Critics' Voices

By Compiled by Andrea Sachs

MUSIC

JERRY LEE LEWIS: CLASSIC (Bear Family; import only). Enough Elvis. Jerry Lee's the once and future king of good ole godless rock 'n' roll. Here's heavy proof: an eight-CD box set of vintage Killer material, all recorded for Memphis' glorious Sun label between 1956 and 1963. In the set are 246 tunes, 30 performances issued for the first time, each and every one a blisterer, including even The Marines' Hymn and Dixie, for Lord's sake. Jerry Lee classics are included too, of course, sounding as full of brimstone as ever. While Elvis became the perpetrator and victim of his own melodrama, Jerry Lee pumped away at his piano, howling at the devil and pining for glory. Whatever ultimate judgment awaits him at the gates, Jerry Lee's got that glory already, and a good bit of it right here in this box. (At Down Home Music, El Cerrito, Calif.)

FRANK MORGAN: MOOD INDIGO (Antilles). Once touted as Charlie Parker's heir apparent, alto saxman Frank Morgan seemingly blew it all on a life of hard drugs, thievery and frequent jail terms. Released from prison in 1985, Morgan, now 56, launched a storybook comeback -- of which this outstanding album is the latest chapter. Ably joined on two tracks by trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, Morgan's soulful, driving sax proves that for a battle-scarred jazz veteran, playing well is the best revenge.

NEIL YOUNG: FREEDOM (Reprise). Typical sore-throat vocalizing but unusually acute songwriting from a still ornery spirit. Along with a timely Rockin' in the Free World, two tunes with Linda Ronstadt singing harmony show that he's kept going these 20 years on heart as well as spunk.

BILLY JOEL: STORM FRONT (Columbia). A monster hit album, with Joel's crazily ! catchy buzz-word history of the past 40 years, We Didn't Start the Fire, plus nine other effortlessly obnoxious ditties that take on such subjects as glasnost and the plight of Long Island fishermen. The musical equivalent of a sociology lecture by Ralph Kramden.

MOVIES

BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY. Tom Cruise comes of age an an actor in this impassioned panorama of life, death and rebirth in the Viet Nam years. If director Oliver Stone is almost breathless on the subject, he also packs enough power and craft to make Viet Nam fester on screen -- one more time.

ROGER & ME. In this impish documentary about auto layoffs in Flint, Mich., filmmaker Michael Moore comes across as a Garrison Keillor with a movie camera. And a mission: to beard General Motors Chairman Roger Smith. The picture is sharp and funny. But did Moore have to make his adversaries look so stupid so he could look smart?

THEATER

JUAN DARIEN. A puppet musical? For adults? Unimaginable, perhaps -- but also spellbinding, in this richly mythic off-Broadway delight.

ROMANCE IN HARD TIMES. The libretto of this off-Broadway musical about the Depression is odd, but the score is one of the most memorable in years.

JEEVES TAKES CHARGE. Edward Duke impersonates P.G. Wodehouse's magisterial butler, his dimwit employer Bertie Wooster and even a terrifying aunt or two in this one-man triumph in Cambridge, Mass.

TELEVISION

AFTER THE WAR (PBS, debuting Jan. 7, 9 p.m. on most stations). Two boys -- one the son of a well-to-do lawyer, the other a German refugee -- meet in boarding school during World War II, then cope with postwar disillusionment in an eight-part Masterpiece Theatre drama written by Frederic Raphael (The Glittering Prizes).

DRUG WARS: THE CAMARENA STORY (NBC, Jan. 7, 8, 9, 9 p.m. EST). Executive producer Michael Mann (Miami Vice, Crime Story) brings some zip to this docudrama about U.S. drug agent Kiki Camarena (Steven Bauer), who was kidnaped and killed in Mexico.

POISON IN THE ROCKIES (PBS, Jan. 9, 8 p.m. on most stations). The clear streams of the Colorado Rockies have long been a nature lover's delight. But this probing Nova documentary shows how badly they have been contaminated by toxic debris from thousands of mines, the construction of ski resorts and acid rain.

BOOKS

GOODNIGHT! by Abram Tertz ((Andrei Sinyavsky)) (Viking; $22.95). Under the pseudonym he once used to smuggle his writings to the West -- which landed him in a Soviet labor camp -- this Paris-based Soviet emigre offers a rich, autobiographical story of crime, punishment, betrayal and resurrection.

SOME FREAKS by David Mamet (Viking; $16.95). The playwright (Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed-the-Plow) turns essayist and brings off some witty, iconoclastic reviews of contemporary U.S. culture and politics.

EXHIBITIONS

THE OPULENT ERA, Brooklyn Museum. In the second half of the 19th century, wealthy women, many of them American, flocked to Paris couturiers to buy the fantastic creations of a now vanished world of craftsmanship. This excellent show, focusing on Worth, Pingat and Doucet, glories in clothes that were meant to be savored over an evening rather than snapped by paparazzi. Through Feb. 26.