On Demand picks

December 4, 2008

MRS. BROWN

(Encore on Comcast) Literate, affecting drama about the relationship between Queen Victoria and her servant, the Scotsman John Brown, who snapped her out of mourning for Prince Albert and got her back on the regal track. Judi Dench is marvelous as Victoria, clinging to grief though awakened by her rude but devoted servant. As the unruly, sincere Brown, comic Billy Connolly (above, with Dench) is a triumph of casting against type. (PG; runs through Dec. 11)

GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPPI

(Encore on Comcast) Earnest but dramatically bland account of an idealistic white prosecutor's quest to bring the assassin of NAACP leader Medgar Evers to justice 30 years after the killing. The writing hampers Alec Baldwin, as the lawman, and Whoopi Goldberg, as Evers's widow. The film is stolen by James Woods's murderous hatemonger, Byron De La Bekwith. (PG-13; runs through Dec. 11)

PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED

(Comcast Free Movies) Kathleen Turner faints during a high school reunion party and wakes up 25 years earlier, in 1960, ready to remake her love life. Not just a blue taffeta "Back to the Future," this film light-handedly and richly embraces fairy tale romance and surprising degrees of emotional complexity. It's Francis Ford Coppola's best film since "The Godfather." (PG-13; runs through Dec. 11)