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Philadelphia DVD

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Philadelphia wasn't the first movie about AIDS (it followed such worthy independent films as Parting Glances and Longtime Companion), but it was the first Hollywood studio picture to take AIDS as its primary subject. In that sense, Philadelphia is a historically important film. As such, it's worth remembering that director Jonathan Demme (Melvin and Howard, Something Wild, The Silence of the Lambs) wasn't interested in preaching to the converted; he set out to make a film that would connect with a mainstream audience. And he succeeded. Philadelphia was not only a hit,... it also won Oscars for Bruce Springsteen's haunting "The Streets of Philadelphia," and for Tom Hanks as the gay lawyer Andrew Beckett who is unjustly fired by his firm because he has AIDS. Denzel Washington is another lawyer (functioning as the mainstream-audience surrogate) who reluctantly takes Beckett's case and learns to overcome his misconceptions about the disease, about those who contract it, and about gay people in general. The combined warmth and humanism of Hanks and Demme were absolutely essential to making this picture a success. The cast also features Jason Robards, Antonio Banderas (as Beckett's lover), Joanne Woodward, and Robert Ridgely, and, of course, those Demme regulars Charles Napier, Tracey Walter and Roger Corman. --Jim Emerson [show more]

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Released
25 May 1998
Directors
Actors
Format
DVD 
Publisher
Columbia Tri-Star Home Video 
Classification
Runtime
125 minutes 
Features
PAL, Widescreen 
Barcode
5035822988231 
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Tom Hanks' Oscar-winning performance as a gay man dying of AIDS in Jonathan Demme's big-budget, all-star movie brings the modern disease to mainstream Hollywood. Hanks plays Andrew Beckett, a lawyer who is fired when his boss discovers that he has AIDS. He then engages the services of homophobic lawyer Joe Miller (Denzel Washington) to take his company to court.

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