Critics' Voices

By TIME''s Reviewers/Compiled by Linda Williams

MOVIES

BLACK ROBE. Sometimes you dance with the wolf; sometimes the wolf eats you. Bruce Beresford's dark drama, about a white priest among some truly savage savages, tops Kevin Costner's Oscar-winning 1990 romance by being anthropologically, if not politically, correct. It embraces ambiguity and is all the more powerful for it.

FOR THE BOYS. The definitive Bette Midler movie -- all music, sass and high emoting -- is also a jazzy panorama of pop culture for half an American century. And even if you skip the movie, get the sound track, which features Bette's great and knowing pipes on excavated swing tunes like Billy-a-Dick and Stuff Like That There.

MEETING VENUS. A Hungarian guest conductor (Niels Arestrup) meets a Swedish diva (Glenn Close) while rehearsing Wagner's Tannhauser with a motley and disputatious band of emigre musicians in Paris. Result: a funny, satirical, romantic and -- above all -- intelligent film about backstage intrigues and onstage triumphs.

THEATER

THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN. Sean O'Casey went on to write better plays and the new Irish troupe that bears his name may go on to better stagings, but both show to advantage in this tragicomedy about the Troubles in Dublin of 1920. The touring show, directed by the playwright's daughter Shivaun, is at Washington's Kennedy Center until Jan. 19.

NICK & NORA. Remember that lovable Asta? Well, the only new American musical of the 1991-92 Broadway season, based on the Thin Man movies, is quite a dog itself.

MARVIN'S ROOM. The first generation of AIDS plays dealt with the disease head on and focused on a specifically gay male world. The new wave, like Prelude to a Kiss and this off-Broadway knockout by Scott McPherson, respond metaphorically, never mentioning gays or even the disease but instead looking at the universal experiences of illness and dying, family rage and reconciliation. Director David Petrarca has polished the work through stagings in Chicago and Hartford, and it shines -- especially in Laura Esterman's portrayal of a care-giving aunt and Mark Rosenthal's depiction of her turbulent teenage nephew.

TELEVISION

CIRQUE DU SOLEIL II (HBO, Dec. 17, 21). Montreal's fantastical theatrical circus troupe presents an all-new show, spotlighting a bewitching company of aerialists, acrobats, contortionists and clowns.

AMAZING GRACE (PBS, Dec. 20, 9 p.m. on most stations). A welcome rerun of Bill Moyers' glorious documentary on the meaning and legacy of one of the most popular hymns in the English language. Jessye Norman, Judy Collins and the Boys Choir of Harlem are among the singers.

TWO ROOMS: TRIBUTE TO ELTON JOHN & BERNIE TAUPIN (ABC, Dec. 21, 9 p.m. EST). Rocket Man, Bennie and the Jets, Crocodile Rock and lots more John-Taupin hits are performed by Tina Turner, Sting, the Who, Elton himself and a galaxy of other rock stars in this salute to the two-decade career of the hugely successful songwriting team.

MUSIC

MARC COHN: MARC COHN (Atlantic). Nimble songwriting and heartfelt singing in the kind of debut album that harkens back to the halcyon days of James Taylor and Jackson Browne. Taylor, in fact, joins in on one tune, but on tracks like the streamlined Silver Thunderbird and Walking in Memphis, Cohn shows off a style that's clearly all his own.

SCHOENBERG: GURRELIEDER (London). 2 vols. This quasi-oratorio is in many ways a summation and culmination of Romanticism: a magnificent music-drama about doomed love and transcendence, it echoes Wagner's Tristan and foreshadows Mahler's Eighth. Riccardo Chailly guides the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, a large chorus and superb soloists led by Susan Dunn and Siegfried Jerusalem in this infinitely expressive, dramatically gripping performance.

ART

LOUIS I. KAHN: IN THE REALM OF ARCHITECTURE, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Drawings, scale models and photographs revealing the work of one of the most sublime builders of the 20th century. Through Jan. 5.

THE RADIANCE OF JADE AND THE CRYSTAL CLARITY OF WATER: KOREAN CERAMICS FROM THE ATAKA COLLECTION, The Art Institute of Chicago. Korean artisans might have initially borrowed pottery techniques from the Chinese, but their subsequent creations rivaled those of their giant neighbor and became the envy of Japan, which dispatched military expeditions to raid Korean kilns and enslave its craftsmen. On display are 114 elegant and serenely beautiful objects including vases, ewers, incense burners and porcelain water droppers. Through Feb. 2.

ETCETERA

FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND PRESS: AMERICAN DEVELOPMENTS TO 1991, Low Memorial * Library, Columbia University, New York. In commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, an exhibition of 70 documents, newspaper articles, broadsides and cartoons dealing with the first of our constitutional amendments. Through Jan. 31.

LOST BOY

Living well may be the best revenge. But a marvelous movie called Europa, Europa argues that there are times when living any way at all can serve the same purpose. It is based on the true World War II adventures of an adolescent Jew named Solomon Perel (Marco Hofschneider). His parents send him away from home, hoping that as a free agent living by his wits, he can escape Nazi persecution. Captured first by Russians, then by a company of German soldiers, he becomes an accidental battlefield hero. His reward is a scholarship to an elite Hitler Youth school, where every shower is a threat: circumcision was a death warrant in Hitler's Germany. There is comedy and suspense in his story, shrewdness and innocence in his well-played character, irony and sadness in his situation, which keeps him always isolated in a crowd. Writer-director Agnieszka Holland's energetic film neither sentimentalizes nor solemnizes Solly. It is finally a celebration of individual wit triumphing over mass viciousness and stupidity.