Critics' Choice

CINEMA

A FISH CALLED WANDA. As writer and star, Monty Python Alumnus John Cleese leads a merrie band of jewelry thieves in a looney caper. Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline get the cartoon-comedy style just right.

COMMISSAR. A tough officer of the Soviet army gets pregnant and, in the company of a Jewish family, finds humanity. Banned for 20 years, this Soviet- made parable is glasnost's greatest gift to movies.

BULL DURHAM. A "natural" ballplayer (Tim Robbins) is a natural disaster to his coaches in the arts of baseball (Kevin Costner) and love (Susan Sarandon).

MUSIC

VAN MORRISON & THE CHIEFTAINS: IRISH HEARTBEAT (Mercury). Traditional Irish tunes given a most unconventional treatment by some of Ireland's most gifted instrumentalists and by a great rocker, who invests each song with his own wild Celtic heart.

HAYDN: SYMPHONIES LE MATIN, LE MIDI AND LE SOIR

(Archiv). Trevor Pinnock leads the English Concert in a way that does Papa Haydn proud.

KEITH JARRETT TRIO: STILL LIVE (ECM). Ravishing standards like Come Rain or Come Shine and upbeat thrillers like Charlie Parker's Billie's Bounce: dazzling jazz piano from one of the best.

TELEVISION

THE BIG KNIFE (PBS, July 20, 9 p.m. on most stations). An unhappy movie star (Peter Gallagher) struggles against the manipulations of a Machiavellian studio boss in Clifford Odets' sharp-edged 1949 drama about Hollywood.

VIETNAM WAR STORY (HBO, debuting July 20, 10 p.m. EDT). TV's fascination with a once neglected war continues, as this series resumes with three dramas inspired by veterans' experiences.

WISEGUY (CBS, Wednesdays, 10 p.m. EDT). A new slot in summer reruns has helped boost the ratings for this intelligent, hard-boiled crime drama, featuring Ken Wahl as an undercover cop on the trail of slimy bad guys.

BOOKS

GROUND ZERO by Andrew Holleran (Morrow; $16.95). A tragicomic tour, in the form of essays, through Manhattan's once bustling gay night spots, now somber, subdued and charged with the emotional fallout of AIDS.

A FAR CRY FROM KENSINGTON by Muriel Spark (Houghton Mifflin; $17.95). A beguiling widow's fictional progress over two familiar Spark terrains: the London publishing world and the battleground between innocence and corruption.

SPENCE + LILA by Bobbie Ann Mason (Harper & Row; $12.95). The author of Shiloh and Other Stories offers up a love story about a Kentucky farmer and his ailing wife so pure and enduring that it might have been carved with a jackknife on an old oak.

THEATER

BIG TIME. Keith Reddin's sly look at yuppies on the make in international finance transfers from Harvard to off-Broadway.

MIRACOLO D'AMORE. Clowns and choruses, nudes and birdsong enliven Martha Clarke's surreal fantasy, off-Broadway, of love and violence.