Critics' Choice

MOVIES

BERT RIGBY, YOU'RE A FOOL. Robert Lindsay (the London-Broadway star of Me and My Girl) plays the lead in Carl Reiner's funny fable about an English coal miner's search for celebrity. Anne Bancroft is glorious as a randy Hollywood princess whom Lindsay meets on the potholed road to stardom.

TRUE BELIEVER. The ambiguities are as unsettling as a crack-house mugger in this humdinger about a sleazy attorney who bends the system to wreak justice. But the real drama is in the demonic intensity and haunted eyes of James Woods, a criminally gifted actor who may be too edgy to become a Hollywood star in this era of the Really Cute Guy.

BOOKS

BILLY BATHGATE by E.L. Doctorow (Random House; $19.95). A fictional Bronx boy, circa 1935, is accepted into the inner councils of the infamous Dutch Schultz gang and survives murderous adventures to tell an incendiary tale.

A THEFT by Saul Bellow (Penguin; $6.95). The Nobel laureate offers an original novella in paperback, a vivid new fiction in which the familiar Bellow hero has become a heroine.

THE END OF TRAGEDY by Rachel Ingalls (Simon & Schuster; $16.95). Four novellas by an author who already commands a formidable cult following. This time out, as before, she rubs against the grain of tired old plots and creates electrifying, hair-raising results.

RICHARD BURTON: A LIFE by Melvyn Bragg (Little, Brown; $22.95). This meticulous biography includes generous quotations from the subject's letters and his 350,000-word private diary; the result is a portrait of a vivid actor who approached language with the same passion he lavished on Elizabeth Taylor.

TELEVISION

UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY: RICHARD M. NIXON (syndicated, March 8, 8 p.m. EST on most stations). Will he never go away? Barbara Howar is the latest reporter to examine the deposed President's life and politics, in this two-hour documentary.

THE GLENN MILLER BAND REUNION (PBS, March 10, 9 p.m. on most stations). In the mood again, with bandleader (and former Miller trumpeter) Billy May, Kay Starr, Jack Jones and more.

DEAD MAN OUT (HBO, March 12, 10 p.m. EST). A prison psychiatrist (the ubiquitous Danny Glover) tries to help an incorrigible death-row inmate in this heavy-hitting drama.

THEATER

JEROME ROBBINS' BROADWAY. The master choreographer and a Broadway cast of 60 re-enact the dance delights of such classics as West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof and On the Town.

LEND ME A TENOR. Funnier than Neil Simon's Rumors and ably played, this door- slamming farce revives the swellegant urbanity of the '30s.

SHIRLEY VALENTINE. Pauline Collins (Upstairs, Downstairs) brings to Broadway her funny and poignant performance as a discontented housewife breaking free.

ART

ROBERT ADAMS: PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE AMERICAN WEST, Philadelphia Museum of Art. A tribute to the master photographer of the imperiled landscape. In the remarkable pictures that Adams has been making since the mid-1960s, nature's stubborn beauty is forever being elbowed aside by parking lots, trash and suburban sprawl. Through April 16.

ANDY WARHOL: A RETROSPECTIVE, Museum of Modern Art, New York City. The first comprehensive look since the artist's 1987 death at what made him the top of the Pops. Through May 2.

THE HUMAN FIGURE IN EARLY GREEK ART, the Art Institute of Chicago. Sixty-seven choice works drawn from Greek museums trace the emerging lineaments of the classical style. Through May 7.

MUSIC

JANE'S ADDICTION: JANE'S ADDICTION (Warner Bros.). This will dice your eardrums and deep-fry your brain in the bargain. Assaultive, tough, unsparing rock from a Los Angeles band with a punk foundation and guitars like trip- hammers.

LOU REED: NEW YORK (Sire). Savage lyricism in the sharpest Reed style, with a startling overlay of tough social commentary.

MANDY PATINKIN: MANDY PATINKIN (CBS). The Broadway (Sunday in the Park with George) and movie (Alien Nation) actor lets fly with a fearlessly melodramatic song cycle chosen from sources as various as Stephen Sondheim and Al Jolson. Some of the tunes are a bit florid, but the best (like Anyone Can Whistle) have a delicacy that lingers.

MOZART AND SCHNABEL, VOLS. 1-4 (Arabesque). The great Artur Schnabel in memorable performances of Mozart piano concertos and solo music, recorded in London between 1934 and 1948.