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Angels in America | 
 enlarge | Director: Mike Nichols
Actors: Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Patrick Wilson, Mary-louise Parker
Studio: HBO Home Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.98
Buy New: $14.99
You Save: $4.99 (25%)
New (68) Used (43) Collectible (3) from $4.95
Rating:  201 reviews
Sales Rank: 2348
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dts Surround Sound, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Dubbed)
Rating: Unrated
Number Of Items: 2
Running Time: 352
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.7 x 0.7
MPN: 92299
ISBN: 0783129505
UPC: 026359229923
EAN: 9780783129501
ASIN: B0001I2BUI
Theatrical Release Date: December 7, 2003
Release Date: September 14, 2004
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Amazon.com
Tony Kushner's prize-winning play Angels in America became the defining theatrical event of the 1990s, an astonishing mix of philosophy, politics, and vibrant gay soap opera that summed up the Reagan era for an entire generation of theater-goers. Post-9/11 would seem to be too late for a film version--philosophy and politics don't always age well--but this 2003 HBO adaptation, ably directed by Mike Nichols (The Graduate), provides a time capsule of the '80s and reveals the deep emotional subcurrents that will give the play lasting power. The story centers around Prior Walter (Justin Kirk) and Louis Ironson (Ben Shenkman), a gay couple that falls apart when Prior grows ill as a result of AIDS. But cancer is not the only thing invading Prior's life: He begins to have religious visions of an angel (Emma Thompson, Sense and Sensibility) announcing that he is a prophet. Louis, who doesn't cope well with disease and suggestions of mortality, leaves and starts a relationship with Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson), a closeted Mormon who works for Roy Cohn (Al Pacino, Dog Day Afternoon)--the real-life right-wing lawyer, notorious for his ruthless behind-the-scenes machinations. Add in Joe's depressed and hallucinating wife Harper (Mary Louise Parker, Fried Green Tomatoes), his determined but open-minded mother Hannah (Meryl Streep, Adaptation), a fierce drag queen/nurse named Belize (Jeffrey Wright, Basquiat, reprising his celebrated performance from the Broadway production), and you've still only begun to discover the wealth of characters and storylines in Kushner's ambitious work. The powerhouse cast (also featuring James Cromwell, Michael Gambon, and Simon Callow) is uniformly superb. The script has its weaknesses--some of the fantastic elements, including Prior's journey to Heaven towards the end, fall flat--but even what doesn't work is bristling with ideas and a ferocious desire to capture human existence in this time and place. --Bret Fetzer
Product Description
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: DRAMA UPC: 026359229923 Manufacturer No: 92299
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| Customer Reviews: Read 196 more reviews...
 Hopelessly intriguing, but confusing August 20, 2008
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.
Monumental August 18, 2008
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.
 Overlong, dramatically crippled and full of unecessary elements. July 26, 2008
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.
 More deceptive marketing July 25, 2008
0 out of 7 found this review helpful
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.
 DISAPPOINTMENT June 30, 2008
1 out of 10 found this review helpful
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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