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Holistic Guidance - Angels in America
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List Price: $19.98
Our Price: $14.99
Your Save: $ 4.99 ( 25% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: HBO Home Video
Starring: Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Patrick Wilson, Mary-Louise Parker
Directed By: Mike Nichols
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 9780783129501
Format: Anamorphic
ISBN: 0783129505
Label: HBO Home Video
Manufacturer: HBO Home Video
Number Of Items: 2
Publisher: HBO Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2004-09-14
Running Time: 352
Studio: HBO Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 2003-12-07
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Editorial Reviews:
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Academy Award-winners Al Pacino Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson lead an all-star cast in a 6-hour HBO Films Event. Directed by Mike Nichols and written by Tony Kushner based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning play: Angels in America.Running Time: 352 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre:Â DRAMA UPC:Â 026359229923 Manufacturer No:Â 92299
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Hopelessly intriguing, but confusing
Comment: This film completely engrossed me, even though I couldn't for the life of me tell you what it was really, truly about. I mean, of course the film is about being gay in New York in the 1980s as a new and deadly disease swirls all around. Perhaps it was the fantasy sequences that got me.
The acting was fabulous, especially those actors (already mentioned many times by other reviewers) who took multiple roles. Justin Kirk and Jeffrey Wright were a wonder. I had only seen Wright in one other movie (Basquiat, that was him, wasn't it?) and I liked him then...
I still cannot figure out why Joe Pitt is shunned at the end, even as his mother becomes central to the in-group. Or, does Joe - the model of right-wing Republicanism who perhaps grows/changes least during the film - do the shunning?
Don't expect any easy answers or - perhaps - even likable characters in this one (I did like Prior and Harper Pitt, though). Do expect to be challenged to your core by this lengthy, entertaining, thought-provoking piece.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Monumental
Comment: I'm not a gay person, and I have not had many gay friends, but I watched this series and found it to be tremendously moving and compelling. It's something that should be seen by everyone.
The acting by all concerned is incredible, and not just the powerhouse names like Al Pacino and Meryl Streep. Mary-Louise Parker is brilliant, as is Justin Kirk as Prior Walter, the main character (now doing great work in Weeds, along with Mary-Louise again). Emma Thompson's nurse is amazing. Tony Kushner's dialogue is endlessly funny, sad, provocative, blistering, heart-rending.
This movie goes way beyond mere sexual orientation. It will forever change--for the better--the way you view your fellow human beings.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Overlong, dramatically crippled and full of unecessary elements.
Comment: It was with a lot of anticipation that watched ANGELS IN AMERICA - the adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize winning play about the HIV outbreak during the Reagan years.
Lots of people here have criticized this 6-hour HBO huge production for political reasons... or because they disagree with some of the views axpressed... or because it supposedly glorifies this or that... or because Ethel Rosemberg is portraited in a certain way... etc.
But ANGELS IN AMERICA disappointed me simply because of its weaknesses as a film.
FIRST - It is a 6-hour film that has no material to be 6 hours long. At best, it could have been 3 hours long. I have nothing about long films when "long" is a consequence of a real dramatic necessity. Here it looks like the producers decided to stretch the screenplay in order to make it look more epic or more overwhelming, or more important, or something it clearly is not. MAYBE it was just a way of justifying the big budget.
SECOND - The scenes are clearly overlong with lots and lots of excessive dialog. The dialog is sometimes beautiful, powerful and poetic... but lost in the excess of talking heads.
THIRD - The ending itself lasts over 30 minutes. It looks like the third LORD OF THE RINGS: it takes forever to end!!
FOURTH - While Al Pacino (the lawyer who dies of AIDS), Jeffrey Wright (unforgettable as Belize, the gay black nurse) and Justin Kirk (as the AIDS victim who is abandoned by his boyfriend) all give beautiful performances, I must say that the other characters look like cardboard stereotypes.
And they are stereotypes because the author clearly hates them: A Mormon (Patrick Wilson) who discover he is gay, his wife (Mary-Louise Parker who looks like WILL & GRACE's Karen Walker on Valium), his Mormon mother (Meryl Streep) who does not understand her son, and Louis Ironson (Ben Shenkman), the selfish liberal Reagan-hater.
With six hours of film, one would expect all these character would have a lot more substance... but only some of them really are that developed. Take the mother (Meryl Streep), for example: she is a Mormon who arrives in NYC after discovering her son is gay. She is clearly someone with lots of prejudices and hate. And yet... we hardly see her having to cope with reality. We hardly the character's arch. Suddenly, she helps Walter Prior (Justin Kirk) to get to the hospital, stays with him, sees the angel, gets frightened and leaves the next morning saying she had a strange dream... and suddenly she is the most gay-friendly person in the world. And not a hint on how her relationship with her own son (the Mormon gay guy) has changed.
FIFTH - Somebody please explain to me WHY, on the very first scene, do we see Meryl Streep as an 80-year old Rabi? The make-up is great... but her voice OBVIOUSLY sounds like a woman pretending to be an old man!! Why? Several characters are played by the same actor. Sometimes it work (Jeffrey Wright as the travel agent and Meryl Streep as Ethel Rosemberg) and sometimes it doesn't (Mary-Louise Parked as a homeless woman and Justin Kirk as a SM leather man in the park). Why?
Well... ANGELS IN AMERICA could have been a landmark.
It simply isn't.
It is beautifully produced and it has great moments. Every production value is right and you can clearly see a top director surrounded by top-everything...
And yet it under-delivers.
Customer Rating:
Summary: More deceptive marketing
Comment: This is yet another production that seeks to disguise that it is about homosexuality until viewed. Nowhere on the packaging does any clue about the homosexual theme appear, and I purchased this by mistake.
I have been burned like this enough to realize that the deception is certainly no mistake. Whether it is marketing not wanting to put the full truth on the packaging, or some subtle push to get this into the homes of middle America is beyond me, but I didn't like being duped.
The acting appears good, but, as is typical, all homosexual or homosexual sympathetic characters are wonderful, caring, kind and noble. All those who disagree with this lifestyle are ogre-ish republican's, and jokes about former President Ronald Reagan are frequent. The flirting of one character while his boyfriend is in the first stages of ARC is somehow presented with sympathy, while for a heterosexual man to do the same while his wife lay dying would certainly not get the same treatment in film or media. It is hard to watch and get past inexplicable pieces like that.
The graphic sexual talk, and I'm no prude, is overdone and seems there only for shock value or to be "genuine" to the homosexual viewers. If heterosexuals described their sexual dalliances in such detail in any situation except the bedroom, it would be shocking.
Not really something I'd have chosen to watch if I knew the story up front.
Customer Rating:
Summary: DISAPPOINTMENT
Comment: It potraits people with AIDS/HIV as victims or as Angels. Well, there is nothing angelic about an individual who chooses to have sex with others who do not take into account the consequences about irresponsible sex. People get what they have coming to them. This film takes away all the responsibility away from those who have choosen not to be responsible. These people are Not victims, there Are a natural consequence to themselves. Get me a violin. I do have to admit; The acting is great.
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