"Hard Truths" star Marianne Jean-Baptiste and director Mike Leigh, photographed in Santa Monica in January. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) There’s a mythology that surrounds Mike Leigh’s films.

It's a good week for new film releases, mostly opening in theaters, including a must-see from Mike Leigh. Also on the slate: a popular world-cinema series in San Rafael. "Hard Truths": For more than ...

Making movies is a hard business, but it’s much easier when you’re doing it with someone you value and respect. It seems the same can be said of picking movies, as collaborators Mike Leigh and ...

Mike Leigh movies feel like a magic trick. Observational, wry, funny, devastating and always rooted in character, Leigh allows us to take in some of the most fascinating people, the milieu they ...

The legendary English filmmaker sat down with THR during a rare trip, taken reluctantly, to Hollywood. By Scott Feinberg Executive Editor of Awards Leigh’s films have won the top prizes of both the ...

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. We also shout-out the podcast Devised and ...

Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, a woman who suffers no fools, pushing everything around her away, but also confronting deeply-held family issues. It’s also a welcome reunion for the filmmaker and one of ...

Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truths Courtesy of Bleecker Street A nostalgic tug got this particular film rolling. Almost three decades had elapsed since Leigh made Secrets & Lies, and Jean-Baptiste ...

Some filmmakers have the whole movie in their heads before the first actor gets cast. On the other end of that spectrum. Some directors just kind of roll tape and let the movie happen. Then figure ...

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The church publishes the ...

Michael "Mike" Leigh, OBE (born 20 February 1943) is a British writer and director of film and theatre. He studied theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and studied further at the Camberwell ...

There’s a mythology that surrounds Mike Leigh’s films. And like with any shared lore, not all of it is true. One misconception, for instance, is that his storytelling is largely improvised, as if his ...