To laugh and to cry go hand in hand in life, and no one knows that better than Mike Leigh, who shines a light on the ways that we bury ourselves within, afraid to reveal our imperfections to the world. Sometimes, you have to laugh your way through the pain, and Secrets & Lies allows us to do that with these incredible characters: messy, flawed, human, and performed to perfection by this cast. Brenda Blethyn and Marianne Jean-Baptiste especially are deep wells of emotion.

Still not quite obsessed with this movie, but god, if it wasn’t a hell of a time in a sold out crowd at Film Forum amongst the girls, the gays, the theys, and the film bros of BFC 🫶🏼

Monumental in its scale, but I found it a little tough to remain engaged with on an emotional investment level.

imagine this: 

me, Christmas Eve, wrapped in a warm blanket, a cup of hot morning coffee, turning on this movie and absolutely sobbing my eyes out at all the Da’Vine Joy Randolph scenes

sorry to say I really hated this :) 

every “scary” moment, every performance (minus Maika who is innocent), every piece of scoring was so manufactured to ~CrEeP~ out the audience instead of letting the horror speak for itself. 

just always found it to be PERFORMING horror instead of actually BEING horror, ya know what I mean???

Nic Cage really went to the Joaquin-Phoenix-in-the-Joker school of “crazy acting” didn’t he? His performance is such a huge misfire for me, throwing spaghetti at the “psycho” wall and hoping some of it sticks. And that also sums up how I feel about pretty much the entire film.