Look up! Look up! Prepare the way...The Messenger is coming!

The complex story is a "slice of life" (and love, and death) among gay and straight characters in the politically-charged mid 1980's during which the AIDS epidemic became a fact of life.

The play examines the relevancy of religion and spirituality at a time of crisis, highlighted by the appearance of a combative angel to a man in the end stages of AIDS, proclaiming him an unwilling prophet.

The play also includes the plight of a Mormon attorney realizing his marriage is a lie, the politics of healthcare during the Reagan era, a gay man's decision to leave his HIV-infected lover, and a conservative attorney who is used to "beating the system" finding a fight he can't win.

One of the stories involves a gay man's decision to leave his HIV-infected lover.

HBO outdid itself with its six hour masterpiece, "Angels In America," the second half of which premiered this very evening. I can only echo the myriad of critics who have stated that this is, head and shoulders, better than anything one has seen on the small or large screen this year.

If it were released theatrically (which HBO might consider, initially first in other countries that would have more patience with a 6 hour or two part film in a theatre), it would have absolutely swept the Oscars.

The writing (screenplay by Tony Kushner, who adapted his award winning play for the cable network), direction (Mike Nichols) and the acting (especially Al Pacino, Justin Kirk, Jeffrey Wright, Emma Thompson and Merrill Streep, most of whom played multiple roles, but the entire cast deserves awards) were all extraordinary.

There are no announced plans to release it on DVD, but Amazon is already signing up potenial customers if it happens. See below for links

If I could, I'd go back to every film I ever rated a perfect 5 out of five, and lower them to 4.9 for effect, since this is clearly the best I have ever seen. Call it a 5 PLUS.

I'll bet you'll agree. See it with friends, and have some tissues handy. Don't plan any activity for a while after the screening, since you can expect some stunned silence will prevail. It's THAT powerful!

Written by: BigBearPhx on the GayMoviesandVideos website.

The Angel: Greetings, Prophet! The great work begins! The Messenger has arrived!

Prior: We have reached a verdict, your honor. This man's heart is deficient. He loves, but his love is worth nothing.

Roy Cohn: I have sex with men. But unlike nearly every other man of whom this is true, I bring the guy I'm screwing to the White House and President Reagan smiles at us and shakes his hand.

Mr. Lies: Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions.

Prior: I usually say, "Fuck the truth," but mostly, the truth fucks you.

Roy Cohn: You don't know what all I know. *I* don't know what all I know. Half this shit I make up and I'm still right, learned that in the 50's.

Roy Cohn: [on why he wanted Ethel Rosenberg to get the death sentence] I would have pulled the switch if they let me. Why? Because I hate traitors. I HATE communists. Was it legal? FUCK legal. Not nice? Fuck nice. The nation says I'm not nice? FUCK THE NATION. Do you wanna be NICE? Or you wanna be EFFECTIVE?

Angel/Nurse Emily: Stop moving!

Harper Pitt: I dreamed we were there. The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air, and attained the outer rim, the ozone, which was ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth, and that was frightening. But I saw something that only I could see, because of my astonishing ability to see such things: Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who had perished, from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles, and formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules, of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them, and was repaired. Nothing's lost forever. In this world, there's a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead. At least I think that's so.

Prior Walter: I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
Hannah Pitt: Well that's a stupid thing to do.

Belize: Look at that heavy sky out there.
Louis Ironson: Purple.
Belize: Purple? What kind of a homosexual are you anyway? That's not purple, Mary, that color out there... is mauve.

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