“You think you can recapture your youth by fucking it. You don't wanna fuck me. You'll catch something cruel.”

Mike Leigh’s Naked is a riveting parable brimming with a scornful wit and a humanity unseen through initial viewing. The film chronicles the exploits of the sardonic and nihilistic vagabond, Johnny, a man whom is first introduced as he brutally rapes a young woman in a back alleyway. Fearing the repercussions of his actions, Johnny flees to the streets of London. There, he tries to justify his pathetic existence by ranting to strangers and shaming their beliefs. And for the next two hours, we are forced to accompany the far from empathetic Johnny as he wanders around London, oppressing the lives…

How to review your favourite film, or even worse, how to review your favourite film when that film is Mike Leigh's Naked?

Naked starts of rough and only gets bleeker. But that's only a small part of what makes this a masterpiece.
First and foremost Naked is abouth David Thewlis' character Johnny, unenmployed both by choice and by circumstance, who personifies the ugly side most commonly shoved under the carpet in favour of the success stories. Yes, we're talking post-Thatcher Britain, but as far as I can tell there's many similairities to present time, and the world Leigh shows us is not limited to a certain era. But it might be limited to big cities.
Johnny is a man who…

96/100

[originally written on my blog]

Nonstop dazzling, both as logorrheic assault ("I sent off for one of those little Linguaphone packages, 'Talk Shite in a Fortnight.' It's all going very well. I haven't quite got the hang of the transitive verbs yet...") and as a stygian tour of London's underclass, with its infinite manifestations of sodden misery. Thewlis placed second in the Skandies poll for best performance of the '90s, and was robbed; there's never been a more incisive portrait of scabrous wit as defense mechanism, which is to say that no other actor has ever achieved such a sustained simultaneous peak of exhilaration | valley of depression. It's like watching an Olympic diver perform a double somersault tuck…

Mike Leigh’s BAFTA-nominated British drama, for adults only, stars David Thewlis as a Mancunian lad down in London who falls prey to the city’s madness. Also starring Lesley Sharp, Katrin Cartridge and Greg Cruttwell.

The second feature film that writer-director Mike Leigh did in this decade, which got a British Academy Film Award nomination for Best British Film, concentrates on a jobless Mancunian who outlets his fury on unwary unknowns as he goes on board a nightly London journey.

David Thewlis gives a very good performance in his part as Johnny Fletcher, the lad who certainly makes his feelings very clear and is certainly not a likeable character when it comes to him and women. He suits his role well…