It (1990, miniseries) - The miniseries that horrified a generation of children

♥♥♥

 

A nightmarish monster with a clown's appearance lurks on this striking poster for Tommy Lee Wallace's It

A group of seven friends from the town Derry in Maine need to revisit their birthplace as adults to once again slay the mystical evil that resides in its sewer system... 

 

It is written by Lawrence D. Cohen (Carrie (1976)) and co-writer/director Tommy Lee Wallace (Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)), adapting the same-titled 1986 novel by Stephen King (Roadwork (1981)).

It is a recommendable and entertaining horror miniseries, though mostly due to King's eminent story and ideas. The execution is structured very like a TV series with cliffhangers and annoying fade cuts.

The acting performances are a mixed bag, except for Tim Curry's (Gingerclown (2013)) spectacular turn as Pennywise the clown. The novel has had significant trimmings done to make it serviceable to broadcasting, but Wallace's It is still a haunting and admirable work.

 

Related posts:

 

Tommy Lee Wallace: Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) - Evil masks ravage in Wallace's under-appreciated horror

 

 

Watch a trailer for the miniseries here

 

Cost: 12 mil. $

Box office: None - TV miniseries

= Uncertain

[It was first broadcast 18 November (USA; Brazil) and runs two episodes totaling 192 minutes. The budget was reportedly double the norm for a miniseries at the time. Shooting took place from May - July 1990 in British Columbia, including in Vancouver, New York and in Chicago, Illinois. The show performed excellently at ABC, totaling 30 mil. viewers, becoming the network's biggest hit of the year. It also drew huge viewership of more than 6 mil. when first screened in the UK on BBC One in 1994. It won 1/2 Primetime Emmy nominations. Wallace returned with And the Sea Will Tell (1991, TV movie). Curry returned with a voice performance in TaleSpin (1990, TV-series) and physically and theatrically in Oscar (1991); Richard Thomas (Billions (2017-19)) in Mission of the Shark: The Saga of the U.S.S. Indianapolis (1991, TV movie); and Jonathan Brandis (Aladdin (1994-95)) in Gabriel's Fire (1991, TV-series). It is fresh at 68 % with a 6.0/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of It?

Merlin (1998, miniseries) - Theatrics and bad styles rule in never-ending turkey

♥

 

Star Sam Neill looks determined at us ensconced in smoke and co-stars on this poster for Steve Barron's Merlin

The English legend of Merlin the wizard, his love, Nimue, sir Lancelot, Camelot, queen Mab and the Lady of the Lake are explored.

 

Merlin is written by Peter Barnes (The Professionals (1960)) and David Stevens (Homicide (1972-76)), with Edward Khmara (Dragon (1993)) contributing story elements, and directed by Steve Barron (Electric Dreams (1984)). This review is based on the video release of the film in the form of one epic-length film.

The length is inexorable, and the impressive cast cannot salvage this folk lore botch-up. Theatrical overacting and childlike hysterics is the general rule in the performances: Sam Neill (Alcatraz (2012, TV-series)) does pretty well in the title role but is regrettably outfitted to resemble an utter moron. Miranda Richardson (Fred Claus (2007)) is dressed as a 1990s goth version of a witch; she fights Martin Short (A Simple Wish (1997)) as a gnome and Helena Bonham Carter (Live from Baghdad (2002, TV movie)) in the contest of who looks dumbest in Merlin.

The effects are mostly failures, (the speaking rock being an exception.) The photography of this hideous jumble is horrid and over-lit, entirely without vision. All things being equal though, one can't rob Merlin of having a certain enthusiasm about its own narrative.

 

Related post:

 

1998 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

 

 

Watch a trailer for the miniseries here

 

Cost: 30 mil. $

Box office: None - TV miniseries

= Uncertain

[Merlin premiered 26 April (US and Canada) and runs 182 minutes over the course of 3 episodes. Shooting took place in Wales and England from October 1997 - February 1998. It aired on NBC and achieved record ratings with viewership of estimated 70 mil. people. It won 4/15 Primetime Emmy nominations and was nominated for 4 Golden Globes among other honors. Hallmark Entertainment followed up with miniseries Merlin's Apprentice (2006) with returning Neill and Richardson. Barron returned with Arabian Nights (2000, miniseries) and theatrically with Rat (2000). Neill returned in The Horse Whisperer (1998). 21k IMDb users have given Merlin a 7.1/10 average rating.]

 

What do you think of Merlin? 

Olive Kitteridge, TV miniseries (2014) - McDormand is sublime in Chodolenko's fine adaptation

♥♥♥♥♥

   

+ Best Miniseries of the Year + Best Maine Title of the Year

 

Frances McDormand stars as Lisa Chodolenko's Olive Kitteridge

Olive Kitteridge is a 4-part HBO drama miniseries adaptation of Elizabeth Strout's (The Burgess Boys (2013)) same-titled 2008 novel, written by Jane Anderson (Mad Men (2008), TV-series) and directed by great Californian filmmaker Lisa Chodolenko (The Kids Are All Right (2010)).

Olive is a school teacher in a small Maine community, where her kind husband Henry runs a pharmacy. With very different temperaments and outlooks on life, the two raise their son and grow old together.

Chodolenko and Anderson have done a bang-up job with Strout's marvelous novel, and the miniseries format is auspiciously chosen for the piece. Olive Kitteridge makes me wonder if climates across nations might affect people in the same way. - The Maine folks here certainly remind me of Scandinavians, who come from a very similar climate and landscape.
Frances McDormand (Friends with Money (2006)) enjoys one of her career's best characters here, and she is wonderful as Olive, whom she tackles with total disregard for her own vanity. - A bold and terrific performance. Equally well-cast and spectacular is Richard Jenkins (Burn after Reading (2008)) as Henry Kitteridge. The family share several dinner scenes in the series, - but many are hilariously short, as Olive has a way of ending them prematurely, quite dictatorially.
Sentimental Henry's colleague and compassion project Denise is played with admirable grace by Zoe Kazan (What If (2013)); Brady Corbet (Force Majeure/Turist (2014)) is good as her short-time husband; Cory Michael Smith (Carol (2015)) is terrific as the mentally ill Kevin Coulson, and Bill Murray (The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)) is perfect as Jack Kennison. Besides the top notch cast, Olive Kitteridge has Carter Burwell (Carol (2015)) composing its effective score.
This is a story of life as it unfolds in Olive Kitteridge's case. There will be situations and arguments that most can relate to. The series is both funny and sad, poignant and surprising, warm and human. It moves fast in a few places, and it's few experiments with digital effects are not altogether successful. But these are minor details of a whole which is extremely recommendable, a moving snapshot of everyday life.

Related posts:

Lisa Chodolenko: 2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V] 

2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
The Kids Are All Right (2010) - Chodolenko's excellent indie crowdpleaser

 

Watch a trailer for the miniseries here

 

Cost: Unknown

Box office: None - TV miniseries

= Unknown

[Olive Kitteridge debuted on HBO Sunday November 2 with 559k viewers tuning in in North America for the first two episodes. The two remaining episodes were shown the following evening. Those ratings are not impressive for an HBO miniseries compared to other recent works and TV movies by them, but when taking into account that this focuses on an acclaimed but not superstar actress portraying a schoolteacher in Maine growing old, the ratings must look better. Olive Kitteridge should also have a significant life after its premiere on other platforms as a high-quality drama with universal appeal. Filming took place in Massachusetts and Maine. The miniseries was nominated for 3 Golden Globes and 13 Emmys, winning 8. Olive Kitteridge currently rests at #231 at IMDb's user-generated TV top 250 and is certified fresh at 96 % with a 8.6 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Olive Kitteridge?

Mildred Pierce (2011, miniseries) - Haynes' spin on the Cain classic is a luxury

♥♥♥♥

1 Time Film Excess Award Winner:

Best Costumes: Ann Roth

4 Time Film Excess Nominee:

Best Actress: Kate Winslet (lost to Bérénice Bejo for The Artist)
Best Supporting Actor: Brían F. O'Byrne (lost to Michael Shannon for Boardwalk Empire S2)
Best Costumes: Ann Roth (won)
Best Production Design: Mark Friedberg, Peter Rogness, Ellen Christiansen (lost to Boardwalk Empire S2)

+ Best Miniseries of the Year

The great Kate Winslet portrays Mildred Pierce in Todd Haynes' miniseries

Mildred Pierce is Todd Haynes' (Far from Heaven (2002)) five-part HBO miniseries, written by Haynes and Jonathan Raymond (Meek's Cutoff (2010)), based on James M. Cain's (The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934)) same-titled 1941 classic, previously adapted as Michael Curtiz's same-titled 1945 masterpiece.

Part-by-part rundown (contains SPOILERS):

Part 1: Los Angeles, 1931: Mildred has a fight with her unfaithful husband, who leaves her and their daughters: Small Ray and the spoiled and snobbish Veda. After a one-time passion, Mildred's desperation starts nagging, and she has to eat up the degradation of taking a waitress job to keep afloat. But Veda's condemnation lurks...
Part 2: 1931: Mildred keeps her head high and soon has a small pie-production going, as also her waitressing job leads to friendships and new knowledge. She finalizes their divorce, following lawyer Wally's advice, so that she can open her own chicken restaurant. After a showdown with naughty daughter Veda, she still puts great importance in the young girl's thoughts. An impulsive romantic outing following her last day as a waitress with rich, idle Monty ends in tragedy, as daughter Ray expires in the hospital from sudden illness. Mildred is now alone with Veda.
Part 3: 1931-1933: Mildred opens the restaurant after Ray's funeral, - with the help of a few friends, - and its opening exceeds all expectations. Her friend Lucy (Melissa Leo (Flight (2012))) gets booze into the place, and Mildred's relationship with ex-husband Bert has improved. Monty goes bankrupt and gets kept by Mildred, while he back-stabs her to Veda, who takes music lessons and puts her mother down, still unpunished. Mildred leaves Monty in a New Year's Eve storm ...
Part 4: 1937-1938: Veda is now a grown, young woman, and she and Mildred finally take a big fight with each other, which Evan Rachel Wood (The Ides of March (2011)), who enters the miniseries as Veda here, plays with some misplaced sentimentality. - Because the dialog is hard as slaps, as her deplorable extortion scheme now sees the light of day, to Mildred's shock. Veda gets kicked out by her miserable mother, who, nevertheless, goes searching for her again in Hollywood, lonely and sad. Bert locates her as a vocal talent on the radio, much to Mildred's elation.
Part 5: 1938-1940: Mildred, who has grown successful, meets Monty again and, more or less inexplicably, takes him back, and they get married, after he has made her buy a smaller mansion in Pasadena. Veda also resurfaces, and Mildred showers her with money and attention, SPOILER until she finds her and Monty in bed together... - And tries to strangle the harlot! Mildred's business is also lost, but Bert is there, and the two decide to get remarried. Veda returns for one last, unpleasant appearance at the nuptials. "To hell with her", the two parents finally agree, after she has run off to New York.

Haynes gives Mildred Pierce his very own spin here, as he subdues his hankering for production abundance instead of some Spartan 1930s feel and a camera that always rests on and probes tremendous Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road (2008)), who is in virtually every shot and has stated that the 14 week shoot of the miniseries was her hardest since Titanic (1997).
As Part 1 ends, my feeling was that Caine's novel could be drawn out to these 336 minutes without problems, but by Part 4 I did feel that the story was getting stretched to some degree. The miniseries avoids most of the format's pitfalls very well, partly due to fine images that heighten a kind of simple beauty (by Edward Lachman (Carol (2015))), and partly due to some great actors: Besides Winslet, Morgan Turner (Quitters (2015)) as young Veda, Guy Pearce (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)) as Monty and especially Brían F. O'Byrne (Jimmy's Hall (2014)) as Bert is excellent.
In the final part, Mildred's trials do bend over into the soapish, unfortunately, and the sometimes pitiful Mildred Pierce of this reiteration is less heartbreaking than formidable Joan Crawford's portrayals in the 1945 movie version.
Haynes' Mildred Pierce is still a handsome and well-acted luxury to watch.

Best episode:

Part 1: Written by: Haynes, Raymond. Directed by: Haynes
Mildred becomes a single mother of two and has to take a job as a waitress, - which is shown in amusing, precise details.

Related posts:

2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Evan Rachel Wood as adult Veda Pierce in Todd Haynes' Mildred Pierce

Kate Winslet as Todd Haynes' Mildred Pierce

Watch the trailer for the miniseries here

Cost: 20 mil. $
Box office: None (TV-miniseries)
= Uncertain
[Mildred Pierce's premiere ratings fell from a 1.2 mil. viewers to around a mil. in the following parts, which isn't too impressive. The miniseries did draw praise critically and a long list of Emmy nominations, winning 5; for Winslet, Pearce, Art Direction, Casting and Music Composition. Mildred Pierce is rotten at 50 % with a 6.7 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes, but note that this is only based on 6 reviews.]

What do you think of Mildred Pierce?

Centennial (1978-79, TV mini-series) - For everyone interested in American history, this is a chest of gold

♥♥♥♥

A poster for producer John Wilder's Centennial

QUICK REVIEW:

Centennial is one of the most important American TV-series to this day, based on James A. Michener's (Tales of the South Pacific (1947)) book of the same name, it is a historical epic, and also in turn a western, a romance, a drama, a thriller and an adventure. It was a monolithic production, with an (at the time) unheard of 25 mil. $ budget, over 100 speaking parts and a story-span of more than two hundred years. The NBC TV mini-series can be seen as the 12 movie-length episodes it was originally broadcast as, or in 26 45 minute-episodes, arranged for the DVD release. (The series is cut up in natural halves and thirds, as the first and last episode was originally 3 hours long, with commercials.)
The following will contain SPOILERS.
Centennial becomes the name of the (fictional) Colorado town, which is first for many years simply known as 'Zendt's Farm' after the merchant Levi Zendt (Gregory Harrison (Logan's Run (1977-78))), who settles there. The name's similarity to 'century' hints at the grand, epic ambitions of the story and series, which are an ode to the Midwest through some two centuries, often educational at its heart, but never didactic.

The camera work, by Duke Callaghan (Miami Vice (1984-85)) and 3 colleagues, is very mobile and innovative to begin with, as the series' narrator David Janssen (The Fugitive (1963-67)) zooms in right from the creation of the Rocky Mountains to the time around the middle of the 18th century, when the Frenchman Pasquinel (Robert Conrad (The Lady in Red (1979)) plays the silly and arrogant role) arrives to the country and meets the Indian chief Lame Beaver (Syrian actor Michael Ansara (Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-80)).
Richard Chamberlain (Shogun (1980)) adds a most likely unintended homo-eroticism to his character, the refined Scot McKeag and his friendly relationship with Pasquinel. Lame Beaver gets shot with gold bullets, which makes Pasquinel turn to gold-hunting, - with two wives and kids all over the place, but he's not a man who lets himself get bound by moral obligations.
His off-spring create troubles in the time to come with their 'unpure' blood, (since Pasquinel had them with an Indian.) Pasquinel dies just as he discovers his gold, and McKeag 'inherit' his Indian family beautifully, - despite the problems of this, just the series' first storyline.
The second storyline begins in 1845 with the falsely rape-accused Levi Zendt, who flees Pennsylvania with his girlfriend Elly (Stephanie Zimbalist (The Awakening (1980))). Both Harrison as Zendt and Timothy Dalton (The Living Daylights (1987)) as Oliver Seccombe, who becomes a big cattle ranch owner, play very well in Centennial.
Elly gets bitten by a snake and dies, and Zendt takes an Indian wife instead, but as strife between the cultures heats up, this creates serious troubles, and particularly their red-clad daughter Clemma (Adrienne Larussa (Charlie's Angels (1979), TV-series)) gets a miserable life as a result.
The Civil War is not a part of the series, but the Indian massacre of 1861 under the command of Colonel Skimmerhorn (Richard Crenna (First Blood (1982)) is phenomenal as the blood-thirsty fanatic, who is based on John Chivington, an ex-Methodist minister who led the infamous Sand Creek massacre in Kiowa County, Colorado in 1864) by Rattlesnake Hill is portrayed with force and integrity in all its horror. Skimmerhorn's son turns against his father, and along with, among others, 'potato' Brumbaugh (Alex Karras (Blazing Saddles (1974)), he becomes one of the new faces in the town. In the following great cattle-run episode, The Longhorns (6), John Addison's (Torn Curtain (1966)) epic score really comes into its own.
In 1876, Colorado becomes the 38th state in the US-of-A on its hundred year anniversary, and the town that is the core of Centennial gets its titular name for this reason. The Union Pacific railroad now connects the country, and bar fights and new kinds of immigrants (like Japanese and Mexicans) arrive with rapidity. Seccombe hires assassins to protect his interests. In the end it turns out that his accounts have been kept somewhat too creatively, and in recognizing his dependency upon the land, he shoots himself in despair.
In a terrible blizzard, old Zendt and a lot of cattle die, among others, and afterwards, the Wendell family arrive in Centennial: A theatrical family, who cheat their way to everything. Sheriff Dumire (Brian Keith (The Brian Keith Show (1972-74))) has got his eye on them, but he cannot prove their guilt, when a business man with 5,500 $ suddenly disappears. Here, great suspense enters the series, and young Philip Wendell (Doug McKeon (On Golden Pond (1981))) only confess his family's guilt on the sheriff's deathbed. Anthony Zerbe (The Death Zone (1983)) has a memorable time as the devious Wendell patriarch.
Hereafter follows more depression and less adventure, as America and Centennial become increasingly civilized: The Mexican revolution, racism and more fraud from the town's new matador, Wendell, lead up into the 1930's, where monetary and psychological depression, sandstorms, suicides and murder sweep the parched land.
After Charlotte Seccombe (Lynn Redgrave (Gods and Monsters (1998))) ends up concluding that 'Only the land lives forever', (reminiscent of Scarlet O'Hara's final realization in the classic Gone With the Wind (1939)), Centennial should probably have ended.
Instead, in the pathetically elongated, last episode, The Scream of the Eagles, we fast-forward to the 1970's and a local election, in which the choice 'today' (at the time) stands between industry or respect for nature. - Fairly glum and with far too many flashbacks pasted in, as we also see at many other times of Centennial.
 
Despite this last, acidic reservation, Centennial must still remain the most pure, epic western TV-series created. Although the intros are visually boring, they firmly impress the sweepingly epic quality which is Centennial's regal garment again and again. The fantasy of the cowboy, his horse and his heard is recreated fantastically here.
The series goes at it with sometimes exaggerated bravado spirit, and almost always, unfortunately, with quite poor aging make-up jobs. It holds great supporting role performances from stars like Pernell Roberts (Bonanza (1959-65)), Donald Pleasence (Phenomena (1985)) and Clint Walker (Cheyenne (1955-62)).
It is produced by co-writer John Wilder (Peyton Place (1965-68), writer) and directed by, in different episodes, Virgil W. Vogel (The Streets of San Francisco (1973-76)), Paul Krasny (Mannix (1969-74)), Harry Falk (The Streets of San Francisco (1974-77)) and Bernard McEveety (Trapper John, M.D. (1979-83)).

Brian Keith as Sheriff Dumire in producer John Wilder's Centennial

Best episode:

6: The Longhorns
About the driving of 3,000 Longhorns to Colorado from Texas through the dessert with cattle thieves, Indians and other dangers lurking at every corner around the camaraderie among the men.

A beautiful VHS collection of the entire series

In lieu of a trailer, (which isn't on Youtube), here is the great opening credits of Centennial with John Addison's magnificent music - play it while you read

Cost: 25 mil. $

What do you think of Centennial?
Do you know of any other TV series of American history that can rival it?

Blame/La Culpa (2006) - Undistinguished Spanish abortion TV-flick

♥♥

Ugly poster for Narciso Ibáñez Serrador's TV movie La Culpa

QUICK REVIEW:

Blame is a Spanish TV movie that seems only worth seeing for Spanish film nerds, because it is both slow, weird and far-fetched.
A woman and her daughter move in with a lonely, lesbian gynecologist, and after an abortion, in which the fetus goes missing (!), murder begins to shake the large house.
It's partly about abortion, partly about Spain and a little bit about women. But it never comes together as a good movie. Some of it is due to the acting that isn't very realistic, in fact the characters often seem like strange soap-opera people.
This thriller drama from the otherwise horror-intended Peliculas Para No Dormir mini-series is a failure for its Uruguayan director Narciso Ibáñez Serrador (Death Is Child's Play (1976)), who has worked mostly in horror films and TV production, but ended his almost 50 year long career with La Culpa.

Unfortunately unsubtitled trailer for this undistinguished TV-movie

Cost: Unknown
Box office: None
= Unknown

What do you think of La Culpa?
Any good Latino horror films that you can recommend?

Band of Brothers - TV mini-series (2001) - WWII-sacrifice and -comradeship portrayed with skill and integrity

♥♥♥♥♥

Neal McDonough on this poster for Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg's Band of Brothers

QUICK REVIEW:

Most episodes in this HBO-miniseries begin with clips from interviews of real soldiers from the 101st Airborne Easy company that is the subject of the series. They tell their memories to the eternal vacuum of posterity, enveloped in black space, to an unmoving, observing camera and are often quite moving. It gives Brothers the right spirit and sets the appropriate mood for this great WWII-show. A mood of importance, of the vast wingspans of history and of great sacrifice.
Band of Brothers is a series about sacrifice and unity during terrible trials.
In spite of the men's differences and strives, they always have each others backs, and that is what is so fantastically uplifting about Band of Brothers.
We have to praise ourselves very lucky that two of the very few people on earth who could make such an incredibly ambitious and expensive project with the required skill and integrity here actually have: Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips (2013)) and Steven Spielberg (Shindler's List (1993)), who had previously collaborated on Saving Private Ryan (1998), along with a vast team of very talented writers and directors. Brothers was the most expensive mini-series ever made at the time.
Episode 1 is about the training in Currahee, Georgia, where the newly formed regiment are trained under the incompetent lieutenant Sobel (David Schwimmer (Friends (1994-2004)) does well), and after this, the group are thrown off to Normandy and D-day.
The episodes of Brothers distinguish themselves by being different from one another; they tell different stories and therefore do not drown in the same dreary pot of awful war.
Episode 3 concerns itself with private Blithe (perfectly played by Marc Warren (Shine (1996))), who suffers a frightening hysterical blindness.
The soldiers' experiences and traumas are taken seriously, and the horrors of war are portrayed with impressive precision.
We follow regiment-leader Winters and his colleague-friend Nixon throughout the series, played by Damian Lewis (Homeland (2011-13)) and Ron Livingston (The Conjuring (2013)), and they form a good core for Brothers. Midway through, the series loses a bit of pace, but it is soon picked up again in episode 6, Bastogne, where we see the atrocities of the icy-cold forest in the Ardennes. We are taken through the unbearable waiting days of war, experience Winters' brave decisions before episode 9, Why We Fight, an exceptionally moving, lump-in-your-throat look at the brothers' discovery of a concentration camp. The horrors are indescribable; the recreation admirable and one of the finest hours in the series.
In the last episode, Points, Easy company takes the Nazi headquarter known as the Eagle's Nest, and we glimpse into the futures of the men. Their reverence towards each other is both striking, gripping and beautiful.
All of this happens to the stunning music of Michael Kamen (Open Range (2003)) and powerful images and effects, making Band of Brothers a strong experience and a prized accompany to the catalog of shared human history recreated in the cinema annals.
Bravo.
The series was followed in 2010 by The Pacific, which focuses on the Marine Corp's operations in the Pacific in WWII.

Related reviews:

Tom Hanks: Philadelphia (1993) - AIDS and homosexuality acknowledged in great drama
Ron Livingston: The Conjuring (2013) - Best horror film in 7 years
Steven Spielberg: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) - A robot fairy tale with both heart and mind
Twilight Zone The Movie (1983) - Fear takes many forms in tragedy-struck anthology
1941 (1979) - Spielberg's bizarre 'comedy spectacular' sinks like a rock

Watch the series' trailer here

Budget: 125 mil. $

How do you find Band of Brothers?
Is there any better war series in existence?

Angels in America (2003, miniseries) or, Dying in the 80s, of AIDS, at L-E-N-G-T-H

♥♥♥

Emma Thompson is the visiting angel on this dramatic poster for Mike Nichols' Angels in America

Tony Kushner (Munich (2005)) wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning play set in the 1980s on AIDS, politics, religion, sex and homosexuality, which premiered in 1991. Adapting it was attempted first by master filmmaker Robert Altman, who ultimately didn't secure the necessary funding. Kushner tried adapting it into a single film but failed. He then started adapting it to miniseries format, and HBO agreed to finance the effort, directed by German master filmmaker Mike Nichols (Catch-22 (1970)) which was released in two versions: You can either see Angels as two roughly 3 hour movies, or as six episodes of around an hour. This review is based on the latter option.

New York in the 1980s: A young, Jewish gay couple are struck by tragedy, when the one part is diagnosed with AIDS. SPOILER The city's shark-like lawyer and Republican, Roy Cohn, dies equally slow from the disease at the same time. Meanwhile the healthy Jew leaves his sick sweetheart and has sex with Cohn's secretary, who has a wife. Next his Mormon mother enters the story, and later; angels.

Angels in America has a stellar cast that includes Al Pacino (The Godfather (1972)), James Cromwell (Owd Bob (1998)), Jeffrey Wright (Lady in the Water (2006)) and Emma Thompson (Beautiful Creatures (2013)). But the stars that really stand out and distinguish themselves here are Meryl Streep (The Manchurian Candidate (2004)) as the Mormon mother, a conflicted part she plays perfectly; and Patrick Wilson (Fargo (2015, TV-series)), who plays the closeted, married gay secretary coming out with lots of charm and intensity.
After the angels enter the story, the metaphysical elements get out of hand in a rainbow of pomposity and self-importance. The limit for this audience member's engagement in the tale gets crossed somewhere between the ethereal, the political, the racial politics and all the dramatic gays, but many others slurp it all up with a quivering smile.
Pacino is Cohn, the dying big-shot lawyer in denial, and he is almost so sick, feeble and skeletal here that you feel physically ill yourself by just watching him, (which you'll do at length in Angels in America).
The ending is excessively lengthy, so in spite of the series' qualities, it is far from being the gemstone that it is hailed as. Better AIDS-themed works include Philadelphia (1993), How to Survive a Plague (2012, documentary), Dallas Buyers Club (2013), The Normal Heart (2014, TV movie), BPM (Beats Per Minute) (2017) and more.

Related posts:

Mike Nichols: Closer (2004) - Nichols and Marber's intelligent film of love and infidelity 

2003 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Biloxi Blues (1988) or, '45 Army Camp Confidential   
Catch-22 (1970) - Nichols wages war on war with ensemble cast in absurdist satire 

Watch a 4-minute clip from the miniseries here

Cost: 60 mil. $
Box office: None (TV miniseries)
= Uncertain
[Angels in America was first broadcast from 7 December - 14 December (HBO) and runs 352 minutes. Shooting took place for 137 days in New York and in Rome, Italy from March 2002 - January 2003. It was reportedly the most-seen TV movie of 2003, - whether this made it profitable also is regrettably unreported. It won 5/7 Golden Globe nominations, 11/21 Emmy nominations, an AFI award, a National Board of Review award, was nominated for a Grammy and several other honors. Nichols returned with Closer (2004). Streep returned in Freedom: A History of Us (2003, documentary TV-series) and theatrically in The Manchurian Candidate (2004)); Thompson in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004); and Pacino in The Merchant of Venice (2004). Angels in America is certified fresh at 92 % with a 9.5/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Angels in America?