Dawn M. Simmons directs a taut Southern Gothic thriller in which thwarted longing and the promise of escape turn a Georgia household into a cauldron of suspicion.

At New York’s Art Students League, Robert Cenedella’s grotesque group portrait turns the MAGA elite into a gathering of horned grotesques.

This week's poem: Whit Griffin's from "Parting Gifts"

Dave Boyle’s atmospheric ghost story raises intriguing questions about sisterhood and the afterlife, then buries them beneath slasher-film carnage.

The Blue Note Records president, producer, and bassist leads his Pan-Detroit Ensemble through original material and a freewheeling tribute to the Grateful Dead’s Blues for Allah at the Sinclair and Gr...

Mikey Madison shines as whistleblower Frances Haugen, but Aaron Sorkin’s Facebook drama preaches more than it provokes.

The arts can survive democracy’s end -- and a sampling of the latest cultural coverage

A spirited recording, led by two outstanding sopranos, makes a persuasive case for the earliest surviving opera by a Black American composer—and for its long-neglected creator.

Stillz’s "Barrio Triste" transforms the dangers of life in Medellín into a haunting journey through cosmic horror, media distrust, and adolescent fear.

Across two October weekends at the Brattle, the expanded 27-film series offers Boston audiences early looks at new work by Lee Chang-dong, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Martin McDonagh, Pedro ...

ECM New Series’ reissue of the composer’s seminal early recordings restores their bite, rigor, and uncommon spiritual warmth.

In a monumental new gathering of his work, the Nobel laureate’s poems—of rural labor, private grief, history, and divided Northern Ireland—remain a moral force in a newly fraught moment.

By Mark Pawlak

In "The Disciple: A Wagnerian Tale of the Gilded Age," the cultural historian and novelist resurrects Wagner’s American apostle—and a progressive, populist musical culture that New York has largely fo...

Janis Siegel’s first project since the Manhattan Transfer’s 2023 dissolution honors the lyric-driven jazz practice shaped by Eddie Jefferson and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.

An incisive exhibition traces how Rembrandt, his Dutch contemporaries, and earlier artists remade a biblical story of concealment, power, and survival.

At TIFF, Barbara Kopple follows exploited delivery workers, William Greaves revives the Harlem Renaissance, and Iranian filmmakers find private lives shadowed by surveillance, war, and repression, yet...

A six-LP, three-CD collection gives us the bassist leading exceptional small groups in music of rigor, energy, and expansive range.

Tom Overton’s lively, intimate biography follows the critic, novelist, artist, activist, and lifelong insurgent through a career that remade the ways we see.

This week's poem: Joanna Fuhrman's "Why Aren't You Angry?"

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