After two period pictures, the venerable English director Mike Leigh returns to contemporary London with ... of ordinary lives and cantankerous individuals, such as 1988’s “High Hopes” and 1993’s ...

Marianne Jean-Baptiste gives a fearless performance in Mike Leigh’s empathetic portrait of the outrageously hostile Pansy, whose hardened façade masks a real fragility.

I wouldn’t say Mike Leigh has the look of a vindicated ... Big-screen return in the 1980s with High Hopes. A triumphant 1990s with Life Is Sweet, Naked and the Oscar-nominated, Palme d’Or ...