What it’s about
This dramatic adaptation of Tony Kushners award-winning play tracks several characters at the height of the AIDS crisis in mid-80s New York City, including Prior Walter (Kirk), a young HIV man who begins to have visions of an angel (Thompson) telling him hes a prophet, and gay-bashing conservative lawyer Roy Cohn (Pacino), whose underling Joe Pitt (Wilson) is a closeted Mormon having an affair with Priors ex, Louis (Shenkman).
Why we love it
Tackling the AIDS panic, religious intolerance, and Reagan-era conservative politics, Nicholss six-hour miniseries brings to the big screen everything that made Kushners original play a Broadway smash in 1993, including the caliber of his actors: Pacino plays real-life, rock-ribbed conservative lawyer Cohn with despicable malice, while Thompson and Streep thoroughly enjoy showier roles as supernatural visitors. (Streep, who won an Emmy for this, also plays Joes straitlaced Mormon mother.) Jeffrey Wright is especially winning here, reprising his stage role as a flamboyant nurses aide. With its poetically inflected dialogue and dreamy special effects, Angels is a vibrant, pop-political melodrama for any age.
Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, Patrick Wilson, Jeffrey Wright, Ben Shenkman, Justin Kirk, Emma Thompson, Mary Louise Parker Mike Nichols