Tender Mercies

Starring:Robert Duvall, Tess Harper, Betty Buckley, Wilford Brimley, Ellen Barkin, Allan Hubbard, Lenny von Dohlen, Paul Gleason, Michael Crabtree, Norman Bennett, Andrew Scott Hollon, Rick Murray, Stephen Funchess, Glen Fleming, James Aaron, Jerry Biggs, Sheila Bird, Robert E. Blackburn III, Eli Cummins, Tony Frank
Director: Bruce Beresford
Studio: Anchor Bay
Product Type: DVD

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Sometimes everything comes together in a movie and it becomes something so much greater than the sum of its parts that it can only be described as a miracle. That's the case with Tender Mercies, a quietly luminous character piece about an alcoholic, washed-up country singer named Mac Sledge (Robert Duvall in an Oscar-winning performance) who hits bottom in a motel room one night and then slowly finds his way back into the land of the living with the help of the widow (Tess Harper) and her young son. It's a low-key, contemplative film that feels like a rural American family comedy in the vein of the great Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu. Tender Mercies was directed by Australian Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy, Breaker Morant), written by Horton Foote (To Kill a Mockingbird), who won an Oscar for his screenplay, and has an unbeatable cast. This is one of Duvall's most intimate and deeply personal performances, matched only by his debut 14 years later as actor-writer-director in The Apostle. --Jim Emerson

Great Performances (Frances / Plenty / Tender Mercies)

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Great Performances (Frances / Plenty / Tender Mercies)
Starring: Jessica Lange , Kim Stanley , Sam Shepard , Bart Burns , and Jonathan Banks
Director: Graeme Clifford , Fred Schepisi , and Bruce Beresford
Manufacturer: Anchor Bay
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0000844JG
Release Date: 2003-04-29

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Frances
Jessica Lange gives a career performance in a role she was born to play: the talented and troubled Frances Farmer. Farmer's awful trajectory travels from bright Seattle girl to 1930s Hollywood starlet to degraded (eventually lobotomized) mental patient. Lange, who has the blond, clean look of Farmer's heyday, goes into these places with the fierce abandon of a true believer. Her performance, the lush John Barry score, and the period re-creation are all worth applauding; almost everything else fails. Everyone except Farmer is grotesquely caricatured to fit the movie's thesis, which is that if you are intelligent and nonconformist, the system will resolutely destroy you. (The medical establishment is evil incarnate.) This simple conclusion seems inadequate and disrespectful of Frances Farmer's tragic problems. For a radiant glimpse of what the real Farmer had to offer, see Howard Hawks's Come and Get It, which bristles with excitement over a new discovery. --Robert Horton

Plenty
David Hare's Broadway play--about political idealism and the way some people always need to be fighting for a cause--was credibly transferred to the screen by director Fred Schepisi from Hare's screenplay. Meryl Streep (in the midst of a streak of movies that required accents) plays a British woman who fought for the French Resistance during World War II. When she returns to normal life in post-war England and marries a diplomat, she becomes something of a terror--speaking her mind when, of course, diplomacy dictates otherwise. Did she leave the best part of herself in France, where life was more meaningful and immediate? Hare's comment on Great Britain's post-war slide into Thatcherism, this film features a tough-minded (and not particularly likable) performance by Streep, who is actually quite good. It's a hard movie to embrace, but a well-made one nonetheless. --Marshall Fine

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Charlie Rose with Robert Duvall (March 11, 1998)

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Charlie Rose with Robert Duvall (March 11, 1998)

Manufacturer: Charlie Rose Inc.
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Description

A rebroadcast of a discussion with actor Robert Duvall about his films, "The Apostle" and "The Gingerbread Man" (from January 29, 1998)

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Tender Mercies [Region 2]
Starring: Robert Duvall , Tess Harper , Betty Buckley , Wilford Brimley , and Ellen Barkin
Director: Bruce Beresford
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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The Apostle
Places in the Heart
The Trip to Bountiful
The Great Santini
Convicts

ASIN: B0001P0450

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