"Director: Mike Leigh"

• Mr Turner | Blu Ray | (02/03/2015) from £8.49   |  Saving you £14.50 (170.79%)   |  RRP £22.99

  From acclaimed director Mike Leigh comes the beautiful and untold story of the great painter J.M.W Turner (Timothy Spall) who in the last 25 years of his life has to make his way through love loss and the struggles of being both celebrated and reviled by the British public and the royal family.

• Secrets And Lies (Wide Screen) | DVD | (16/08/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  If a film fan had never heard of director Mike Leigh, one might explain him as a British Woody Allen. Not that Leighs films are whimsical or neurotic; they are tough-love examinations of British life--funny, outlandish and biting. His films share a real immediacy with Allens work: they feel as if they are happening now. Leigh works with actors--real actors--on ideas and language. There is no script at the start (and sometimes not at the end). Secrets and Lies involves Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), an elegant black woman wanting to learn her birth mothers identity. She will find its Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn), who is one of the saddest creatures weve seen in film. Shes also one of the most real and, ultimately, one of the most loveable. Timothy Spall is Cynthias brother, a giant man full of love who is being slowly defeated by his fastidious wife (Phyllis Logan). There is a great exuberance of life in Secrets & Lies, winner of the Palme DOr and best actress (Blethyn) at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival--not Zorba-type life but the little battles fought and won every day. Leighs honest interpretation of daily life is usually found only on the stage. Secrets & Lies is more realistic than a stage production, however, especially when Leigh shows us uninterrupted scenes. Critic David Denby states that Leigh has "made an Ingmar Bergman film without an instant of heaviness or pretension." If that sounds like your cup of tea, see Secrets & Lies. --Doug Thomas

• Mike Leigh Collection | DVD | (07/04/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £59.99

  Mike Leigh is one of Britain's most respected film directors with a career spanning nearly 40 years. This box set features 10 great films from the British director including a bonus DVD which features specially commissioned footage of Mike Leigh in conversation with twelve of his actors the 2002 broadcast South Bank Show on Leigh and his controversial 1991 London Film Festival trailer. Vera Drake (2004): Vera Drake spends her days doting on her family and caring for her sick neighbour and elderly mother. However she also secretly visits women and helps them induce miscarriages for unwanted pregnancies. While the practice itself was illegal in 1950s England Vera sees herself as simply helping women in need and always does so with a smile and kind words of encouragement. When the authorities finally find her out Vera's world and family life rapidly unravel. All Or Nothing (2002): In a crowded South London apartment building Penny a working mom struggles to keep her dejected daughter her lazy son and her disillusioned partner on the right path. But when tragedy befalls her loved ones she finds that support comes from the most unexpected places...and brings the most surprising results. Topsy Turvy (1999): The egos. The battles. The words. The music. The women. The scandals. This is the delightfully entertaining story about the musical team of Gilbert and Sullivan and the making of one of their most famous collaborations The Mikado. Career Girls (1997): Former college flatmates Annie and Hannah decide to meet up in London for the weekend. Naturally both girls have changed since their student days of some 10 years earlier. As they talk go flat-hunting get drunk and bump into numerous people from their past the girls start to reminisce upon their earlier friendship. Secrets And Lies (1996): After her adoptive parents die a young black woman seeks out her natural birth mother only to discover her mother is white. Equally shocked to learn the daughter she gave up for adoption is black Cynthia insists it's a mistake. But she soon realizes it's true and when she springs her newfound daughter on the rest of the family the resulting chaos leads to a series of Secrets and Lies being revealed at last. Naked (1993): David Thewlis stars as Johnny a charming eloquent and relentlessly vicious drifter in London. Rejecting all those who would care for him the volcanic Johnny hurls himslef into a nocturnal odyssey through the city colliding with a succession of the desperate and the dispossessed. Life Is Sweet (1990): The remarkable story of an unremarkable British family told in the classic tragi-comedy style that is uniquely Mike Leigh's. High Hopes (1988): Old-school socialist Cyril gets exasperated with his Tory-voting mum her yuppie neighbours and his nouveau-riche sister. Meantime (1984): Meantime centres on the Pollacks - Mavis Frank and their

• Mr Turner | DVD | (02/03/2015) from £7.55   |  Saving you £12.44 (164.77%)   |  RRP £19.99

  From acclaimed director Mike Leigh comes the beautiful and untold story of the great painter J.M.W Turner (Timothy Spall) who in the last 25 years of his life has to make his way through love loss and the struggles of being both celebrated and reviled by the British public and the royal family.

• High Hopes | Blu Ray | (06/04/2020) from £14.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  High Hopes by award-winning Writer and Director, Mike Leigh (Mr Turner, Secrets Lies) depicts a slice of the lives of Shirley (Ruth Sheen) and Cyril (Philip Davis), a working-class couple in London. Cyril finds it hard to cope with his family; especially when his elderly Mum (Edna Dore) locks herself out and must ask her yuppie neighbours for help, and his social-climbing sister Valerie and her crass husband decide to throw a surprise party for their mum's 70th Birthday which has disaster written all over it. On top of all of this, Shirley wants a baby but how does this fit in with Cyril's Marxist ideals of a perfect world?

• Peterloo | Blu Ray | (11/03/2019) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  From acclaimed director Mike Leigh, Peterloo is an epic portrayal of the events surrounding the infamous 1819 Peterloo Massacre, where a peaceful pro-democracy rally at St Peter's Field in Manchester turned into one of the bloodiest and most notorious episodes in British history. The massacre saw British government forces charge into a crowd of over 60,000 that had gathered to demand political reform and protest against rising levels of poverty. Many protesters were killed and hundreds more injured, sparking a nationwide outcry but also further government suppression. The Peterloo Massacre was a defining moment in British democracy which also played a significant role in the founding of The Guardian newspaper.

• Career Girls | DVD | (12/05/2008) from £5.19   |  Saving you £10.80 (208.09%)   |  RRP £15.99

  From the award winning director of Secrets And Lies comes Career girls - a wonderful film about friendship love sex and hilarious memories of student life. Former college flatmates Annie (Lynda Steadman) and Hannah (Katrin Cartlidge) decide to meet up in London for the weekend. Naturally both girls have changed since their student days of some 10 years earlier. The curry loving ""Cure"" obsessed acne ridden and moody flatmates of yesteryear have been replaced by confident career girls of today. As they talk go flat-hunting get drunk and bump into numerous people from their past the girls start to reminisce upon their earlier friendship. Mike Leigh cleverly weaves together past and present as we share their memories; the touching the funny and the sometimes tragic. Full of classic one liners hilarious comedy and tear inducing emotion Career Girls is Mike Leigh at his very best.

• Secrets & Lies Blu-Ray | Blu Ray | (22/07/2019) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is a young, black optometrist whose adoptive parents have recently died. Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) is a sad, unmarried mother who works in a factory and lives in a shabby terraced house with her confrontational daughter Roxanna (Claire Rushbrook). Cynthia's brother Maurice (Timothy Spall) is a successful photographer who lives comfortably in suburbia with his wife Monica (Phyllis Logan). In a misplaced effort to re-unite the family, Maurice & Monica throw a small barbecue party for Roxanne's 21st birthday. When Cynthia brings along her new friend Hortense, chaos ensues and some painful truths are revealed.

• Meantime | DVD | (03/09/2007) from £6.25   |  Saving you £3.74 (59.84%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Meantime centres on a East End family the Pollacks - Mavis Frank and their sons Mark and Colin - and their experience of unemployment poverty and life in early 1980s Britain. When Colin comes under the influence of skinhead Coxy and when Mavis's better off sister Barbara offers Colin work family tensions erupt into conflict. Mike Leigh's first independent film for five years has a superb cast of rising stars including Gary Oldman Alfred Molina Tim Roth and Phil Daniels. First shown on television it is a memorable and closely observed account of life in Thatcher's Britain.

• Bleak Moments | DVD | (01/06/2015) from £8.00   |  Saving you £7.99 (99.88%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Sylvia leads a very quiet life caring for her mentally ill sister Hilda but both sisters' urgent longing for companionship is threatened by their inability to interact with other people socially. Featuring a performance of great depth from Anne Raitt and balancing heightened realism with moments of real humour it is one of the key films in the development of British cinema.

• Classic Films Triple - Prick Up Your Ears/Made in Britain/Meantime | DVD | (06/10/2008) from £29.98   |  Saving you £-16.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Titles Comprise: Made In Britain: Tim Roth made an unforgettable screen debut as the tattooed contemptuous racist Trevor. Made In Britain depicts his relationship with Harry and the reasons behind his violence with documentary-style naturalism. Filmed on location in London Made In Britain is one of the most memorable feature-length TV dramas of the 1980s. Prick Up Your Ears: Joe Orton was one of the 1960s golden boys from working class Leicester lad to national celebrity from sexual innocent to grinning satyr from penniless student to icon of Swinging London. He became a star by breaking the rules - sexual and theatrical. But while his plays including Loot What the Butler Saw and Entertaining Mr Sloane were hugely successful his private life was sometimes sordid often farcical and ended in tragedy... Meantime: A drama which centres on the Pollack family who live in a council house in East London whose lives are affected by unemployment and boredom...

• Life Is Sweet | DVD | (11/02/2002) from £19.93   |  Saving you £-6.95 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Life is Sweet, Mike Leigh's 1990 snapshot of the suburban family condition at the tail end of the Thatcher era, is often depressing and occasionally harrowing. It is also ultimately joyous, not just for the sharpness of Leigh's satire--the script was improvised with and by the cast--but also for the real affection that binds the family together. Through a series of minor crises, channels of communication silted up by the daily grind and terminal self-absorption are gradually eased open and the film ends on a note of genuine hope. As parents Wendy and Andy, Alison Steadman and Jim Broadbent give virtuoso performances: two adults who use fantasy, mundane work and a stream of banal chatter to keep reality at bay before a freak kitchen accident forces them to stop and take stock. They have two daughters to perplex them: one a plumber (Claire Skinner) and the other an angry anorexic (Jane Horrocks, unsparing in a gut-wrenching bulimic scene). Timothy Spall is hilarious as family friend Aubrey, a would-be restaurateur whose efforts to establish a gourmet eatery in Enfield collapse in hopeless, drunken farce. This is not an overtly political film, but the sense of a stake being driven through the heart of the 1980s enterprise culture is unmistakeable. Inspiring. --Piers Ford

• Secrets and Lies | DVD | (17/09/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Mike Leigh's superlative drama at once hysterically funny and profoundly sad examines a wounded contemporary British family. Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) a young black optometrist has just buried her beloved adoptive mother. In her sorrow she embarks on a search for her birth mother who turns out to be Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) a white factory worker living a lonely life with her surly daughter Roxanne (Claire Rushbrook). No one in the family except Cynthia's brother Mauri

• Career Girls | DVD | (11/02/2002) from £9.41   |  Saving you £3.57 (55.61%)   |  RRP £9.99

  This simple comedy by British filmmaker Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies) concerns the reunion of two women friends from university days who try hard, although awkwardly, to rediscover their early closeness. They succeed beautifully and experience a series of chance encounters with old friends and lovers whom they once knew together. Katrin Cartlidge (Breaking the Waves) and Lynda Steadman are outstanding, playing their characters via flashback in their grungy, early 20s as well as their more polished, contemporary selves at age 30. Following the complex ambitions of Secrets and Lies, Career Girls almost looks like a holiday for Leigh, but it is no less the rich product of his now-famous process of symbiotic rehearsal and writing. The film is also graced by some of the most delicate passages of remembered love between two people seen in a long time. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• All Or Nothing | DVD | (28/04/2003) from £6.85   |  Saving you £13.14 (191.82%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A 2002 Mike Leigh drama, All or Nothing is at times almost unbearably bleak and poignant, yet funny, truthful and richly rewarding. The film's revolves around Timothy Spall's mini-cab driver, his family and the various characters and acquaintances on the South-east London estate where he lives. It's perhaps even better than Secrets and Lies, in which Spall also starred, which was marred a little by some of the tearful excesses of Brenda Blethyn's bravura performance. It's evidence that Leigh has matured and improved with age, rather than mellowed and softened. He's developed into a highly distinctive but rounded and humane filmmaker. Spall's cabbie is too gentle and thoughtful to be described as a slob, but his lack of even the most basic ambition and stoic non-resistance to life has created an unspoken rift between him and wife Penny (Lesley Manville). Working on a supermarket checkout, she must cook dinner and fend off insults from her fat, frustrated, obnoxious 18-year-old son Rory. She receives only passive sympathy from her older daughter Rachel. Only when Rory is taken ill is Phil snapped out of his torpor as the family pull together. A host of minor characters also feature; fatuous cabbie Ron (Paul Jesson) his alcoholic wife and sluttish daughter, as well as the wonderfully good-humoured and resilient Maureen, Penny's best friend, concerned at her daughter's relationship with a violent boyfriend. Once accused of caricaturing his "lower class" characters, here Leigh (with the collaborative assistance of his actors) exhibits them in all their authentic complexity, neither idealising nor sentimentalising them. On the DVD: All or Nothing's extras include the original trailer, as well as interviews with several members of the cast. Timothy Spall is interesting on the unnerving process of collaboration favoured by Leigh, whereby characters are "built from zero" by the actors. The smart and rather posh Lesley Manville strikes quite a contrast in real life with her mousey, put-upon character. There's also a meticulous and absorbing commentary from Mike Leigh, who talks about filming in Greenwich and how he has moved away from some of the more dogmatic ideas about filmmaking of his earlier, avant-garde days. --David Stubbs

• Meantime | DVD | (14/04/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Meantime, made in 1983, was only Mike Leigh's second film to reach the big screen, though by now he was far from a novice director. Yet 10 years after his first movie, Bleak Moments (1971), he couldn't get funding for a single cinematic feature and was obliged to make films for television. Meantime, first shown on Channel 4, was given a limited theatrical release, heralding his eventual return to the cinema. The title is a double-edged pun. It suggests the waiting-around no-time-in-particular that the characters inhabit, but it's also Leigh's barbed comment on the mean-spirited politics of the Thatcher era, when millions of people were tossed on the scrapheap of unemployment. Leigh has sometimes been accused of caricaturing and being condescending to his characters, but Meantime is notable for wry compassion in its portrayal of a bunch of no-hopers stuck in their East End limbo. Not a lot happens. Mark (Phil Daniels) and his retarded brother Colin (Tim Roth) hang about the streets and pubs, banter with their skinhead mate Coxy (Gary Oldman), half-heartedly chat up local girls, bicker with their parents. Their aunt Barbara--who bettered herself and moved to the relative poshness of Chigwell--offers Colin a job helping her decorate, but he backs out of it. Nobody's going anywhere much. But the view's not totally forlorn. Leigh leaves us with a brief, unexpected moment of warmth and solidarity between the two brothers. On the DVD: It's paltry stuff. A so-called "trailer" proves to be a plug for other DVD releases in the same series. Otherwise it's just a scene menu, and English subtitles for the hard of hearing. The early 80s TV-quality images are badly shown up by the DVD's visual acuity. --Philip Kemp

• Secrets And Lies | DVD | (10/09/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  If a film fan had never heard of director Mike Leigh, one might explain him as a British Woody Allen. Not that Leigh's films are whimsical or neurotic; they are tough-love examinations of British life--funny, outlandish and biting. His films share a real immediacy with Allen's work: they feel as if they are happening now. Leigh works with actors--real actors--on ideas and language. There is no script at the start (and sometimes not at the end). Secrets and Lies involves Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), an elegant black woman wanting to learn her birth mother's identity. She will find it's Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn), who is one of the saddest creatures we've seen in film. She's also one of the most real and, ultimately, one of the most loveable. Timothy Spall is Cynthia's brother, a giant man full of love who is being slowly defeated by his fastidious wife (Phyllis Logan). There is a great exuberance of life in Secrets & Lies, winner of the Palme D'Or and best actress (Blethyn) at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival--not Zorba-type life but the little battles fought and won every day. Leigh's honest interpretation of daily life is usually found only on the stage. Secrets & Lies is more realistic than a stage production, however, especially when Leigh shows us uninterrupted scenes. Critic David Denby states that Leigh has "made an Ingmar Bergman film without an instant of heaviness or pretension." If that sounds like your cup of tea, see Secrets & Lies. --Doug Thomas

• Nuts In May | DVD | (27/03/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  An early masterpiece from Mike Leigh, Nuts in May is a filmed-for-TV adaptation of an earlier stage play. The cast is small (only five characters who matter), but the acting is impeccable, and the mix of wicked humour and social observation make this one of Leigh's best works. Keith Pratt, a man who fully earns his surname due to his nit-picking obsessions with order and detail, takes his partner Candice-Marie, a well-meaning but irritating hippie, on a camping trip. There they meet Trevor, a shy teacher who finds their enforced friendship intrusive but is too polite to extricate himself, and a brash young couple of bikers, Honky and Finger, whose loud and chaotic personalities lead them into conflict with the repressed and dogmatic Keith. Plot isn't the issue here, since Leigh is far more interested in teasing out the subtleties of human behaviour, which he does with forensic skill in several unforgettable scenes. Funny and painful at the same time, like all Leigh's successes, Nuts in May is brilliantly acted by all concerned, though special mention must go to Roger Sloman, for bringing to life the appalling but ultimately pitiable Keith, and Alison Steadman, whose portrayal of fey, goofy and tragi-comic Candice-Marie is every bit as memorable and nuanced as her more famous turn as Beverley in Leigh's Abigail's Party. --Andy Medhurst

• Life Is Sweet | Blu Ray | (28/05/2012) from £8.99   |  Saving you £11.00 (122.36%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Life is Sweet is the remarkable story of an unremarkable British family told in the classic tragi-comedy style that is uniquely Mike Leigh's. It covers issues of unemployment, anorexia, failure, nervous breakdown, and hope, as they affect one suburban London family and their friends and acquaintances. The characters and story were created with and by the actors - giving a special edge and momentum to the unfolding events.Leigh's sharply satirical and unsentimentally compassionate view of life strikes a chord with audiences and critics alike. Life is Sweet brings together an impressive cast - including Alison Steadman ('Let Them Eat Cake'), Jim Broadbent ('The Avengers'), Jane Horrocks ('Little Voice') and Timothy Spall ('Topsy Turvey') - many of whom have worked with Leigh in the past, as has producer Simon Channing-Williams.

• Mike Leigh: Secrets And Lies, Life Is Sweet, Career Girls | DVD | (30/09/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Secrets And LiesNominated for 5 Oscars winner of 3 BAFTA Awards and the winner of 'Best Film' at the Cannes Film Festival Mike Leigh's hilarious bittersweet comedy is an unmissable and moving slice of real life. Life Is SweetLife is Sweet is the remarkable story of an unremarkable British family told in the classic tragi-comedy style that is uniquely Mike Leigh's. It covers issues of unemployment anorexia failure nervous breakdown and hope as they affect one suburban London family and their friends and acquaintances. The characters and story were created with and by the actors - giving a special edge and momentum to the unfolding events. Leigh's sharply satirical and unsentimentally compassionate view of life strikes a chord with audiences and critics alike. Life is Sweet brings together an impressive cast - including Alison Steadman ('Let Them Eat Cake') Jim Broadbent ('The Avengers') Jane Horrocks ('Little Voice') and Timothy Spall ('Topsy Turvey') - many of whom have worked with Leigh in the past as has producer Simon Channing-Williams. Career GirlsFormer college flatmates Annie (Lynda Steadman) and Hannah (Katrin Cartlidge) decide to meet up in London for the weekend. Naturally both girls have changed since their student days of some 10 years earlier. The curry loving Cure obsessed acne ridden and moody flatmates of yesteryear have been replaced by confident career girls of today. As they talk go flat-hunting get drunk and bump into numerous people from their past the girls start to reminisce upon their earlier friendship.