Apart from being the only famous person I've ever seen in Kebab Delite in Wood Green, Mike Leigh is probably the most consistently brilliant film director of the modern era. "Career Girls" has attracted less critical praise than some of his other films, possibly because audiences found the way the characters accidentally ran across each other a bit contrived. Well, forget all that. The strength of this extraordinarily moving film is that, though the characters are deliberately slightly exaggerated, they are essentially incredibly true to life, in a way that Hollywood couldn't even begin to understand. Having been at college myself during (roughly) the period shown in the film I can testify that it is packed with eerily accurate details (e.g. wearing swimming goggles when cooking, Robert de Niro poster on wall etc.).
A high-ranker in a canon composed more or less entirely of classics.
A high-ranker in a canon composed more or less entirely of classics.