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Rated: R; Genre: Drama; With: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jason Robards

A THOUSAND ACRES Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Lange, Jason Robards, Jennifer Jason Leigh (1997, Touchstone, R, $103.99) This King Lear for the '90s -- based on Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel -- is beautiful to look at but as flat as the Iowa farmland that serves as its metaphoric kingdom. Lear is Larry Cook (Robards), a bipolar patriarch who divvies up his property among his glamorous but disturbed daughters: the dutiful Ginny/Goneril (Lange), breast-cancer survivor Rose/Regan (Pfeiffer), and city lawyer Caroline/Cordelia (Leigh). In a contemporary, strangely reductive twist, the Bard's incest subtext is pushed front and center, and the dialogue gets as confessional as a daytime talk show's. Still, somehow it's wonderful seeing luminous Lange, feisty Pfeiffer, and smoldering Leigh all on one screen. B-


Posted Mar 27, 1998
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