Reviews

To say that this film repays a second viewing is an understatement and true in the usual, complimentary sense, but it doesn't make clear just how stingy the film is on first viewing. The fact that the DVD contains so little sound signal seems to be a challenge that intentionally intensifies the fact that most of the dialogue is muttered, slurred or whispered beneath or behind sound effects, music or chatter. I admit that Ken Turan's review acquits the film's coy strategy, but jeez louise! I had only the slimmest tendril of an idea of what was going on the first time through this (and while I know I'm not the brightest person in the world, I do have some graduate degrees and a hoity-toity career that suggests I'm not in the bottom half of the population IQ-wise).

Anyway, give it your full attention as you watch; it's worth working at. But plan to watch at least the first half again when you're through.

And then go trade your SUV in for a hybrid, and stop voting for oil industry executives for high office.

This is a worthy recording for television of one of the best stage productions I've ever seen (I was lucky to see it on Broadway around 1999).

This being a movie site, it's understandable that the credits above read as they do, but I want to point out that the main creators of this production, which was the best traditional production of a book musical I've ever seen, are inadequately credited or not mentioned at all here.

The stage director, the great Michael Blakemore (who won a Tony Award for his work here) also adapted the material. The brilliant choreographer, Kathleen Marshall, is responsible for the spectacular dances that are the show's greatest element (though every piece of the puzzle, from the costumes and sets to the performances, is superb). Most hilarious is the passing mention of composer/lyricist Cole Porter, who is after all the creative genius that stands as the main creator of KISS ME KATE.

I also wanted to mention that, although everyone is good in this televised version, I missed some of the best performances from the Broadway cast, most notably Brian Stokes Mitchell in the male lead and Lee Wilkof as a singularly hilarious gangster.

I am actually humbled by this film, and I am unusually grateful to have seen it, finally, 45 years after its making.

There are some superficial aspects of *Judgement at Nuremberg* that are dated: some of Stanley Kramer's camera-work is unnecessarily showy or gimmicky. Some of the sets are noticeably fake, and some of the dialog is stilted, especially in early scenes outside the courtroom. The music goes momentarily over the top in the climactic confrontation between the key defendant, played by Burt Lancaster, and the chief judge (Spencer Tracy) after the trial.

Much more striking, however, are the film's strengths, and how unusually well it holds up. I usually think of Kramer as an overstated liberal autodidact, but here the acting is, for the most part, admirably restrained and authentic. Even *William Shatner*--no kidding--is subtle here. After an unpromisingly sensational opening salvo by Richard Widmark as the chief prosecutor, this movie settles into a gravity, balance and rigorous honesty (both intellectual and emotional) that are utterly necessary for a serious treatment of a subject as overwhelmingly important as the origin and expression of Nazi evil.

Balance is a key to this film's greatness. It is not insignificant that it was Maximillian Schell, who played the Nazi judges' defense attorney not as a slimy shyster but as a powerfully rigorous advocate determined to hold the *world's* feet to the fire rather than let his clients become patsies for a vast breakdown of moral responsibility with astonishingly widespread implications. By looking courageously into the teeth of the reality of German society and politics leading up to and during the Second World War and the reality of American, European and Communist moral failings, Abby Mann's great screenplay creates an extraordinarily persuasive context for the extraordinarily powerful thematic statements against Nazi atrocities with which it concludes.

Two scenes near the movie's conclusion struck me most powerfully. First, I have never been more sickened, enraged and humbled by visual evidence of the Holocaust than I was when it was presented in the context of the trial at this film's center. Second, I was chilled--frightened in a very contemporary and immediate way--by the great speech of judgment given at the trial's end by Spencer Tracy's Chief Judge Dan Hayward. I urge anyone that is concerned about the erosion of civil liberties in America today to watch this film to better understand how insidiously evil may overtake a modern nation in crisis. More important, I urge anyone that believes that America is today in a crisis that requires extraordinary measures to watch this movie, listen with an open mind to this speech, and consider its implications for the direction of our own country today.

Stepping down now from my soap box, let me say more clearly: Do yourself a favor and watch this movie. Never mind how old it is or how long it is or how dreary the subject may seem. If you care about the fate of humanity, you too will be grateful.

What I believe to be the greatest of all American plays (and make no mistake, *Angels* is one play, not two) has been worthily adapted for the screen by Mike Nichols with the full participation of and deep respect for the work of Tony Kushner. The result is, on balance, the single best thing I have ever seen on television.

Those who are irritated by the quirks of Meryl Streep's acting may be slightly annoyed by her here (though less than usual), just as those whose eyes sometimes roll at the excesses of Al Pacino's work will find some tooth-marked scenery here (though less than usual). And some of the fantasy scenes--not all, but some--are weaker than the rest of the film.

But these concerns are utterly overwhelmed by the richness, the intellectual vigor, the poetry, the political energy, the courage, the care, the vividness, the suspense, the narrative momentum, the thrilling originality, the overwhelming emotional power and ultimately the truly spiritual rocket fuel that takes this long, magnificent film into the realm of undeniable greatness. The direction is exemplary, the acting Oscar-quality in at least *seven* of the performances, the production values first-rate, and the writing... I say again, the writing stands with the finest of O'Neill, Williams and Miller at the very pinnacle of American drama, and of screenwriting as well. It just doesn't get any better than this.

I am writing this response to *Angels in America* as an act of gratitude. To all those involved in bringing it to the stage and then to the screen, thank you for a profoundly enriching artistic experience, an emotional healing of a kind I have been granted only a few times by any artistic experience in my lifetime, a moving and inspiring statement of truth to power, an authentic soul-lifting--on the wings of *Angels.*

As dazzling a display of the screenwriter's craft as I have ever seen. Thrillingly directed, with a breathtaking ending...um, beginning, well, beginning and ending actually, which means also ending and beginning. Anyway, it's just kick-ass. I don't know when I have ever put so much energy into giving a movie my full attention, and had my effort so satisfyingly rewarded.

This is one of those films that age well. Very controversial in its time, I think it is now clearly a classic.

Should Nicholson have gotten an Oscar over DeNiro's performance in *Raging Bull*? No, obviously not--Nicholson is borderline hilarious in this, as is Shelley Duvall and for that matter even the great Anne Jackson (Scatman Crothers is, unambiguously, intentionally hilarious). But Kubrick's movies are not about "good" acting in the usual sense, and Nicholson's most over-the-top, eyebrow-popping, tongue-flicking, scenery-chewing mugging here works like a charm in a way it could not in any other movie because Kubrick was a complete original and a genius.

This movie simultaneously amuses, engrosses, terrifies AND alienates. I'm not here to say it's Kubrick's best movie, but it's certainly the one I've gone out of my way to see the most times so I suppose it's my favorite. It's not the scariest movie I've ever seen (that would be *Halloween,* and at least half a dozen movies rank above this one on that scale), but I defy anyone to genuinely watch this film with an open mind and not have the snot scared out of him/her at least 20 times. And it is certainly more artistically ambitious than all but two or three of the films I've seen that are scarier than this one.

I hope my review displaces the absolutely boneheaded one that was up on this movie's page when I checked it out (what exactly is a "prodding" screenplay?). This is not one of the 10 best movies I've ever seen, but it may be one of the 100 best, so it deserves more respect than it's getting on this site at the moment.

Hard to believe that Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Spacey, Morgan Freeman, Donald Sutherland, Cuba Gooding Jr. and several more excellent actors could be assembled in a very fine production under Wolfgang Petersen's direction, all at the service of a script so utterly preposterous. There's a lot of B-grade melodramatic dialogue here but it's the plot, with its myriad howlingly wild contrivances and nearly complete lack of internal logic, that's really shocking. It starts off quite intriguingly but it just gets worse and worse as it spins off into a dramatic idiom where Buck Rogers would have felt comfortable in the 1930s. Personally I didn't buy into the idea of Hoffman as an action hero either, but that's more a matter of taste. There's just no defending this writing though. Still, you've really got to hand it to Morgan Freeman: even with egregiously bad material his work never seems less than wonderful. Spacey acquits himself rather well too, and I don't really blame Sutherland, Gooding, Rene Russo or JT Walsh for having to say the lines they were paid handsomely to say, but this is one of the great embarrassments of Hoffman's career, and really it's a mystery to me how a terrific storyteller like Petersen could have made it.

I wasn't aware of the existence of this television production of O'Neill's agonized masterpiece until it turned up on PBS tonight. It's excellent. Bill Hutt is Canada's greatest stage actor and I have never (to my knowledge) seen him on the screen; he is magnificent. All the acting is wonderful, and with all due respect to the very good visual elements, all the emphasis is on the actors' conveyance of O'Neill's text. It is shot almost entirely in close-ups, rendering it an intimate, dark and claustrophobic production of the most intimate, dark and claustrophobic play in the English-speaking theatre.

A thrillingly virtuoso display of the craft of screenwriting. If the picture as a whole falls just short of greatness, largely because the ending does not reach a deeply visceral level of satisfaction, I still believe I have never seen a more *engrossing* movie--ever. I was riveted for two solid hours, using last brain cell and loving every minute of it. Guy Pearce and the rest of the cast are superb, the editing is exquisite, the direction is crackerjack, but the writing, the writing! Mind-blowing.

The story is so saccharine, the swelling violins so lugubrious

(from the first minute of the movie!), and Robin Williams's

performance so insufferable that I sat there rolling my eyes for

nearly two hours. There are a couple of laughs but the picture not

only tugs at the heartstrings, it wears them out. An embarrassing

addition to the filmography of some superb actors (Philip Seymour

Hoffman, Peter Coyote, Josef Somer and others). Unfortunately a

rather typical entry on the filmography of the star, Mr. Williams.

This is not a bad movie; it has some excellent performances and cinematography, some good writing, some terrifying and moving imagery. But the key scene near the end is DREADFUL and the movie, on balance, is the most overrated I can think of.

George Lucas sacrifices story, theme, character and relationships in favor of wildly lavish production designs and overwhelming special effects. The movie is entertaining enough; the key pod-racing scene is a brilliant set piece; Liam Neeson's leading performance is excellent; the character of Anakin is original, enormously appealing and beautifully cast in the person of Jake Lloyd; the designs are gorgeous if overstuffed and the special effects are state-of-the-art. But the movie is nearly ruined by its most remarkable technical accomplishment: that intergallactic hybrid of Roger Rabbit and Step'n'Fetchit, Jar Jar Binks. Most of all, its thin story lacks any of the mythic richness of the first trilogy, and the characters, with the possible exception of Anakin, are barely introduced as paper cut-outs compared with the characters of the first three movies, and their relationships get no more interesting than the over-obvious effort to foreshadow the future of Anakin and Queen Amidala. Still, there is cause to hope that in the next two movies Lucas will turn enough of his attention away from his special effects to give full-bodied life to the new chapters of his great cinematic epic.

This is the rare film that is not only a brilliant work of art but, even more than that, a life-changing experience, like reading a profound philosophical novel. Not a great film, but a superb one, and a truly deep one

Ragtime has emerged as a classic film. Its astonishing array of great performances--literally a score of them, from Howard Rollins's truly tragic stand for human dignity at the film's center to James Cagney's historic return to film at the end of his life and the end of this motion picture--would almost alone qualify this as a great motion picture. But Michael Weller's breathtakingly complex and complete dramatization of Doctorow's sprawling novel, the gorgeous production and costume designs and the superb direction of Milos Forman seal the deal. This is a magnificent tapestry of American life at the beginning of the American century.

Lavishly entertaining, genuinely heartbreaking and a dandy history lesson to boot, Ragtime has joined the pantheon of great, epic movies.

Although this is a fine movie, it is one of the most overrated by audiences in recent years. Among the film's main strengths are the stunning performance of child actor Haley Joel Osment and by the young actress who plays his mother.

The script is very clever but also very, very sentimental. This is not to say that the scene near the end of the picture when the boy connects on a new level is not moving--it is. But the ending of the story of Willis's character is more effective as a stunt than as a source of honest emotion.

I will say, though, that the scenes intended to be scary are really, really scary. This owes largely to Osment's performance, which draws us into complete identification with the haunted child at the movie's center. It is also a credit to the screenwriter/director, though the movie's scares are never adequately integrated with the gooey emotion at the movie's heart.

I recommend THE SIXTH SENSE, but I insist that it is not the "great" movie that current popular sentiment suggests.