Critics Voices

By TIME''s Reviewers. Compiled by William Tynan

ART

VICTOR PASMORE: NATURE INTO ART, Center for International Contemporary Arts, New York City. A small retrospective of one of Britain's leading Modernist painters, designers, teachers and theorists. Nov. 9 through Feb. 17.

REVELACIONES: THE ART OF MANUEL ALVAREZ BRAVO, Friends of Photography Museum, San Francisco. In Bravo's great photos, a modern eye schooled in Surrealism meets a timeless place soaked in the myths of church, folklore and revolution. Yet this uncanny locale is still recognizable as the harsh and tender world of Mexico. Now this is magical realism. Through Dec. 30.

BOOKS

IN PRAISE OF THE STEPMOTHER by Mario Vargas Llosa (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $18.95). The loser of Peru's presidential election returns to his typewriter with a sexy novel that proves the brain is also an erogenous zone.

BUFFALO GIRLS by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster; $19.95). Calamity Jane joins Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show in another wistful novel by an author who, almost single-handedly, keeps the legendary West alive in an age of revisionist historians.

MOVIES

THE NASTY GIRL. A Bavarian schoolgirl starts poking into her hometown's Nazi past and becomes the local scourge. Michael Verhoeven turns social satire into exhilarating comedy. And Lena Stolze is a perky paradigm for young Germans unafraid of old demons.

THE KRAYS. The sun set on the British Empire, and the vermin came out to play. In the 1960s these Cockney twins ruled the London underworld with silken sadism. Peter Medak's docudrama underscores the mom-obsessed brutality of the Krays.

TUNE IN TOMORROW. Like the soap operas it parodies, this broad comedy teases more than it delivers in its tale of a blowsy woman (Barbara Hershey), her avid nephew (Keanu Reeves) and a radio writer (Peter Falk) who loves mischief and hates Albanians. A savory score by Wynton Marsalis, though.

MUSIC

THE CALL: RED MOON (MCA). Mystical, mythic rock that stakes a strong claim in territory explored by the likes of the Band and Van Morrison. Wildly ambitious, the Call keeps well away from pretension with the unassuming vigor of its homespun rhythms.

BRAHMS: SONATA NO. 3; INTERMEZZI, OP. 117 (Sony Classical). Emanuel Ax whittles Brahms' mightiest sonata down to size in a performance that combines majesty with might. Meanwhile, the mournful, enigmatic intermezzos of the composer's later years get tender, loving care.

DEXTER GORDON: HOMECOMING -- LIVE AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD (Columbia). Gordon's 1976 return to the U.S. after 14 years abroad produced a smashing live album. Now reissued with the latest batch of Columbia Jazz Masterpieces releases (other offerings include Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck), this two-disk set features a throaty version of 'Round Midnight that ranks as one of the great tenor sax performances of all time.

TELEVISION

CHEERS (NBC, Nov. 8, 9 p.m. EST). While The Simpsons and Cosby try to clobber each other, this hardy perennial has quietly passed them both and grabbed the No. 1 ratings spot. Tonight the barroom gang marks its 200th episode with an hour-long special featuring talk-show host John McLaughlin.

PSYCHO IV: THE BEGINNING

(Showtime, Nov. 10 and 16, 9 p.m. EST). What was Norman Bates like as a child? Mother troubles, we suspect. Anthony Perkins is back in his most famous role, and Henry Thomas (E.T.) plays the young Norman in flashbacks.

BIG ONE: THE GREAT LOS ANGELES EARTHQUAKE (NBC, Nov. 11 and 12, 9 p.m. EST). See a big American city reduced to rubble! See a sexy seismologist (Joanna Kerns) warn people of the impending disaster! See a major TV network stretch a hokey disaster movie into two boring nights!

THEATER

ABUNDANCE. Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart) switches from Southern Gothic to Old West revisionism in this off-Broadway portrait of desperate mail-order brides and lonely plainsmen who seek them, starring Amanda Plummer, Tess Harper and Keith Reddin. Behind the stoic pioneer myth lay pain, privation and poverty.

SHADOWLANDS. Late in life, the confirmed bachelor C.S. Lewis, author of The Screwtape Letters and the fantasy classics The Chronicles of Narnia, found love with American poet Joy Davidman. Then sadness struck. Nigel Hawthorne and Jane Alexander repeat their London roles on Broadway in this poignant tale.

TWO TRAINS RUNNING. The year is 1968, one of the most turbulent of the century, but outwardly nothing much goes on in the black luncheonette that is the setting for this beguiling, comic slice of life from Pulitzer prizewinner August Wilson (Fences, The Piano Lesson.) Yet the show at Boston's Huntington Theater is rich in symbol and metaphor -- the author's subtlest, shrewdest reflection yet about how to overcome the bitter past. Through Nov. 25.

A MASTERPIECE RESTORED

A somber wedding party makes its way to the riverside, where suddenly the bride (Dita Parlo) hitches up her dress, perches on a barge boom and swings onto the boat for a honeymoon on the Seine. Thus begins Jean Vigo's 1934 French film L'Atalante, which ends when the groom (Jean Daste) finds his restless spouse at an arcade, lifts her up and carries her out over his shoulder. In between are scenes of sweet, surreal comedy that dazzle with gorgeous movie movement. Vigo was tubercular from youth and died at 29, just as his saucy masterpiece was being mauled by the producers. But his love of life and film informs every frame of L'Atalante. It is evident in the vibrant camerabatics, in Maurice Jaubert's haunting score and in the performance of grouchy, ursine Michel Simon, the living relic of a lifetime happily misspent at sea. Last year the French restored L'Atalante to its original form, even adding nine minutes of footage. Now American audiences can savor this sweet enthraller of a river romance in all its radiant glory.