I Do Movies Badly: Introduction to Mike Leigh (featuring Tyler Smith of Battleship Pretension)
Professor Tyler Smith makes his second appearance on I Do Movies Badly this year to discuss how he easily could have split his Mike Leigh recommendations into two episodes. We’ve only got time for one though, so we’ll have to make do with a discussion on his approach to why he teaches some films over others in his classes, what it means for Leigh to be an Oscar-nominated writer despite such a heavy improvisational directing style, what it means to be objective vs. observational, and a little bit of fantasy film casting (who would Eddie Marsan play in your Harry Potter franchise?). Avoiding Leigh’s more tightly controlled period pieces, Tyler recommends Naked (1993), Secrets & Lies (1996), and Happy-Go-Lucky (2008).
The only Leigh film I’ve seen so far is Secrets & Lies. It jerked more tears from me than any actual tearjerker simply because crying is contagious and Cynthia cries all the time. It somehow manages to be a good movie even while spending that much time with such an annoying character.
My go-to example of a miscategorized “lead” performance due to memorability is Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs. His total screentime is famously short, and he really is just a supporting character in Starling’s story (he’s not even the antagonist of the film).
I tend to think Robin Hanson is right about cynicism generally being more accurate, including the cynical take on cynicism (which would be metacynicism). A bully might have a troubled home life, but what does that actually tell you? Plenty of kids with such backgrounds don’t become bullies, and privileged kids bully as well.
Since you brought up “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”, Vulture recently ranked all of Tarantino’s movies and put that at #3 (the highest of his 21st century work):
https://www.vulture.com/2015/08/every-quentin-tarantino-movie-ranked.html