Clifford, Graeme

Frances

Jessica Lange gives a career performance in a role she was born to play: the talented and troubled Frances Farmer. Farmer's awful trajectory travels from bright Seattle girl to 1930s Hollywood starlet to degraded (eventually lobotomized) mental patient. Lange, who has the blond, clean look of Farmer's heyday, goes into these places with the fierce abandon of a true believer. Her performance, the lush John Barry score, and the period re-creation are all worth applauding; almost everything else fails. Everyone except Farmer is grotesquely caricatured to fit the movie's thesis, which is that if you are intelligent and nonconformist, the system will resolutely destroy you. (The medical establishment is evil incarnate.) This simple conclusion seems inadequate and disrespectful of Frances Farmer's tragic problems. For a radiant glimpse of what the real Farmer had to offer, see Howard Hawks's Come and Get It, which bristles with excitement over a new discovery. --Robert Horton

The Last Don II

The New Avengers '76

Sometimes dismissed as a pale descendant of a great original, The New Avengers deserves a second look and is perhaps best considered as a largely successful attempt to re-imagine its predecessor for 1970s audiences. Patrick Macnee was never the most convincing of action heroes, and the decision to make his John Steed the supervisor and mentor of two younger agents was a sensible one--Steed's virtues are style, wisdom, and fortitude rather than physical prowess. Gareth Hunt's Gambit has an unattractively smug side, but also has charm. Joanna Lumley's Purdey is one of the most attractive heroines of genre television, astonishingly leggy and beautiful. Those who only know her later incarnation as Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous will now understand why such a fuss is made over her. The script team overlaps heavily with that of the original series; the new show has the same quirkiness, only occasionally varying it with a rather darker Le Carré-esque complexity or sudden outbreaks of Hammer Horror. If it lacks some of the sheer style of the original, that is a reflection of its period--the 1970s were less visually imaginative than the '60s. Tightly plotted and imaginatively cast with interesting guest stars, it is only with The Avengers that The New Avengers suffers by comparison. --Roz Kaveney

The New Avengers '77

Gleaming the Cube

To 16-year-old Brian, life is an empty pool and a skateboard, until his brother is found dead and it's declared a suicide. Determined to uncover the truth, Brian risks all as he crosses into a world of deceit, contraband, and murder. Special Features include: Cast and crew filmographies, trailer, behind the scene footage, film facts, and scene access. Christian Slater

Mario Puzo's The Last Don

If you have an appetite for Sicilian soapers, then you're like all those other people who made Mario Puzo's The Last Don the highest Nielsen-rated show for the week in mid-May 1997 when it originally aired. And who could blame you, since the story line of this TV miniseries is chock-full of all the familiar elements that make up a bestseller--power, money, sex, murder, gambling, madness, fame, Hollywood, loyalties made and broken. The story proper begins with a little Romeo and Juliet when Rose Marie, daughter of Don Domenico Clericuzio (Danny Aiello), falls for the youngest son of the warring Santadio family. On their wedding night, Rose Marie's new husband and the entire Santadio family are slaughtered by the Clericuzios to avoid further conflict between the two families, and Rose Marie goes completely insane and grows up to be Kirstie Alley. But not before she gives birth to another Santadio, Dante (so named because he has to live in Hell), in whom she invests all her hatred for her own family. So he grows up to be a psychotic hitman, played with sly and sadistic ingenuity by Rory Cochrane. The Clericuzios' chief executioner, Pippi (played with smooth aplomb by Joe Mantegna), is responsible for killing Rose Marie's husband, and wants his own son, metaphorically overburdened with the name "Cross," to follow in his footsteps. The sins of the fathers are visiting all over the sons in this picture, and naturally the two kids will have to resolve this inheritance. The acting is the main attraction here. Aiello in particular invests The Don with a stately grace that is just right. --Jim Gay

The Complete Faerie Tale Theatre Collection (26 Titles)

One of the first gems of the cable TV age, Faerie Tale Theatre brings 26 classic tales to life. Produced over a five-year span (1982-87) for Showtime, FTT brought together creative dramatics and whimsical writing with some of the top talents of the day. Executive producer/host Shelley Duvall (who was coming off her breakout role in The Shining) shepherds this mix of theatrical simplicity and grand storytelling for these oft-told tales ("Goldilocks and the Three Bears," "Little Red Riding Hood," "Hansel and Gretel," "Sleeping Beauty," and the like) for kids and their parents. Since they are not elaborately produced, FTT may be a hard sell for some smaller members of the family at first, but most should be hooked, even older kids who may pooh-pooh fairy tales. There's always a slight twist that makes these productions fresh.

The cast is amazing, especially when you think how lightly cable television was thought of in the '80s: Jeff Bridges, Bud Cort, Liza Minnelli, James Coburn, Susan Sarandon, Christopher Reeve, Klaus Kinski, Billy Crystal, Matthew Broderick, Gregory Hines, Eric Idle, Robin Williams, and Mick Jagger are some of the talented--and varied--actors appearing. Crystal's take on the smart "Little Pig" (with Jeff Goldblum as the wolf) and Williams's "Frog Prince" are two comic gems. Malcolm McDowell, right in the middle of his career high-point of playing baddies, brings flair to the Big Bad Wolf, while his then-real-life wife Mary Steenburgen beautifully counterpoints as Red Riding Hood. The casting of Vincent Price and Vanessa Redgrave in "Snow White" is inspired. Also impressive are the directors Duvall pooled: Tim Burton ("Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp"), Francis Ford Coppola ("Rip Van Winkle") Peter Medak (three episodes), Nicholas Meyer ("Pied Piper"), and Roger Vadim ("Beauty and the Beast"). You can go on for days about these wonderful tales, most totaling around the 45-minute mark, but it's better just to get the set and start wherever you'd like; you will get to the end sooner than you think. --Doug Thomas

Faerie Tale Theatre - The Three Little Pigs

Three pig brothers leave home to build their own houses, only to be confronted by a wolf who is hungry for pork.

Deception

Faerie Tale Theatre - Puss 'n Boots

A clever cat comes up with a way to transform his master into a nobleman, but first he demands a new wardrobe.