Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: Great movie about the start of AIDS in United States. Shows how everybody (government, gay community, and society in general) dropped the ball in fighting this terrible disease.
Rating:
Summary: An eye-opener!
Review: Having gotten poliomyelitis in 1953, I see comparisons between the two diseases. People with AIDS suffered prejudice and lack of information of how the disease is passed just like those who got polio. There was isolation and fear with both. Polio killed as did AIDS, but Polio was not necessarily a death sentence as was AIDS (at least at first). Polio children were often pitied,especially if they were crippled. But, much money was raised from the public sector by the National Foundation to pay for braces, operations, etc. The story of AIDS is as tragic as the disease itself. It is a gripping story that everyone should know. This movie shows clearly how it happened and why money was hard to get. It certainly kept my attention throughout. All the actors did a wonderful job with their respective roles. Even Alan Alda was convincing as Dr. Gallo, the researcher. (Alda was a polio survivor.) Lily Tomlin was wonderful as was Matthew Modine, and all the rest. My advise is not to watch this movie on the same day as you see Tom Hanks' "Philadelphia" (another great movie). At least for me, I can only take so much injustice in one day. I now want to read the book by Randy Shilts.
Rating: 
Summary: Lies and lying liars who tell them!
Review: I actually got this from a blog from Dean's World (Dean is a liberal) who nailed the problem with this movie:"Reagan had an excellent record on gay rights issues--to the extent that anyone at that level of office in that day and age could be said to have such a record, anyway, since he had publicly supported gay rights measures and, while he did ally with some conservative Christian forces, never once backed any anti-gay legislation and was always personally gay-friendly. While it's true that there were things his administration could have done better about the early AIDS crisis, this is true for just about everyone in the 1980s--gay rights activists, local and national elected officials of both parties and at all levels of government--responded poorly. If any of you saw that execrable HBO movie And The Band Played On, you should be aware that it gave a horribly politically slanted accounting, but the book it was based on, And The Band Played On by Randy Shilts, was a much fairer and more damning book. Shilts would never have approved that attrocious movie. The book is must-reading, for Shilts (who was gay, lived in San Francisco, and himself eventually died of AIDS) documents in excruciating detail how local government officials, gay rights activists, judges, and career civil servants in many cases conspired to keep the plague from being recognized and to prevent government from even getting involved. Shilts was unsparing in his indictment of everyone at all levels and in both parties, and if he was sometimes harsh on the Reagan administration, he was usually even harsher with others, including gay rights activists he personally knew and who were responsible for preventing government from taking direct action to stop the plague in its tracks. It's great reading. And a good supplement, by the way, is David Horowitz' autobiography Radical Son, because in the last half of the book Horowitz talks about how he befriended Randy Shilts and saw himself how radical left-wing gay activists fought tooth and nail to prevent government from taking any action to stop the plague or even recognize that a plague was spreading. And how gay men who tried to act against it were often attacked as liars and traitors and sellouts to "the fundamentalists." It's powerful reading. Oh, and by the way, there is also a consistent rumor floating around parts of the gay community that the Reagan administration wanted to put AIDS victims into concentration camps. Just so you know, that too is a myth. It's remarkable what some people think they know that simply isn't true."
Rating:
Summary: A Change of Mind
Review: I am only 17 and saw this when it came out when I was just 11. After seeing this movie my views and opinion on AIDS changed completly. I went from knowing next to nothing about it to being enraged at president Reagan for not giving money to reaserch the unknown pathogen. This movie is one that really makes you think about how much red tape there is for researchers when all they want to do is save lives. This is well represented in the movie when a character says when he dies he does'nt want the cause of death to be "red tape." One of the most didturbing things in the movie is the "butcher's bill," which shows the date, the number of cases and the number of deaths. The cast including Matthew Modine and Richard Gere do an excelent job with this difficult topic. ATTENTION ALL TEACHERS!!!! this is a must for a clasroom pic.
Rating:
Summary: **A Touch Of Reality **
Review: I am very glad Amazon.Com, was selling this movie on DVD.
Not your everyday subject, but yet it should not be ignored how the A.I.D.S virus got spread around. The fight about the virus etc, how one came about inventing at least a test for the AIDS virus etc. If you are a teacher, and want your students to really learn something, or you want your students to pay attention, show them this movie.
It is a real EyeOpener !!
Rating: 
Summary: Deja vu all over again
Review: I first began treating patients with HIV infection when we were still calling the syndrome GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency) and some of the best coverage a family physician could read on diagnostic and therapeutic advances was to be found in the pages of periodicals like *The Advocate* and Boston's *Gay Community News*. I lived through these horrible early years and all the uncertainty and suffering experienced by the characters in this movie, and I had to deal with the bureacratic waffling and the willful governmental ignorance so truthfully depicted in this film. The critics griping about the lack of dramatic tension and the supposed failure of the "star-studded" cast to chew the scenery to the reviewers' liking merely demonstrates that a brain biopsy on these eunuchs-at-a-gang-bang would come up positive for Portland cement. *And the Band Played On* is a minor cinematographic masterpiece, providing a readily-apprehended depiction of a complex and difficult time in public health and epidemiology, with a wonderful grasp of the historical flavor of an era that we must *never* forget. We learned some costly and very valuable lessons in the process of translating GRID into AIDS, and we need movies like this one to keep those lessons fresh in the public memory.
Rating:
Summary: What about region 4 in Australia?
Review: I have just ordered this DVD movie thru Amazon. Unfortunately, in Australia, this movie is not available to purchase for private sale in either a DVD or VHS format. This is not the only movie that is unavailable down under, but was the first on my list to purchase thru Amazon. That says it all.
Rating:
Summary: Informing and Inspiring
Review: I just saw this movie on December 1st (World AIDS Day). Before this movie I didn't know anything about the history of the AIDS virus and the impact it had on society. I now know about the devastation and fear it caused, and how the government chose to ignore it because it only primarily affected gay men. What was sadder then the tragic effects of the disease itself was the way society viewed and treated those infected with AIDS. I think everyone in the world should watch this movie to be better informed about AIDS. This movie made a big difference in my life and I know it will in others.
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite movies of all time
Review: I must have seen this movie at least three or four times, and it always gets to me. I will not go into the story line here, as that has been done in detail by other reviewers. Instead, I would just like to say that this is one of those great movies which, in my view, has not received as much attention as it should have. It is not only a suspenseful and gripping account of the early AIDS epidemic, it is also a lesson in how science can be at once extraordinary, as well as petty and ferociously competitive. Based in fact, this movie also serves as an important historical document. Seeing this movie will not lift your spirits, and it most certainly doesn't paint a pretty picture of humanity, but it does leave you feeling a little wiser, and more educated about the beginnings of a disease which continues to greatly affect people and societies all over the planet. It tells a story which needs to be told, and it does it well.
Rating:
Summary: Where were you twenty years ago?
Review: I never made it all the way through Randy Shilts's book so I won't presume to know whether this film did right by Mr. Shilts. Simply put, this is great drama. The patronizing statements about made-for-tv movies don't apply here. The drama, sadly, comes from the real events that are depicted--the collective denial about the reality of AIDS as that disease first began appearing in the gay and Haitian communities, the government's (read "Ronald Reagan's") persistent indifference, the professional jealousy within the medical communities vying to be the first to identify the agent (the virus) that causes AIDS, and how human beings resist having their preconceived notions about life challenged (as when a group of gay activists insists on keeping gay bath houses open even as it became apparent that AIDS was spread through sexual contact). This movie really took me back twenty years to when I first read a short article buried somewhere in the middle of the New York Times about a gay-related cancer little realizing how much my life would change from that point onward. The performances across the board are great. I was especially impressed by Matthew Modine (I've liked him since "Birdy" and I like to see him get meaty roles as here), Alan Alda (not the likable mensch from MASH), Ian McClellan, B.D. Wong, and Phil Collins (who knew?). Aside from some cast biographies this DVD has no other "extras". Nor does it need any.
| 
