Angels in America
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Movie Reviews of Angels in America
Movie Review: Perfectly Depraved and Devoid of Fact
Summary: 5 Stars
There have been few movies that deserve the ratings this movie deserves. Never before have I seen such exquisite hatred from Hollywood that covers all the bases like this movie does. Conservatives, Religion, Republicans - all slammed effectively in one single movie that serves only one single purpose - to deceive. It is pure genius how Republicans are singled out and actually blamed for the AIDS epidemic, despite how Republicans have never promoted homosexuality and drug use - the very means by which AIDS initially spread like wildfire during the 80s and early 90s (a fact we all remember very well). This movie is truly worthy of the Michael Moore stamp of approval in first rate propaganda and disregard for anything sacred. It is also a brilliant example of perfectly deceptive packaging - just look at that cover! It will surely fool unsuspecting right-wing families into buying/renting it because it masks itself as some kind of Mel Gibson or Walt Disney movie, complete with zero description on the back of the cover as to what this movie actually contains (a brilliant plan to convert those right-wingers to liberalsim by tricking them). It also does a fantastic job of getting Mormonism completely wrong (Mormons, remember, faithfully refuse to abandon Leviticus 18:22, a COMMANDMENT that AIDS seems to magnify). About every concievable innacuracy one could conjure up about a religion is present in this movie while promoting a lifestyle that, if all practiced it, would doom the entire human race to extinction in a single generation due to lack of reproduction. A new low that should earn Hollywood the notoriety they so desire and certainly earn in spades with this triumph of cinematic flatulence. The utter degenerate state of humanity that this movie portrays truly serves the liberal agenda. But it also serves the conservative agenda even more, doggone it. For you see, as Hollywood continues it's downward spiral into the toilet, offending nearly everyone under the sun in the process, conservatives eagerly anticipate the next series of elections in which the Democrats (the political arm of Hollywood) will only continue to lose elections and scratch their heads as they wonder why. As the rest of the growing majority of Americans who continue to sit back in their increasingly populous red states, read their bibles, raise their children to know the difference between right and wrong, vote against those who promote this tripe, and watch the liberals reap what they have sown, we have to ensure that Hollywood continues to crank out this kind of entertainment so that our message continues to get out loud and clear.
Keep it coming, Hollywierd!
Movie Review: My understanding of what the moive means
Summary: 5 Stars
I think the movie is simply about choice until the last moment of the movie. Choices between heaven and America, choices between angels in heaven or angels in America, choices between dream or reality. (Heaven=angels in heaven=dream) and (America=angels in America=reality). I don't know if you can understand my using "=" here, it means "is related to".
Actually I lived in NYC for almost 2 years and walked through so many streets and paths, the saddest thing is that I suddenly realised that I didn't visit the center of central part, the angel, when I saw Angels in America. And I know, the America, the angels in America and the reality are our choices.
Conservative or liberal, Gay or straight, heaven or earth... Seemingly opposite, uncompromisable, but they are actually related and can exist together. People in the movie try to struggle about which side to choose, which side their lives should be at, they feel they need to choose, and have to choose. But in the end, they know they can just live the way arguing about it without being sharp and horrible, have a clear and final choice while trying to prove others' are wrong is really unnecessary.
And of course life is not a circle, life is progressive, from time to time you trap yourself into arguing with yourself then realising that the argue and communication themselves are progressive that make you understand more, and choosing a clear side is not the answer, you discover that you have reached a new level and prepare for a new beginning... Then you'll do it again and will reach a new balance,satisfying point.
But why the title is angelS in America, not angel in America if it is talking about that copper statue in NYC. Well, of course the angel is not a dead status, the angelS are us, the American people, being blessed and watched by God. Remember the end of movie, people together? They are just like ordinary American people, they do have their troubles in life, they still argue, but they also agree, they are lovely people, they can argue about big things like politics but still can live their lives and care about each other in a corner of NYC or a huge park in NYC.
Now we have realised it is actually really AngelS in America, the people in this good country.
Next time I go back to NYC, I need to go to the park... to see the statue, and to see the people.
(You may want to watch the beginning for many times, so you understand you really cannot distinguish between America (the land) and Heaven (the sky), you can always argue about that, but yet you have to admit that this is a great nation after all, God bless it!)
Movie Review: A Truly Touching and Wonderful Movie
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently rented this 2-set CD. I originally watched this when it was on HBO (in 2005, I think). I had forgotten what a masterpiece of filmmaking this was. Apparently, so has HBO. They won't show this again, but I can turn on and see "Batman Returns" any day of the week. Go figure.
Adapted from Tony Kushner's prize-winning "Angels in America/A Gay Fantasia on National Themes," Mike Nichols does a most superb job at directing this for the small screen. A winner of 5 Golden Globes and several Emmys, the play (and movie) deal with the early discovery of AIDS and its affect (or lack thereof) on the Reagan administration.
The major characters are Joe Pitt (played by Patrick Wilson); Roy Cohn (played by Al Pacino); Ethel Rosenberg, et al. (played by Meryl Streep); The Angel, et al. (played by Emma thompson); Prior Walter (played by Justin Kirk); Belize (played by Jeffrey Wright); Harper Pitt (played by Mary-Louise Parker), and Ben Shenkman (played by Louis Ironson). Meryl Streep is absolutely unbelievable in ANY role she plays here (as always). Al Pacino is just as fantastic as Roy Cohn. You just want to kill him, but (as the saying goes) he eventually gets what's coming to him.
Mary-Louise Parker defies description in her performance of the eternally depressed, pill-popping, wife-of-convenience, Harper Pitt. Patrick Wilson plays her husband of convenience who is so brainwashed by regligion, he sets himself on a path where neither he nor anyone who comes to associate him will ever be happy--although he so desparately wants to be. Justin Kirk plays the AIDS-ridden "prophet," that the angels have decided to contact. Too bad his agents or whomever it was involved with the movie thought only to nominate him as a supporting actor, when he is the main character in the play and movie. When they tried to right their wrong, the votes were in and he wound up being nominated for nothing! Jeffrey Wright reprised his role of Belize.
Although never preachy, this movie does deliver a very serious message: that gay people have (and want) just as much rights to live as others. Reagan had a great ability of burying his head in the sand on matters regarding AIDS, and it cost countless lives--both gay and straight.
This movie is divided into 6 parts, with a total running time of 352 minutes. I could have watched double that time. I loved it all. I did think when Prior made it to heaven, there should have been more to it than it showed, but it's the ending that I will NEVER forget. And I'm betting, neither will you. A must-see.
Movie Review: A Film For All Seasons
Summary: 5 Stars
Two hundred years from now, when the AIDS epidemic will be ancient history as both a vaccine has been developed and a cure found, when people want to know what the AIDS plague years of the 1980's were like, they can acquaint themselves with this marvelous work by Tony Kushner. This HBO production, directed by one of America's great directors Mike Nichols, (screenplay by the playwright) deserved every award it received. The acting is phenomenal. Meryl Streep literally becomes Ethel Rosenberg. The Roy Cohn deathbed scene where she recites the Kaddish is spellbinding. She is also perfect as Hannah, (such an Old Testament name) the Mormon mother. Of course she would wear sensible shoes and carry one of those awful rain scarves in her purse for rainy days. Al Pacino plays the vile Roy Cohn with everything he has. (Cohn was such a reprehensible human being that someone created a panel for him for the AIDS quilt that points out his awfulness, calling him a bigot as I recall.) Emma Thompson (we've all known someone just like her) is better as the nurse with a tattoo, too much eye makeup and a polyester nurse's uniform than as an angel. In the stage production, the angel's appearance is magical. You literally gasp when the angel, held up only by wires, first descends, appearing to Prior. That magic is difficult to translate to the screen and some of that wonderment is lost, as we get bogged down in the angel and heavenly scenes-- it's good to know however, that gay men go to San Francisco when they die-- but the film may ultimately belong to Jeffrey Wright who plays the effeminate African American nurse Belize.
Mr. Kushner is so ambitious, tackling homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, fundamentalist religion, closeted homosexuals, gay Republicans, the indifference of the Reagan administration to the first cases of AIDS because they were in the gay population and more-- and then friendship, the courage of the gay community, death and dying, love and ultimately hope. There are so many levels of meaning here and different plots that the playwright artfully brings together.
There is much humor here (the memorial service for the "glitter queen", for example, and more sadness. Parts of this play with make you weep. Some scenes are almost too painful to watch. Many of the lines approach poetry. ANGELS IN AMERICA is simply the best thing ever written about AIDS. How do you compare, say, a short story or a novel or a three act play for that matter with a six-hour epic? It is impossible to describe just how wonderful this production is.
Movie Review: A Triumph In Every Way
Summary: 5 Stars
Set in 1980s New York and subtitled "A Gay Fantasia on National Themes," the six-hour ANGELS IN AMERICA concerns a group of largely gay men who find themselves caught up in series of disasters that range from love to religion and from politics to philosophy--and most specifically caught between the rising tide of AIDS and a generally unsympathetic society.
In the midst of this, AIDS patient Prior Walter begins to have a series of visions, which may be fever dreams, medicine-induced hallucinations... or, most unnerving of all, real. His long dead ancestors rise to speak to him, the floor cracks open to reveal a burning book--and at the conclusion of the play's first half a beautiful woman with majestic wings crashes through his roof. She is the Angel of America. He is, she tells him, a prophet, and she has come to bring him a message for mankind.
Intertwined with Prior's other-earthly experiences are oddly parallel lives. Joe and Harper Pitt are a deeply dysfunctional couple doubting their faith in the Mormon Church, Joe a closeted homosexual, Harper a valium-addicted and mildly psychotic woman given to visions as strange as those of Prior Walter's. And as further counterpoint historical figure Roy Cohn (1927-1986), among the most sinister figures of 20th Century America, finds himself taunted by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg as he drifts toward his own AIDS-induced death. The characters swirl in and out of each other's lives and dreams, playing to stereotypes and yet defying them, arguing politics and philosophy and love and death--and it is fascinating stuff.
Although the play stunned 1990s audiences, most considered it utterly unfilmable due to both length and content. But this HBO-produced, Mike Nichols-directed version not only captures the power of the original, in some ways it improves upon it. Playwright Tony Kushner has adapted his work to the screen, rearranging certain problematic scenes and bits of dialogue to better effect, and certainly no one could argue with the cast, which is absolutely stunning in a series of multiple roles.
With a mad swirl of irony, intense drama, outrageous humor, and unexpected twists and turns, ANGELS IN AMERICA is almost sure to hold your attention--particularly if you recall the Ronald Reagan years well enough to recognize the truly bitter allegory the film offers on what many consider his largely absentee second term. Truly a must have, multi-layered, bearing repeated viewings, beautifully directed, performed, and filmed.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer