Albert Welling Movies

The Beatles' early days as a struggling bar band are depicted in this fact-based drama, which tells the little-known story of original member Stuart Sutcliffe (Stephen Dorff). A close friend of John Lennon, Sutcliffe acts as the band's original bassist, accompanying them on their early gigs in Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany. The friendship becomes strained, however, when Sutcliffe falls in love with a German art student and starts to question his commitment to the band. With Sutcliffe's story taking center stage, the stories of the more famous Beatles largely fade into the background. The exception is John Lennon, thanks to a fierce performance by Ian Hart, who had previously portrayed the musician in the more intimate and provocative The Hours and the Times. While Backbeat does provide a new perspective on the band's beginning, and numerous opportunities for a group of modern rock musicians to recreate the band's energetic early performances, it never makes Sutcliffe's story seem more than a footnote to musical history. ~ Judd Blaise, Rovi

For the fourth installment of the BBC crime series Prime Suspect, the producers experimented with the show's format. Instead of following police detective Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren) through a single murder investigation over the course of four hours, Prime Suspect 4 includes three 90-minute, stand-alone mysteries. In "The Lost Child," Tennison investigates the disappearance of a child whose mother is unwittingly dating a convicted sex offender. In "Inner Circles," she traces the connection between the residents of a brutal housing development and the well-heeled denizens of an exclusive country club whose manager is brutally murdered. And "The Scent of Darkness" returns to the serial-killer investigation that made Tennison's career (in Prime Suspect 1) as additional murders with the same modus operandi bring up the possibility that she apprehended the wrong man. In addition to its new format, Prime Suspect 4 also depicts, in "The Lost Child," the first non-murder investigation of Tennison's career. Prime Suspect 4 originally aired April 30, May 7, and May 15, 1995, in the United Kingdom. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi