The real-life friends play fictionalized versions of themselves in a genial but thin comedy built around a long-running family rumor.

Tom Cruise delivers a virtuoso turn, but Iñárritu buries a potentially potent climate-change comedy beneath exposition, self-congratulation, and stunts.

Three Toronto premieres — John Trengove’s "The Smell of Apples," Avi Nesher’s "Our Loves," and Pedro Almodóvar’s "Bitter Christmas" — locate private lives within political violence, historical memory,...

Kelly Anderson’s "The Wild Beneath" finds beauty in the eerie aftermath of disaster, where grief settles everywhere and the sea reshapes what its survivors believe is real.

Ahead of his October 2 Regattabar show, the Brooklyn-based soul singer reflects on Boston’s supportive early-2000s music scene, working with Swamp Dogg, and the pleasures and challenges of drawing fro...

Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa transforms a revenge thriller into a chilling examination of guilt, conspiracy, and the violence that permeates modern life.

Our expert critics supply a guide to film, visual art, theater, author readings, television, and music. More offerings will be added as they come in.

The BSO avoided a strike and greeted its music director warmly, but an oddly programmed opening night culminated in a deeply disappointing Brahms Fourth.

"Edie Arnold Is a Loser" is a divinely idiotic punk-rock Catholic-school comedy: sweet, predictable, outrageous, mildly blasphemous—and infectious.

There is no question that this new volume will be the resource that all subsequent historians will turn to when they explore the trajectory of classical ballet’s slow -- and not yet completed -- chore...

The festival’s strongest films find courage, comedy, and unexpected forms of kinship amid political repression, mortality, war, and the complications of family.

This week’s poem: Wanda Phipps's "other memory"

Kenneth Womack’s lively account of Boston photographer Roger Farrington’s 1980 shoot offers a small but captivating footnote to Beatles history.

James Ijames’s funny, moving family fable receives an engaging New England premiere, but its comforts also raise questions about what local theater should risk in a moment of public crisis.

In advance of a rare Fall River appearance, Matthew Stubbs and Cody Nilsen discuss recording with the harmonica master, choosing blues deep cuts, and building a set unlike either artist’s usual show.

Stages should heed the call to carpe diem - and a sampling of the latest cultural coverage

Iana Boukova’s novel finds enchantment in digression, folklore, and the sensuous music of language.

With Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax on hand—and an audience that repeatedly, rapturously made its feelings known—the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s opening weekend served as both a musical showcase and a public...

In The Hard Path to Unity, former congressman  Barney Frank offers a sharp account of Trump-era politics and liberal disarray—but his call for patience with progressive “dissidents” invites serious re...

Scott Edmiston’s sharply acted Lyric Stage revival of Arthur Miller’s 1947 drama reveals the moral rot lurking beneath postwar suburban prosperity—and its unsettling relevance today.

Zach Cregger’s comedic instincts have overtaken his skill as a horror director. Resident Evil is more like a gory stoner comedy than an all-gas-no-brakes horror ride.

At the New Museum, "I Am Tony" turns film, music, violence, memory, and Black creativity into a searing visual reckoning.

Christopher Nolan’s high-tech Homer struggles to achieve epic grandeur; Fritz Lang’s "Die Nibelungen," with its stylized images and Gottfried Huppertz’s symphonic score, shows what modern spectacle le...

In Central Square Theater’s production of the solo drama "Eleanor," the acclaimed actor channels a historic first lady’s activism, marital complexities, and enduring call to civic action.

David Kittredge’s lively, illuminating documentary revisits John Boorman’s troubled 1977 "Exorcist II: The Heretic"—a studio-era fiasco whose ambition, artistry, and afterlife now demand a second look...

His threatened destruction of the nation’s living memorial to John F. Kennedy exposes not merely an assault on a building, but the petty authoritarianism, civic vandalism, and cultural contempt drivin...

With Matthew Hagle at the piano and a storied 1742 Guarneri in hand, violinist Pine found both familial warmth and dramatic urgency in three Brahms sonatas.

This week’s poem: Chuck Stebelton's "A Peony For Liu Yuxi"

In films about Franco’s disappeared, AI companions, Iranian exile, and an Indian South African family’s buried history, the Camden International Film Festival finds digital—and analog—means of restori...

By Jim Kates

Claudia Acuña reconnects Chilean roots with American jazz on "Ave de Luz," while Jorge Drexler explores love, technology, politics, and dance on "Taracá."

By Dan Kennedy

The Cape Ann Museum’s revelatory exhibition shows how Milton Avery, Adolph Gottlieb, and Mark Rothko turned the Gloucester shore into a language of abstraction.