Meantime (1981)
by Mike Leigh
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Product details
Actor: Jeff Robert, Marion Bailey, Pam Ferris, Phil Daniels, Tim RothDirector: Mike Leigh
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Color, NTSC
Running Time: 103 minutes
Release Date: 1999-01-26
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Fox Lorber
Studio: Fox Lorber
VHS Movie Reviews of Meantime (1981)
Movie Review: 5 stars for the film, 0 stars for the sound....
Summary: 2 Stars
The soundtrack on this film is truly horrible... HOWEVER, I did find that by adjusting the balance completely to the right, I was able to hear just the dialogue, without the dreadful, invasive sound effects track getting in the way. The DVD is unwatchable unless you do this!Movie Review: Tim Roth & Gary Oldman is the best...
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie is a great movie...to see Tim Roth and Gary Oldman when they first started out is a treat..in this movie they were kids...Roth was around 18-19 when he made this role.I enjoyed this film a raw and gritty look at a working class family and their friends..the stand out performances are Roth and Oldman incredible.......
..i hope the distributors of Made in Britain makes this movie and the meantime/made in britain double pack availble to regional 1 folks.......
Movie Review: One Star for the DVD only
Summary: 1 Stars
Don't buy this DVD. The sound is bad. The dialect in Leigh's films can be hard enough for us Yanks without having it be virtually inaudible and painfully blotted out by the music. The mix of this DVD is really bad and it spoils the movie. That said, the movie is fantastic; too bad the DVD does it such an injustice.Movie Review: Don't buy this DVD.
Summary: 1 Stars
The sound [is bad]. Leigh's characters' dialect is hard enough to understand sometimes but on this DVD the dialogue is inaudible and much softer than the music itself, which blots it out most of the time. Frustrating -- because the movie is fantastic.Movie Review: A wonderful movie, an awful DVD
Summary: 3 Stars
I'd give the movie five stars. The problem is, the DVD release from Fox Lorber is awful. There's something seriously wrong with the soundtrack; the dialog elements are drowned out by the music, and there's a synchronization problem that often leaves the left and right channel staggered by about half a second. Even more distracting, added sound effects often come from the wrong channel compared to the supposed visual source of the sound. My guess is that instead of using a properly mixed mono soundtrack, Fox Lorber went back to the multi-channel master tapes for the mono soundtrack and used them as a fake stereo master -- but did a really bad job on the mix.
Whatever the technical explanation, it ruined my enjoyment of the movie.
Summary of Meantime (1981)
This early Mike Leigh film was made for British television in 1983 (released theatrically in 1985), and introduced both Gary Oldman and Tim Roth. Set in the Thatcher era, the story--typically for Leigh--is more a matter of dramatic evolution than a conventionally realized script. The action revolves around a middle-class family whose male members are all on the government dole, and whose matriarch (Marion Bailey) is long-suffering in the sight of her two sons, one a half-wit (Roth) and the other a cynical bum (Phil Daniels). Oldman plays the latter's skinhead pal, mostly a goof with no future, and Alfred Molina portrays a relative of the brothers strongly resistant to nudging their lives in a more constructive direction. The story, such as it is, is actually a series of discrete, deceptively unambitious, and highly entertaining scenes that could just as easily stand on their own as belong to some greater whole. Leigh, not quite fully baked as a filmmaker in the early 1980s, occasionally engages a rather obvious wit, such as shooting a long take in a laundry room from an angle that favors the sight of a washing machine and ignores the characters from the waist up. The remarkable actors, however, are as deeply immersed in their roles as in any of Leigh's work, and the film is ultimately as moving and funny as one expects from this unique director. --Tom KeoghDrama Video
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