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Summary: A Sad Commentary
Review: This film graphically illustrates the downfall of the American Red Cross. Victims of political pressure to a president who refused to recognize HIV as the deadly menace it is, both the Red Cross and researchers more attune to personal gain than to the needs of the general populace allowed a countless number of innocent Americans to become exposed to HIV. Regardless of your sexual orientation, HIV can affect you. This film points out the senseless acts of so many once held in high regard, and the unwillingness to spend a few extra dollars to protect the public at large. May we all learn a lesson from this debacle and strive to continue improving healthcare in America.
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Summary: Simply brilliant!
Review: This film shows how things <<really>> work in government and how the system and the people within it reward those who put their careers above the lives of ordinary people.
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Summary: The Band Is Still Playing
Review: This film, in my opinion, is a fantastic telling of the behind the scenes of the discovery and the eventual research of the AIDS disease and virus. It is based upon the book of the same name by Randy Shilts, and it is wonderfully acted and a superb telling of a true and heart-wrenching story. I reccommend this to anyone.
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Summary: Fantastic and Great in a Classroom Setting.
Review: This is a great video. The actual footage from news reports and commentaries is fabulous. Students learn the true origin, development and spread of the HIV Virus. I recommend this video to all, especially teenagers.
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Summary: Powerful
Review: This is literally my favorite movie ever. Everything from the story to the score is just beautifully done. A lot of star studded movies tend to lose something amidst all that star power but this one does not. Every star in there does an excellent job with their part. There just aren't enough good things I can say about this movie. Expecting it to be the book, which is wonderful in its own right, is a little unfair but it really does an admirable job making these horrible events come to life. Whether you know everything about the AIDS epidemic or nothing at all I'd definitely recommend this film. It's heart breaking but important.
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Summary: Pulling on your emotions
Review: This made-for-HBO movie definitely transcends the "disease of the week" genre that it's part of. Based on the book by Randy Shilts, it chronicles the struggle of science vs. politics vs. morality in the early days of the AIDS crisis. Our point of view character is Dr. Don Francis (Matthew Modine), a passionate young scientist with the Centers for Disease Control. He and his colleagues, both at the CDC and France's Pasteur Institute, seem to be the only ones who remember that there are real people dying of this mysterious disease. Dr. Robert Gallo (Alan Alda)is one of the few human "villians" of the piece, more interested in writing himself into the history of the disease than in helping anyone. Two other notable performances are those of Lily Tomlin as the tough, no-nonsense Dr. Selma Dritz) and Ian McKellan as Congressional aide Bill Krause, who as part of San Francisco's gay community, is in the epicenter of the crisis.
Watching this movie, I got very angry. The blood banks, for example, were more worried about money than lives. One of the best scenes in the movie is where Dr. Francis stands up at a meeting and screams at reps from the blood industry, "How many dead hemophiliacs do you need?" before they do something about it. (That was a reenactment of a real outburst, not a fictional event.) An end title tells us that "By the time President Reagan made his first speech on AIDS, 25,000 people had died." Between events like these and Gallo's blatant scientific misconduct, it's hard to avoid being incensed.
The acting is excellent, especially Modine and Alda, who even look a little like the men they're playing. Modine brings an incredible amount of passion and frustration to Dr. Francis. I especially like McKellan's character, an older gay man who is not a stereotype. Several familiar character actors show up as supporting players, and some very famous faces (Steve Martin, Richard Gere, Phil Collins, Swoosie Kurtz, and Anjelica Huston) make cameo appearances. If you're looking for something light and fluffy, this is not the movie for you. If you want something that will make you think, with some fine acting and a realistic script, this is for you. (Watch this, then go read Shilts' book.)
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Summary: sad but well done
Review: This movie relates the red tape and bureaucratic mess made by many of the people in the beginning of the AIDS epidemic and how hard a few fine scientists had to work to get the word out. Well made;but all too real.
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Summary: A Must Have!!
Review: This was a wonderful movie. Anyone in the social work field I highly recommend you view this movie. Matthew Modine's played his character wonderfully. I'm an Alan Alda fan and his character was very manipulative, unlike his usually fun-loving characters in other movies. A good learning experience for those wanting to be educated on HIV and AIDS. Great material for social work/sociology teachers to use as visual aid for learning about social aspects.
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Summary: Moving Inside Story of What Happened Behind the Headlines
Review: Those of us who were old enough remember the headlines about AIDS in the 1980's. I remember the confusion about the blood supply, that this was a "gay" disease, that it could be contracted through common household contact, the controversy over safe sex, and when Rock Hudson's diagnosis was announced, and when he died.
The facts about AIDS that we take for granted now - that it is not a "gay disease", that it is a virus, that safe sex can prevent its spread - were not seen as obvious facts in the early and mid 1980's.
"And the Band Played On" is the story behind the headlines, rumors and misinformation of that time.
When I say behind the headlines, I mean the activities most Americans were oblivious to - the small number of health professionals realizing in 1980-1981 that people were dying of seemingly suppressed immune systems; the realization in the gay community that their members were becoming ill; and the search by the CDC to study the disease in terms of who was becoming sick, how the disease progressed, the determination that it was a virus, and plotting its course and victims.
The movie is extremely well-done and well-acted. While much of the book was left out of the movie (i.e., the activities of the gay community in NYC), I think this had to be done so that this could be a movie and not a mini-series.
As with the book, periodically through the movie the "Butcher's Bill" metrics are displayed ... for this date in 1984, so many cases have been diagnosed in the U.S. For the same date, so many people have died in the U.S.
I watched this movie's premier on HBO. Later, when I met my husband, we came across it on HBO and watched it. He was very favorably impressed by the movie, and was struck by the periodic displays of the "Butcher's Bill". He's told his teenage son and daughter about it, we purchased it, and we've all watched it together.
I highly recommend this movie. Even more highly, I recommend the book. It is one of the best works of nonfiction I've read.
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Summary: Superb account of the AIDS crisis 1977-1993
Review: Whilst Hollywood was busy congratulating itself for the critical and commercial success of "Philadelphia" (1993) - an awkward, uncomfortable drama which undermined its own sincerity for the sake of mainstream acceptance - HBO debuted Roger Spottiswoode's "And the Band Played On" (1993), an adptation of the late Randy Shilts' hotly debated chronicle of the AIDS crisis in America. Itself the subject of considerable controversy, the film took several years to develop and was eventually taken out of Spottiswoode's hands during the editing process, to be completed by Bill Couturie (co-producer of the Oscar-winning documentary "Common Threads Stories from the Quilt" [1989]), who's credited as an editorial 'consultant' in the closing titles. Not merely a 'gay' drama, the film has broad-based appeal, both as a narrative and as an invaluable history lesson. From the first case diagnosed in Copenhagen in 1977 to the US death toll in July 1993, Arnold Schulman's script follows the heroic efforts of virologist Don Francis (Matthew Modine at his most earnest) to uncover the source of an unknown 'plague' which is killing gay men, hemophiliacs and intravenous drug users across America. Unfortunately, as the unfolding drama reminds us in no uncertain terms, the crisis coincided with Reagan's election to the presidency, establishing a right-wing administration which refused even to publicly acknowledge the problem until it began to spread beyond the gay community and affect 'ordinary' voters. Like the book on which it's based, the film vents its spleen on those who turned a blind eye to the escalating tragedy until it was too late, especially the blood bank industry which ignored repeated scientific warnings about possible contamination of the blood supply until lawsuits from people who became infected during transfusions forced them into action, and the gay community which railed against the proposed closure of bath houses in major cities as an infringement of their hard-earned sexual freedoms. Scientific divisions simply exacerbated the problem: Alan Alda portrays the eminent scientist Robert Gallo as an insensitive, vainglorious bully who was prepared to sacrifice lives whilst pursuing credit for discovering how the virus worked, an accolade which actually belonged to a number of extremely diligent French scientists! The film is careful to acknowledge Gallo's hard work in this field, but as depicted here, his arrogance leaves a rotten taste in the mouth. With Modine's eminently sympathetic scientist-figure acting as the primary focus, the fast-moving screenplay conveys a wealth of information with remarkable clarity, keeping the viewer fully informed throughout. Paradoxically, if it wasn't for the all-star cast (including Richard Gere, Lily Tomlin, Ian McKellen, Phil Collins, etc.), the film might not have been made at all, but their contributions - often fleeting - are sometimes distracting rather than illuminating ("Oh look, there's Anjelica Huston, Steve Martin!", etc.), though the performances are uniformly strong, particularly since there's no time to sketch these characters in anything but the most basic terms. Evidence of production troubles is non-existent, and the film ends on an emotional highpoint with documentary footage of celebrities and individuals whose lives have been touched by AIDS, set to Elton John's 'The Last Song'. If nothing else, AIDS forced society to confront its two greatest taboos, sex and death, and it also exposed a raft of prejudices which had been festering for decades. Galvanized by its sense of loss, and appalled by the state-sanctioned bigotry which prevented adequate funding of research and treatment while the US government allowed its defence budget to spiral into the stratosphere, the gay community finally shook off its complacency and launched a prolonged militant campaign which eventually forced the issue into the public arena. The film provokes anger and sadness in equal measure as it outlines the circumstances which incited the virus to epidemic proportions, and the inevitable devastation which followed. But every so often, the story makes way for something more profound than mere anger, and reduces the viewer to heartbroken silence: A young man, once beautiful, waits alone for death in a room at the V.A. hosital in Los Angeles, slowly succumbing to the lesions which are beginning to destroy his brain. As the scene concludes, he turns toward a window overlooking an enormous cemetery featuring row upon row of gleaming-white gravestones which stretch to the horizon, an image that links the fallen victims of a bygone conflict to those of the present generation, dying in their thousands as a helpless world looks on. Though produced for television, the film - which runs 141m 32s - was photographed by Paul Elliott ("The Broken Hearts Club A Romantic Comedy" [2000]) with theatrical screenings in mind, allowing HBO to provide a letterboxed (1.85:1) print for their region 1 disc, anamorphically enhanced. Picture quality is excellent. There's a choice of 2.0 or 5.1 surround tracks, and while they're both impressive, there really isn't much to distinguish between them. Closed cpations are provided along with English subtitles, and the only extra is a series of potted biographies for the main cast. Incidentally, the film's R rating seems unusually harsh, unless the MPAA was concerned about some brief dialogue references to certain sexual practices; otherwise, there's nothing here which warrants anything more than a PG-13.
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