Framed inside a smaller box, Angels is contained and drained; it bogs down, betrays its seams and patches; its lofty scaffolding creaks.

Full Review | Feb 21, 2020

"Angels in America" is one of the most dazzling movies ever made for television or any other means of projecting a film, but it dazzles the mind as well as the eye.

Full Review | Feb 21, 2020

The performances are uniformly, unabashedly, be-still-my-heart superb.

Full Review | Feb 21, 2020

Blessed with a virtuoso cast, each of whom creates characters that live and haunt and mesmerize long after the final credits pass.

Full Review | Dec 7, 2018

Al Pacino and Meryl Streep lead an outstanding cast in Tony Kushner's epic play about Aids directed for television by Mike Nichols.

Full Review | Aug 14, 2018

Nichols effects a heady mix of theatre spectacle and cinematic style in some thrilling, extraordinarily beautiful sequences, resulting in a poetic, compassionate, ultimately hopeful work about the human condition at the turn of the millennium.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 8, 2018

The performances retain the heightened brio of grand theatrical acting, something this text absolutely requires, while still maintaining a solid lifeline to naturalism.

Full Review | Sep 2, 2014

Mike Nichols's six-hour adaptation, for HBO, of Tony Kushner's epic two-part play about AIDS in the 1980's was exhilarating - artsy television that didn't make viewers antsy.

Full Review | Sep 2, 2014

There is much, much more to Angels than politics, which is why it is so gripping.

Full Review | Sep 2, 2014

Angels in America is not just one of the best television movies ever made - it's also a transcendent work of art. Watching Angels is an ecstatic experience, one that uplifts both your spirits and a medium that so often prefers to be degraded.

Full Review | Sep 2, 2014

This version of Angels doesn't fly as high as the opening credits promise (and there are some laughable special effects that help keep it from doing so), but Kushner's brilliance isn't easily denied.

Full Review | Aug 27, 2014

It's the ways in which Nichols and Kushner have opened up and pared down the scripts that make the definitive stage drama of the last decade a masterful, must-see film event for the new millennium.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 26, 2014

Under director Nichols, Angels in America receives its definitive treatment and emerges as a vivid but exhausting experience. The great revelation is the cast, which proves there's no special effect equal to heartfelt acting.

Full Review | Aug 26, 2014

While Nichols can be charged with making Angels less comic and energetic and more sentimental in spots, Kushner's achievement feels very much at home in its new skin.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2014

Note-perfectly written for the screen by its playwright, Tony Kushner, the adaptation is as trenchant, poetic, fantastical, and moving as its source -- with the added thrill of an up-close cinematic approach.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2014

Thanks to a phenomenal cast, Mike Nichols' sensitive direction, and Tony Kushner's script, it generally achieves its generation-defining ambitions.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2014

Ultimately... the real problem is that Angels is and remains a play, not a movie.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2014

Angels' plays like a classic while retaining an urgent timeliness.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2014

Kushner may make poetry and he may make jokes, but he is also making points: There's no stopping the fast-forward of modernity, no turning back, and no one to wait for.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2014

Angels is not a newscast. It is art, and it achieves something more difficult than balance: empathy. Gay and straight, radical and reactionary, sinning and sinned against, its characters make surprising connections.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2014