Angels in America

Rating:
Summary: A must see for everyone
Review: Many people get stuck on the fact that Angels In America contains many gay themes, and it's sad. The themes in this film run so far beyond gays and into every vein of American society. I challenge everyone to view this film or see the play even if you are vehemently anti-gay. I guarantee it will open your eyes to a picture much much bigger than you can ever imagine. I don't believe this movie at any time condemns anyone for their beliefs, it simply asks us to evaluate our beliefs, and to question the status quo.

I was a lighting designer for a production of this (both parts!) while I was in college, and it opened my eyes then. To see a movie made of it is simply wonderful. I think Kushner did a wonderful job translating it for the screen. The director I worked under always said this play was really a film, and he was absolutely right.

I refuse to call this a movie because to me a movie is just another thing to watch. This is truly a film. It is film at it's finest, coming together with theatre to truly touch our hearts. Please, see this film. You will walk away asking yourself more questions than you ever thought possible.

Rating:
Summary: From stage to film other worldly
Review: It is a rare thing indeed when a play in this day and age with this kind of subject matter that did very well on the stage can be captured so ethereally by the camera. This film not only tugs at your heart but it opens it as well by inviting you into this world and holding your hand through it, leading you to the other side. Questions are asked and like in everyday life there are no clear cut answers. But the questions are provocative and the answers we do get are enlightening, and they lead to other questions. Sometimes in life the destination isn't the goal, but the journey to get there. All we really know how to do is survive because that's all we can do and sometimes that's enough.

This film is also poinant because right now in 2004 there are people out there who think AIDS and the devastating effects it has on people is over because a few drug companies have come up with something that works for some (not all). Angels in America brings it back down to the human level of suffering, while at the same time asking us exalted questions not only about faith and destiny put the level of that faith, and our understanding of our destiny.

Who we are isn't dictated to us by the level of our adversity, but by how we address it. With what dignity we come to the table and confront our fears, our anger and our pain. One can only be defeated if one refuses to get back up again.

Rating:
Summary: One of the most brilliant motion pictures of our time
Review: I'm not joking.

I'll be frank: I was hyped up for this film. Even ignoring the incredible play that is actually life changing, it has a stellar cast and incredible behind the scenes crew. I wanted it to be good; I needed it to be good. To say that it superceded my expectations is an understatement.

This play/movie challenges and provokes; entertains and amuses; floods you with grief and compassion. Those final words (which I won't spoil if you haven't seen it) make my heart sing. It features career defining work from Streep, Parker, Wilson and Pacino (Streep in particular is stellar in three different roles), and what had better be career exploding roles for Patrick Wilson, Justin Kirk, Ben Shenkman, and Jeffrey Wright. These gentlemen are doing work that they'll have a hard time topping. Wright manages to take Kushner's poetry and transform it into something Whitmanesque, Shakespearean in it's grandeur and heartbreaking imagery. He does more with a glance than most actors can do with an entire script. Patrick Wilson makes Joe's pain so real that it's heartwrenching for the audience. When he utters "I'm going to hell for doing this", you can't help but cry out in sympathy. Kirk is phenomenal as our leading character - he mixes pathos with deep (and broad) humour, and not only provides the biggest laughs (well, Wright too), but it's only because the comedy is rooted in pain. Shenkman has the most difficult role - he's the author's stand in. He's also kinda unsympathetic, and his hyperintelligence isn't portrayed as well as it should be (director/writer, not actor), but Shenkman manages to pull of these disparate pieces into a cohesive whole.

I'm giving it five stars not because it's perfect (indeed, there are a few little flaws), but because anything this good doesn't need to be perfect. Anything with this much stuff, in terms of ideas, drama, humour, depth and profundity is reall quite something. The opening credits are gorgeous (seriously breathtaking. That's how good this movie is).

Watch it, treasure it, remember it, and whenever someone bashes Hollywood for producing crap, remind them that it can also produce beautiful things. This is one of them

Rating:
Summary: A profound human dimension amid the politics and pain
Review: A jaw-dropping film adaptation of Tony Kushner's epic, 5-hour play, which was a defining artistic statement documenting the political and social upheaval that AIDS-HIV disease brought to America's gay community and to the wider America around it. Mixing agitprop and camp with magical realism and utter, heart-rending, pathos, Kushner and director Mike Nichols bring the story to the screen in a big, big way, with all-around amazing performances by a perfectly cast ensemble. Al Pacino gets to chew up yards of scenery in his portrayal of the sleazy, venal, far-rightwing attorney Roy Cohn (who acted as Joe McCarthy's point man in the infamous 1950s prosecution of "atom spies" Julius and Ethel Rosenberg) and for once, all of Pacino's high-decibel yelling pays off with some real dramatic ooompf.

There are a lot of things that you could comment on in this play -- the exploration of Jewish-American assimilation, the powerful reaffirmation of a supposedly marginalized leftist perspective, etc. -- but the most profound insight Kushner has to offer is about who the real redeeming angels will have to be in our nation's coming cultural reconciliation. The humanity that he is able to impart into the character of the middle-American Mormon, Mother Pitt (played faultlessly by Meryl Streep), is a marvel of modern political drama: and it rings undeniably true. Pushing past our narrowly defined social and political "roles," and into our shared humanity, is the only road open to folks who want to see America's moral and ethical core liberated from the ideological intrusions of the religious far-right, and the resulting frustrated anger of the disenfranchised middle-liberal-left. In a strictly us-vs-them world view, Mother Pitt would be derided by those on the we're-here-we're-queer Left... but as many people have learned, particularly amid the devastating upheavals of the HIV crisis, our real emotional lives are (ideally) not ruled by dogma. Mother Pitt isn't just a caring parent, she's also a kind, pragmatic person, and for her, the most pragmatic choice when confronted with an epidemic, is to simply offer sympathy and solace. What could be more natural? Let's hope her example prevails.

Rating:
Summary: The CITIZEN KANE of the Modern Era
Review: My expectations were high when I learned that HBO was going to spend over $60 million on an adaptation of Tony Kushner's extraordinary 6-hour epic play, but I could nt have imagined that the resulting film would move to the top of my list of best films ever made in the United States - but that is precisely what Angels in America has done.

Streep and Pacino deliver the finest performances of their careers here (Streep in 4 roles!). Emma Thompson is radiant. And the performances of Jeffrey Wright, Mary-Louise Parker, Justin Kirk and Ben Shenkman positively shine.

And the WRITING and DIRECTION! As close to Shakespearean as any American work I have ever read. And scenes that captivate in their composition and lighting, in their structure and their content. And a magical blending of profundity, humor, pathos, tragedy, and ultimately, the triumph of the human spirit over desperation and resignation. A musical score to match the high levels of word and vision.

In short, this film is nothing short of miraculous. All who worked on this masterpiece should be proud of their achievement. Angels in America stands as testimony to what the human mind can accomplish at its finest and most creative.

Rating:
Summary: Magical, fantastical, wonderful
Review: Nichols' film version of Kushner's play is faithful to the ethereal effervescence of the original. The performances by ALL of the actors are pitch-perfect (Mary-Louise Parker is particularly forceful, as is the brilliant Jeffrey Wright.) I am not using the word "wonderful" aimlessly: the film is literally full of wonder. My only gripe (aside from the fact that not one of the main actors is gay) is that Nichols decided to cut the line "Very Steven Spielberg" at the end of Millenium Approaches. That may seem like a ridiculously mundane gripe, but that one line encapsulates the entire power and point of Kushner's play (according, too, to Kushner)! The play is a reponse to the overly schmaltzy barrage of AIDS dramas in the 1980s. Society, it seemed, accepted gay men only as subjects of death and sappy sentiment. In the play-text, Kushner takes the most potentially sentimental moment in the play (Prior is at rock-bottom! The Angel crashes through the roof with sublime, spiritual, stunning force!)...and undercuts it with Prior's campy response, exposing the fakery and artificiality of straight society's view of gay men. Alas, this production decides to forsake powerful cultural critique for unabashed sentiment, playing it safe in more ways than one, in what is an otherwise perfect rendition.

Rating:
Summary: A BIG surprise!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: First saw "Angels" advertised as I drove down New York City's West Side Highway and saw a HUGE billboard ad. Was a little bit cynical about how good it would be. Watched it on HBO, and what can I say???? BRILLIANT!!!!!!
The performances, direction, cinematography blew me away.
Had only seen Part Two performed on stage, so was intrigued to see the "whole thing".
EASY to say that Pacino, Streep, Emma Thompson were amazing, but SO were everybody involved in this production.
IF it had been theatrically released, it would have SWEPT the Oscars.
Buy, WATCH, and appreciate sheer brilliance!!!

Rating:
Summary: Pretty Close to Perfect
Review: Having read the play I was thinking how a movie could never live up to it. I was wrong. The entire cast is amazing and I will certainly never forget it as a whole. I invited people over for each night it played and all of us loved it. I will definitely own this and I think anyone who has and interest in the play and even some who don't should at least see it. Worth every Emmy it won and every penny you will spend.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant performances, decent direction...
Review: Let me get this out of the way right now- I am gay, and I am a student of theater. So, I am intimately familiar with Angels in America. It is my favorite contemporary play of all time, bar none. It might be on par with Shakespeare, I don't know. So, when I heard that HBO was doing a version of this, I was, like another reviewer, intrigued and frightened. My fears were assuaged when I found out who would be in it. (Mary Louise Parker and whatnot)
When I watched this montrously epic play come to life onscreen, I was more than satisfied. The directing was ok, a little heavy on the mystical elements of the play and lacking in the play's abundant humor. However, the performances made up for this. I think my favorite performance of all of them was Mary Louise Parker. The woman should win every acting award available, be it Oscar, Emmy, Tony, or anything else, for this performance. I have always known she was good, but I didn't know she was THIS good. Oh, my, is all I have to say. I go back to it, and watch it again and again. She is absolutely one of the finest actresses of our time, one of the finest. My other favorite performances were Ben Shenkman as Louis, and Jeffrey Wright as Belize. Shenkman really fleshed out the character, made him more interesting than I remember. And Wright took the minor character of Belize and made him one of the more memorable people in the story. You could just look at him and tell he was brimming with emotion.
Thanks HBO, for doing justice to this monumental piece of theater.
A note: I was not all that impressed with Justin Kirk. He is a magnificent actor, and I would love to see him onstage, where he is best. But as Prior, he just didn't get it for me. He was fine, really emotional, but lost the humor the character needs. Too heavy on the self pity. Just my two cents worth-

Rating:
Summary: A Panopoly of Talent
Review: Part One: THE MILLENNIUM APPROACHES
Tony Kushner's ANGELS IN AMERICA created a major sensation when it was produced in the mid 1980s in New York and Los Angeles (and subsequently in theaters across the country). Not only is this a magnificently written drama whose seed lies in the agar plate of America in the time of Reagan, AIDS, post-Vietnam trauma, and general angst, it is presented in a long, two part production that demands much of the audience - not only in physical endurance, but in emotional vulnerability. That Kushner succeeded in making his points is evident in the continuing productions of his bipartite play. And now HBO has granted Director Mike Nichols a huge budget, his choice of the finest actors available, and an uncut presentation of this historically important work for television audiences. Yes, the experience is different when the play is transformed to film, but this transformation was with the complete blessing of Kushner so we must accept that this version is on target with Kushner's concepts.
The story is so well known that it need not be summarized, other that it is a series of messages about mortality, moral decline, the exigencies of dealing with AIDS as a paradigm for the possible extinction of the human race, or more poetically - the millennium, and the importance of connection between souls in a time of terror. The cast is superb - yes, different from the stage production with the exception of the brilliant Jeffrey Wright - and Mike Nichols draws performances from such luminaries as Meryl Streep (a rabbi, as mother of the main character, Ethel Rosenberg), Emma Thompson (a street bum, the nurse, and the Angel Messenger), Al Pacino (in an inordinately affecting portrayal of the usually despicable Roy Cohn), Mary Louise Parker in her finest acting performance to date, and Justin Kirk as the lead. All of the "minor" roles (such as the uncredited Michael Gambon, Patrick Wilson, etc) are played to perfection, the appearance of delusional characters is splendid in a surreal, theatrical fashion, and the visual effects are compelling.
After this satisfying Part One THE MILLENNIUM APPROACHES it is with great anticipation that we await Part Two PERESTROIKA. The play/film deals with challenging ideas and it is to the audience's credit that the work is being so well accepted. But enough said. The true brilliance is in the poetic writing of Tony Kushner who deserves every kudo and award available for this daring and provocative and wholly poignant masterwork.
Part Two: PERESTROIKA
Part Two of Tony Kushner's brilliant adaptation of his own play ANGELS IN AMERICA is in many ways more compelling than Part One, due in part to the stunning visual effects afforded film vs stage, but also because of the heightened writing level for his characters. The actors continue to create wholly three dimensional characters, each surpassing their own high standards. The lines are delivered in a near
Shakespearean manner - but then the lines are WRITTEN with a near Shakespearean quality! (...) three hours of an extended tale requires more room than this space allows. But the message is clear: ANGELS IN AMERICA is the most important work to appear on television. Mike Nichols direction, Thomas Newman's musical score (rapturously orchestrated by Thomas Pasatieri), and all the creators of the special effects and cinematography deserve Emmy Awards and more. This is simply brilliant theater and it will be available on DVD soon.