That’s the message I got from Leigh’s latest venture into Miseryland which is called “Another Year” because it covers one year in the life of the main protagonists. But it’s just another year like any other.

The director has his fans and I did enjoy “Secrets and Lies” and “Vera Drake” because they had substance. There was a denouement to them, a story that was engrossing.

This film unfortunately leaves you high and dry, in mid-sentence, so to speak, and that is disappointing.

“Another Year” has no development as such. A older couple living a very boring twilight life in a rather ordinary English suburban home which one critic described as well-to-do. Surely not! They are supposed to be happy together and while there is no conflict between them, there is also no spark or vitality in their lives. They seem disengaged from other things as they cultivate their allotment, a very British hobby.

Tom and Gerri, (a bit of Leigh’s humorous reference to the Cat and Mouse cartoon characters, which goes nowhere, unfortunately) are still working in their professions. Tom is a geologist and engineer and Gerri is a counsellor. Interestingly enough, their professions seem to have no bearing on their lives

Into their lives comes an array of troubled visitors who really need empathy but don’t receive it from their hosts. They are given meals and then sent back to continue their miserable lives without Tom or Gerri feeling anything for them. It’s as if the rest of the world doesn’t seem to matter to them.

Lesley Manville as Mary, the tragically lonely work colleague of Gerri is quite brilliant in her role. Her acting is outstanding. Mary elicites our sympathy and makes us resent Gerri’s callous indifference to her needs. To be fair to Gerri, however, Mary is too cloyingly needy and tiresome and Tom and Gerri don’t want to have their lives invaded by her. How far should we become involved in other people’s lives, is probably one of the main themes of this film. According to “Another Year” we should keep our distance, remain uninvolved.

The same goes for all the other characters in the film, who are meant to act as foils for “the happy couple.” I suspect that they invite these lost souls into their home to make themselves feel better by comparison. It’s a kind of perverted affirmation that they, Gerri and Tom, are okay.

So many melancholy people in this long, long film leave one with a depressed feeling. And yet it’s not a film to make you cry which is really strange. So much sadness and yet no tears. Very much like French existential literature which leaves one numb from lack of human feeling.

We get Leigh’s oft repeated message about life being very unbearable without companionship.

We also get the message that Mike Leigh’s film is not uplifting in a way that makes you glad you bothered to see it. This one isn’t entertaining either and should not be viewed by anyone contemplating suicide because if you feel that life is too sad and lonely to endure, then “Another Year” will only confirm it.

In all honesty, had it been showing on T.V I would have switched channels three quarters of the way through but I kept on hoping it would lead to something. It didn’t.

Take “The Social Network” as an example of this.

I had to laugh when a film critic by the name of Adam Kamien actually described the use of actor, Armie Hammer, in a dual role of identical twins, the Winklevoss brothers, as “a stroke of genius.” This is hardly new nor is it a stroke of genius. Does anyone remember “The Patty Duke Show” (1963-1966)? It’s a very old and common device in movie production.

Personally, I picked that it was a dual role as soon as I saw the Winklevosses on the screen and no, I had not looked up the cast before going to the movie theatre.

Why? Well, it seemed disjointed and poorly scripted. The main actor who played Mark Zuckerberg, was excellent. But the other actors resembled caricatures, monofaceted and so many of them overacted. It is not easy to make a story of a young man’s rise to fame and fortune tedious, but this film managed to do it.

We should have been fascinated by this “genius” but he seemed like he was just playing in the lost children’s section of Toys R US. Poor little hacker…

I found myself looking at my watch to see how long there is to go. There were some noisy coke (as in cocaine) scenes. The portrayal of young women in the film was abysmal. They all seemed to be rather sluttish, apart from the one who had broken Zuckerberg’s heart and sent him on the road to billions.

It was a rather sad and confusing movie which had much potential in the beginning but which failed to deliver. Having said all this, I realise that other reviews have been favourable and my opinion is not that of the majority.

I would even go so far as to admit that had I been watching “The Social Network” at home on TV I would have switched channels after the first dreary half hour, but you know how it is, I had paid for my movie ticket and by George I was going to get my money’s worth of suffering lol.

No matter how successful Curtis was he never forgot his humble Bronx roots and that was part of his charm.

I did a double take when I read that he was buried with a copy of “Anthony Adverse.” For some reason I got the notion that “Anthony Adverse” had been written by Henry Fielding, the Eighteenth Century novelist responsible for “Joseph Andrews” and “Tom Jones.”

Well, it did sound like the sort of thing that Fielding would have written. It could even have been the work of Samuel Richardson, perhaps. Imagine my surprise that Tony Curtis would have chosen to be buried with a copy of an English Eighteenth Century classic!

I was amazed and very impressed to have learned of this facet of Tony Curtis’s character. I mean, not only was Tony a hunk but he was also an intellectual! I practically swooned. He wasn’t just a pretty face.

I decided to google “Anthony Adverse”……….

The film began quite well but around the middle it began to wander off the track before coming back to the main theme of the alienation of a solitary and self-absorbed life coupled with a very implausible career of firing employees. George Clooney has the title role which does not sit well on him. He is okay but unimpressive especially when he decides to go mellow and become a nice man at his sister’s wedding. The whole bit about the wedding was schmaltzy and weak.

George’s character has a pragmatic sexual relationship with a rather unattractive person who is supposed to be the female version of the same callous character that George is. There is supposed to be a twist in the film but it’s not really a surprise. She was too unbelievable anyway. And that’s what is wrong with this film. The characters are one-dimensional. Clooney=selfish bastard, his playmate=also selfish, his boss=uber selfish. We get it. They are not nice people and they wreak havoc on the lives of fired employees.

I can’t help but wonder how the Brits and the French would have handled this theme. They would no doubt be more subtle and sophisticated. Unfortunately, Americans just can’t resist explaining everything. Even when the village idiot shouts “Enough, I understand what you’re getting at!” Americans have to continue with their examples and incidents until you wave the white flag. It’s often what is left unsaid that has the greatest impact and I wish that American movies would adopt that approach.

The only saving spark in the whole film is the young assistant that George takes on his trips. She at least provides some of the humour in the film. After trying to be dispassionate she discovers that the job is too soul-destroying. But then how many of us could last in that lousy job? Why would a company outsource its firing to strangers, anyhow? It simply is too incredible.

So what did I enjoy about the film, if anything? Well, it had no special effects, no violence, no car chases and no crudity. So that was good. I have to confess that I thought Reitman’s other effort, “Juno” was also a bit off. So perhaps I just don’t like his films. I am in the minority, however, so there you are.

I have heard that Wayne Carey who apparently can kick a football and a girlfriend has been put into the Hall of Fame. That’s Fame with an F not SH.

Two days ago some idiot “reformed” drug addict, who used to play football, almost brought our city to a standstill when he appeared in a football match. It was an anti-climax since he played badly, fell over, hurt himself and is now recuperating for the next month.

So now we will have to put up with progress reports on his health. He’s no example for our youth either, but all is forgiven if you play sport.

It’s not just the sportsmen who get off lightly when they commit a crime. I’ve already alluded to the aboriginal who sexually assaulted a four year old girl and got a suspended sentence.

Compare that leniency with the appropriate sentence given to a young couple in Germany who starved their baby daughter to death.

The couple were drug addicts and this is an important point because if they had been Australian the drug addiction would have been a mitigating circumstance as it often is with murderous drunk drivers. Had the couple been Australian sports stars then they would not have been sentenced at all. And had the couple been aboriginal then the do-gooders would have pleaded for understanding of their culture.

You see the law treats people differently even when it’s supposed to be blind and fair. I could add “deaf and dumb” to those attributes as well, but only for a price.

Even though it’s meant to take place in an urban setting in Michigan, it is essentially a good old-fashioned western. Solitary hero, Kowalski (Clint Eastwood), suffering from tragedies in the past, is fed up with humanity but comes good at the end and saves the day. There are goodies and baddies, and the goodies win, just the way, Eastwood and the rest of us would like it to be. I am calling the hero Eastwood because it’s Classic Eastwood we are watching.

Films are often full of promise at the beginning and somehow along the way they seem to stray from the denouement and fizzle out. It’s usually because the director doesn’t know how to direct a good ending and we are left dissatisfied. Or he simply doesn’t know when to shout “Enough”. So we walk out of the theatre wondering if we had missed something along the way.

But that’s not how it is with “Gran Torino.” The ending is satisfying and yet leaves you crying. You wish all bad people would get their come-uppins Eastwood style. It’s the “don’t mess with me or you’ll be very sorry” approach that warms the cockles of my heart.

And yet, the film has much pathos in it and I noticed that the film audience remained silent in their seats after the end of “Gran Torino.” That’s always a good test of whether they have been affected by it. And no, they weren’t asleep either.

From a logical point of view many of the scenes in the film are too black or white and characters are not rounded, but that’s the way of the western. Black hat fights with white hat and white hat wins. That’s how it used to be in the old days before political correctness. And there is something comfortably reassuring in Eastwood’s style of acting. He’s older but just as determined as he was when he said “Make my day” so long ago. It is important for him to be fair and fight fair even when he is violent. It’s not violence he wants but justice. He fights for the underdog and in this instance it is the oppressed Asian immigrants who live next door to him.

We expect the hero to win and he doesn’t let us down. He does it at a cost, though, but his life was over anyway after his wife died. The film opens with the funeral of his wife and here we are shown the dynamics in the family. His two sons have no interest in him and all they want is to inherit his home. Even his granddaughter is a bit of a greedy slag as are his two daughters-in-law. I wish that at least one member of his family would have had some redeeming features, just for the sake of balance, but there isn’t one.

No wonder he’s fed up with the lot of them. Well, you can’t choose family, can you?

Embittered and haunted he may be, but bravery redeems him after his kindly Asian neighbours win him over. It’s all a bit schmaltzy at this point and I actually feel that Eastwood overacts during the first half of the film. He is meant to be surly, but he walks around growling too much all the time as if he is uncomfortable being so racist towards his Asian neigbours.

Some critics wrote that only Eastwood could play the role of the disgruntled and prejudiced Korean veteran, but I think that Rod Steiger could have done it as well and perhaps Harvey Keitel. Nevertheless, Eastwood is terrific in the second half.

The second half of the film is definitely much better. As I said in my intro, the ending is worth it. There is nothing more exquisite than retribution perfectly executed. Classic Eastwood, directing, producing and acting is a dish to be savoured in today’s world of the “what’s in it for me” generation.

As it is, we can’t help feeling that Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April (Kate Winslet) are a couple of spoilt American middle class brats of the Fifties who are simply disenchanted with their marriage. Surprise, surprise, she wants more out of life than a comfortable home and two children and he is bored with his very secure job.

Today as the economic crisis grows, this couple would be envied. People losing their homes and their jobs are bound to be less sympathetic of people who are emotionally unfulfilled, who want to find themselves, as the saying goes. That’s what I meant when I wrote that “Revolutionary Road” has been released at the wrong time.

During the post-war period of the Fifties, jobs were so secure that all the men in Frank’s office in New York city have time to sit around and hardly do any work. In fact, their primary concern is to not be caught loafing when the boss comes around. Frank is one of those unambitious men who found his war service more exciting than his current job in the big company. He is bored and doesn’t want the uneventful life that his father led. But is he prepared to do anything about it?

The film director, Sam Mendes, who is Winslet’s husband in real life, has tried to represent the Fifties by having everyone going around smoking incessantly and wearing Fifties hats to work. The Wheelers have a shiny car in the driveway and Frank says “swell” quite often, but I think that perhaps the Fifties effect might have been more credible had the film been shot in black and white. Kate Winslet, for example, doesn’t look plausible as a Fifties woman. Her appearance is more 21st century. DiCaprio passes for Fifties more convincingly because of his haircut and clothes but I think that Mendes has not succeeded in representing the period as he should have.

In my view, Mendes has chosen a period which is well and truly gone. Nowadays, people can travel wherever they like. They don’t stick to boring jobs for long. They can get abortions and women have more freedom to work outside the home. So it’s hard for the audience to become involved in issues that are in the past. And I don’t believe that “Revolutionary Road” is of any value as a historical documentary because it lacks rapport and authenticity. As entertainment value, it earns zero points.

As for the casting of the two main leads, well, this is not the first time they have appeared together in a film. Winslet and DiCaprio were star-crossed lovers in “Titanic” and I said it then and I will repeat it this time that Winslet looks too old to be DiCaprio’s love interest. He has a perpetually Peter Pan young boy look and the two of them together just don’t gel.

The other actors in the film are quite good but they mostly have cameo roles as the two leads dominate the scene. Even though the film was based on Richard Yates’ novel of the same name, one could have set the entire film on a theatre stage. We are well aware that the other characters act as foils for this couple. They are Fifties archetypes of conformist personalities.

The only character who is different, however, is the son of the real estate agent. He is mentally ill and has just been let out of hospital. His role is that of a Greek chorus, a commentator who explains to the dumb audience what the film is all about- just in case you didn’t get the message, loud and clear, that the Wheelers are not happy with their lot. And, of course, he advises them to be adventurous. Carpe Diem–now there’s a novel idea!

Anyhow, April Wheeler decides that they should go and sell up everything and live in Paris for six months. She believes that it will revive their marriage and Frank thinks her suggestion is “swell.” I suspect that had April lived in the Sixties she would have travelled to India for a spell at an Ashram and come back with a dose of diarrhoea.

The puzzling thing about “Revolutionary Road” is that although the Wheelers have two young children these are conspicuously absent from the home. While the arguments and rantings continue there is no presence of children and that seems very strange in the “Father Knows Best” age. It’s as if Mendes forgot about them from time to time and then brought them onto the set only when necessary. Even my husband commented on their continuous absence.

The film is slow and ends predictably. The storyline is not devastating as we were told to expect, but perhaps I have become too cynical be shocked by married couples being fed up with one another. It’s hardly an original theme and Winslet has acted in a very similar role to this one in “Little Children” (2006)

If anyone in the slums of developing countries saw “Revolutionary Road” they would wonder what all the fuss was about. Perhaps April Wheeler should have been offered a chance to take part in “Wife Swap”. And then the boring suburbs of Connecticut would have appealed to her a bit more.

Anyhow, back to Obama. I would have thought that he would arrive on water, walking on it, in fact, and then he would turn that water into wine. My point is that too much pressure is being placed on the poor man. He is expected to be the panacea for every ill in the world, apparently, and it’s so unrealistic.

The new President will have so much to take care of. The economy, the troubles in the Middle East, the war in Afghanistan, the health system, the tax system, the education system, the illegals, global warming and carbon whatsits all demand immediate attention.

For crying out loud, give the man a break! He is not Mighty Mouse nor is he the Messiah. He seems to be an affable and talented man who wants to do his best for America. And it’s pleasing to see a man of colour become President. But if one builds him up to be any more than human, not only will the honeymoon be brief but the marriage will be annulled. And that would be a shame.

Howerd was a very weird man who had terrible sexual problems. He was homosexual but was struggling against his urges since it was illegal to be homosexual before the late Sixties. He was also into paying people to give him manual relief, anywhere and anytime. It was pretty pathetic and Walliams’ portrayal left nothing to the imagination. So quite frankly, I can never look at Frankie again without wanting to puke.

That was last night, and so tonight I decided to watch “The Curse of Steptoe” about the relationship between Harry H. Corbett and Wilfred Brambell who acted as the father and son team of rag and bone men in the famous sitcom “Steptoe and Son”. As a production, it was quite superb, far superior to the Frankie Howard one.

But I was taken aback to discover that Wilfred Brambell who was Steptoe in “Steptoe and Son” was also battling with his homosexuality. When he was seen entering toilets for anonymous sex and even being arrested, I decided that the British novelist, George Eliot, was absolutely correct when she said that if you want to go on admiring your hero, then you must never meet him in person. You are bound to be disappointed.

Sometimes it is better not to know too much about the private lives of actors and other famous people. We need illusions and fantasies and we need heroes.

The truth is that nobody is perfect and we know that to be true and yet who of us wasn’t disappointed when we learned that President John F. Kennedy was off having affairs while his wife gave birth to their son?

Who of us wasn’t disappointed that Rock Hudson turned out to be totally not interested in women? And what about Mr Brady in “The Brady Bunch” who could never have been involved with Mrs Brady?

Of course, in our minds, we know that actors are only acting, but in this age of information, it would have been nicer not to know that it was all B.S. I certainly have no respect for Kennedy since discovering how promiscuous he was, and I can’t watch Rock Hudson in any romantic role any more. In a way, I feel that we women were conned and that’s an unpleasant experience.

Nowadays, actors don’t have to be secretive about their sexuality and that is certainly progress. It must have been stressful and even dangerous to live with all that subterfuge. Blackmail would have been a terrible reality as well.

So it’s good that people can be out of the closet and yet not suffer the consequences. Except in romantic leads, that is.

I can’t think of any actor who is openly gay and yet can play a romantic lead and be accepted for it. I suspect that Rupert Everett will never get a romantic heterosexual role in cinema ever again. There’s something about love scenes that make the audience want to relate to them. It’s part of our need to identify with the heroine. It’s quite ridiculous since we are prepared to accept that Superman can fly. But that’s the way it is.

I do wonder, however, what homosexual men thought of two heterosexuals acting in “Brokeback Mountain”? Did they feel the same way as women do about Rock and Rupert and countless others?

So please, no more revelations about the ins and outs of “icons”. It only spoils it, as George Eliot said.