Excellent AIDS drama about early 1990's
T. Richard Williams | 05/23/2007
(4 out of 5 stars)
"I've been teaching a course on the AIDS Pandemic at Dowling College on Long Island for 10 years. I use this film in the class because it focuses on an incident in the early 1990's that impacted many people in the central Long Island region (where the College is located)--in other words, for us, it's a local story. Beyond that, this is a finely acted, well-scripted family drama that addresses many issues--from discrimination to lack of communication and its effects on a family's emotional, spiritual, and physical health. John Lithgow does his usual excellent job portraying twin brothers, and Ellen Burstyn's performance as the twin's mother is also riveting. This is an excellent introduction to the pre-drug cocktail era of AIDS, when AZT was about the best hope there was. But what could be bleak turns into a wonderful story of human courage and proves, once again, that you don't need a scatillion dollars of special effects to make a touching film."