. Under the Skin is about realizing we’re all aliens in each other’s eyes, meaning everyone can fascinate and be at the expense of another.

Glazer’s life’s work seems to be studying “otherness” and bringing it to life, dissecting it, becoming it, and eventually turning us into it. He uses discomfort to achieve it, reducing us to our primal instincts to provoke a visceral reaction and evoke something real within us. Indeed, Under the Skin features some of the most unnerving visuals in modern sci-fi, and the result is an utterly unforgettable experience that compels you to turn away while hoping you won’t. The film is full of juxtapositions like this — human and alien, beauty and ugliness, coercion and persuasion.

The haunting beauty of Under the Skin is that there’s no hopeful solution, only bleak possibility. Unlike many other sci-fi movies, where humanity is flawed and alien life forms are elevated, Under the Skin presents a far more terrifying concept: life itself that’s weak and detached, perpetually afraid yet restlessly curious, proud but vulnerable, selfish but in need of connection.

Yet, it’s also capable of growth; how can it not? The real question is not “Can it change,” but “Will it want to?” Glazer doesn’t have that answer, and something tells me he wouldn’t want to know even if he could. Certainty means there’s nothing left to ask, and where’s the fun in that?

Under the Skin is available to stream on Max .

Editors' Recommendations

• Why we still can’t forget Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Where to watch Dune: Part Two in IMAX 70mm (and why it’s worth it)
• 10 best sci-fi movies of 2023, ranked
• This Anne Hathaway thriller is 2023’s freakiest movie. Here’s why you should watch it
• You probably didn’t watch the most underrated crime thriller of the 2010s. Here’s why you should see it now

Even for a filmmaker as celebrated as Luca Guadagnino, remaking one of the most beloved and iconic horror movies in history isn’t an easy thing to do. Nonetheless, just one year after Call Me By Your Name launched him to the top of the international cinema scene, that’s exactly what the director did. Assembling a crew of talented collaborators, including Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, modern Scream Queen Mia Goth, and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Guadagnino set out in 2016 to finally make his own interpretation of Dario Argento’s giallo horror classic, Suspiria.

The resulting film, an oppressively drab, operatic exploration of supernatural horror, looks and feels like a purposeful counter to the Argento original, rather than a straightforward remake. Guadagnino’s Suspiria eschews many of its predecessor's defining aspects — namely, its vibrant color palette, surrealist direction, and prog rock score. For these reasons, the film proved somewhat divisive, and its box office earnings left plenty to be desired. In 2018, the general consensus seemed to be that the remake was an audacious, if not entirely successful, creative experiment for Guadagnino.

Shane Black's The Nice Guys, starring Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe, is a comedic homage to classic LA films like Chinatown, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and L.A. Confidential in which down-and-out detectives uncover far-reaching Machiavellian conspiracies that have dire implications for the future of society.

While The Nice Guys foregrounds Black's fun-loving tribute to the genre over its more serious cautionary themes, the writer/director still makes a point to condemn greedy and short-sighted institutions -- in this case, those that have accelerated climate change. In an era in which billionaires and oligarchs have brought us to the financial and ecological brink, The Nice Guys and its cinematic forerunners seem more relevant than ever. Following in a hallowed tradition Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway in Chinatown - Paramount Pictures Paramount

FOE | Official Trailer

The sci-fi genre is more alive and popular than ever. Just last weekend, Gareth Edwards' original blockbuster The Creator debuted in multiplexes nationwide, while more arty movies like The Beast and Poor Things premiered at the 2023 New York Film Festival to almost universal acclaim. Now more than ever, sci-fi speaks to our particular moment in time, when the rise of AI technology magnifies humankind's universal concerns about identity, aging, and mortality.

Every Ghostbusters Movie, Ranked from Worst to Best

I t's been 40 years since the Ghostbusters first showed up on our movie screens, armed with proton packs and the blaring Ectomobile, kicking ghost butts all over Manhattan while their iconic theme song played in the background. The brainchild of SNL alumnus Dan Aykroyd, who was inspired to create the story based on his family's own fascination with the paranormal, Ghostbusters was a unique blend of horror and comedy.

Its all-star cast, which included big names like Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, and Sigourney Weaver, helped make Ghostbusters one of the biggest movies of the 1980s. Since then, we've had sequels, reboots, and more sequels, taking Ghostbusters from a stand-alone comedy to a multi-million dollar franchise . And with the recent release of the newest installment, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, what better time to review the franchise's 40-year history and rank every film?

Ghostbusters (2016)

Ghostbusters.

Release Date July 14, 2016

Director Paul Feig

Cast Zach Woods, Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones, Kate McKinnon, Ed Begley Jr.

Rating PG-13

Main Genre Comedy

Runtime 116

Ghostbusters (2016) was subject to review bombing and misogynistic online hate when it was announced that the film would reboot the original series and star a female main cast, which many viewers felt was "too woke", gimmicky, and a slap in the face to the original film. At one point, Answer the Call had the most disliked movie trailer on YouTube. It would've been nice if this movie turned out to be a great refresh, shutting up all the haters and naysayers. But unfortunately, as a movie, Answer the Call just isn't very good. And it should have been.

Not Great, but Unfairly Hated

Set again in New York City, Answer the Call was directed by Paul Freig , who knocked it out of the park with his female-led comedy, Bridesmaids. The film also stars four of the funniest women in comedy -- Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones -- who play the next generation of Ghostbusters.

Yet despite this, much of the humor in Answer the Call falls flat. The film is also bogged down by an overuse of CGI, which ends up looking worse than the original. Several original cast members make cameos, though they oddly don't play their franchise characters. There's a lot of talent in this movie, no doubt, but it's wasted on a messy story with poor pacing that spends more time being nostalgic than standing as its own film. Rent on Apple TV.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

Ghostbusters: frozen empire.

Release Date March 22, 2024

Director Gil Kenan

Cast Dan Aykroyd, Paul Rudd, Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray, Patton Oswalt, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Emily Alyn Lind, William Atherton, Kumail Nanjiani, Carrie Coon, Annie Potts

Main Genre Adventure

Studio BRON Studios, Columbia Pictures, Ghostcorps

Read our review of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is the latest installment in the franchise, which just released this year. So far, it seems to be one of those fascinating cases where the critics' and audiences' opinions don't align at all . Critics torched the film, while early audiences gave it the thumbs up. So, is it actually good? Well, from the get-go, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire has a few things going against it. It's yet another sequel from another franchise during a time when reboots and sequels are all we seem to get at the movies.

Another Unnecessary Sequel

When you first watch its trailer, you can't help but roll your eyes and say to yourself, "Ugh, another one?" And that shows in the film itself. It's nice that the franchise takes the story back to the streets of New York City, and it's refreshing to get a brand-new villain (aside from the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, again ).

But the story tries juggling too many characters at once, which doesn't really let any of them shine. And sure, it reunites the original main cast, including a few extras. But didn't we already get most that in Afterlife? Overall, Frozen Empire just feels like another unnecessary sequel that was shoved down our throats. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is currently in theaters.

Ghostbusters II (1989)

Ghostbusters 2.

Release Date June 16, 1989

Director Ivan Reitman

Cast Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray, Rick Moranis

Main Genre Action

Runtime 102

Ghostbusters II tried capitalizing on the first movie's success and brought back the original cast. It was even directed by Ivan Reitman and written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, just like the first one -- and yet, the dream team still couldn't recapture the magic. The story behind Ghostbusters II felt tired and uninspired, like it was nothing more than a cash grab.

More Serious Than the Original

It also felt overly mature and serious compared to the original, which reveled in childish fantasies. The film's negative reception stalled the momentum of the franchise, putting it on a 27-year hiatus, until the franchise was (unsuccessfully) rebooted in 2016. Ghostbusters II did have some perks: it introduced a new villain rather than reusing those from the original film: Vigo the Carpathian, whose oil painting has become iconic in the Ghostbusters universe.

We even get to see Louis (Rick Moranis) throw on a Ghostbuster jumpsuit and proton pack in an attempt to become the fifth Ghostbuster. But like so many sequels , it failed to compete with the original's caliber. Stream Ghostbusters II on Hulu.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

Ghostbusters: afterlife.

Release Date November 19, 2021

Cast Paul Rudd, Bill Murray, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Carrie Coon, Annie Potts

Director Jason Reitman

Runtime 2hr 4min

Read our review of Ghostbusters: Afterlife

After the female-led Ghostbusters bombed, producers needed a new direction for their beloved franchise. The answer turned out to be Ghostbusters: Afterlife . Rather than reboot the franchise, Afterlife continues the original series, set about forty years after the first movie. It departs the streets of New York City and follows the family of none other than Egon Spengler into rural Oklahoma.

The film introduces new ghosts and a fresh cast, including Paul Rudd, Stranger Things' FInn Wolfhard, and Mckenna Grace, who perfectly captures her grandfather's appearance and nerdiness . Afterlife imagines a world where the Ghostbusters and their adventures in New York City have been reduced to a mere ghost story, all but forgotten by the younger generation. Paul Rudd's character, Gooberson, is baffled when the kids don't know the iconic Ghostbusters song.

One Big Nostalgia Trip

Afterlife does lack originality. One of its ghosts, Muncher, feels like a rip-off of Slimer, and it recycles the original film's antagonists, Gozer and the terror dogs. But we're also treated with a surprise appearance by the original Ghostbusters: Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), and Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson).

Sadly, Harold Ramis, who played Egon Spengler, passed away prior to the film, though we do get to see his ghostly, digitized form. It's pretty cool seeing these four old friends throw on their proton packs and take on ghosts again. Is it one big nostalgia trip? Sure, but it's the most fun audiences will have riding around in the Ectomobile since the 1984 original.

Related: 10 Movies to Watch if You Love Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters (1984)

Release Date June 8, 1984

Cast Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Bill Murray, Rick Moranis, Annie Potts

Runtime 105

It's impossible to rank anything else as number one. This is the film that started it all, whose tremendous success birthed this entire list of movies. Ghostbusters blended comedy and horror to create a ghost story unlike anything that audiences had ever seen before. Here, a team of ghost police -- Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler, and Winston Zeddemore -- use their wild inventions to clear Manhattan's streets of ghosts. Ghostbusters came with an A+ team.

It was directed by Ivan Reitman, whose name is attached to classic comedies like Animal House Kindergarten Cop, and it was written by comedy legends Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, who also co-star in the movie. And of course, they're joined by the comedic genius of Bill Murray and Rick Moranis. Throw in Annie Potts, who plays feisty secretary Janine, and a sexually possessed Sigourney Weaver, and you have yourselves a box office smash.

We Ain't Afraid of No Ghosts

Ghostbusters also features one of the most iconic villains ever. And no, we're not talking about Gozer, or the terror dogs , or even Slimer. We're talking about the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. The movie's creature effects, which utilized puppets and costumes, still look better and more realistic than some of today's CGI.

The film's theme song, "Ghostbusters" by Ray Parker Jr., has become iconic in cinema, its lyrics instantly recognizable: "If there's something strange in your neighborhood, who you gonna call?" Ghostbusters is now regarded as a 80s classic. Try as they might, none of these sequels and reboots could capture the magic of the original film. Stream Ghostbusters on Hulu.

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Warner Bros announces new Matrix movie helmed by Drew Goddard

Writer of The Martian, Cloverfield and World War Z will write and direct fifth film in groundbreaking cyberpunk franchise

Movie-goers are headed back to the Matrix . Warner Brothers announced on Wednesday that The Martian screenwriter Drew Goddard will write and direct a new movie in the sci-fi action franchise for the studio.

This will be the first in the cyberpunk series, which includes the 1999 original as well as The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions and The Matrix Resurrections, not to directly involve its co-creators Lana or Lilly Wachowski, though Lana is attached to executive-produce. No word yet on whether the franchise stars Keanu Reeves , Laurence Fishburne, Carrie Anne-Moss, Hugo Weaving and Jada Pinkett-Smith will return.

Goddard, who won an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay for The Martian in 2016, has considerable sci-fi credits, having started his writing career on the 90s show Buffy the Vampire Slayer before moving on to such shows as Angel, Alias and Lost. He is the creator of Marvel’s Daredevil, which ran from 2015 to 2018 on Netflix, and an executive producer and director on NBC’s beloved comedy series The Good Place. Additional screenwriting credits include Cloverfield, The Cabin in the Woods and World War Z.

It was Goddard who brought the idea of another Matrix film to Warner Bros, after 2021’s The Matrix Resurrection grossed a less-than-hoped-for $159m worldwide, in part due to a pandemic same-day streaming release.

“Drew came to Warner Bros with a new idea that we all believe would be an incredible way to continue the Matrix world, by both honoring what Lana and Lilly began over 25 years ago and offering a unique perspective based on his own love of the series and characters,” said Jesse Ehrman, Warner Bros Motion Pictures president of production, in a statement. “The entire team at Warner Bros Discovery is thrilled for Drew to be making his new Matrix film, adding his vision to the cinematic canon the Wachowskis spent a quarter of a century building here at the studio.”

The first Matrix, starring Reeves as a computer programmer turned fighter in the cyber underworld, became a defining cultural touchstone at the turn of the millennium for its groundbreaking visual effects, mind-bending story of simulated reality and propulsive action. The film went on to gross $467m worldwide, turned Reeves into a bankable movie star and won four Oscars, for best visual effects, best editing, best sound and best sound editing. Follow-ups to the red pill didn’t go quite as well; The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, released back-to-back in 2003, garnered mixed reviews and uneven audience interest.

The Matrix Resurrections also received poor to mixed reviews, with the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw calling it “a heavy-footed reboot which doesn’t offer a compelling reason for its existence other than to gouge a fourth income stream from Matrix fans”. It was assumed to be the end of the franchise for a while, until Goddard stepped in.

“It is not hyperbole to say The Matrix films changed both cinema and my life,” said Goddard in a statement. “Lana and Lilly’s exquisite artistry inspires me on a daily basis, and I am beyond grateful for the chance to tell stories in their world.”

• Keanu Reeves
• Laurence Fishburne
• Science fiction and fantasy films

Most viewed