Welcome back to The Big To-Do. At long last, the World Cup is underway, and the Globe is working every angle. The US team opens play today against Paraguay in Inglewood, Calif., and Haiti and Scotland face off tomorrow in Foxborough. Also tomorrow, the Knicks visit San Antonio in hopes of wrapping up the NBA Finals in five games. The weekend weather looks Texas-style hot, with the humidity moderating somewhat. If retreating to an air-conditioned den sounds good, the latest streaming movies and TV shows range from “horror comedy fare to the return of a superhero icon.” The Globe’s Matt Juul offers five top picks. This week’s One Special Thing is both a film and a harbinger of an unexpected career. And the arts brief section The Rundown includes the lowdown on a new mural by Ryan Adams celebrating Massachusetts 250. Head to the Hub on Causeway to find the “hidden Celtics logo” and other Boston Easter eggs.

Movies

Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day,” which “begins with a kidnapping and ends with a message,” earns 4 stars from Globe film critic Odie Hender​son. Awash in “weird events,” this is “a patient movie, allowing us to marinate in its mysteries and the cast’s great performances. The best way I can describe this effect is a late scene where one of the villains, sensing defeat, simply pulls up a chair to observe what’s about to happen.”

The disaster spoof “STOP! THAT! TRAIN!” yields “about three very big laughs, and a few chuckles here and there.” The drag queen-heavy cast is “so full of joy, good humor, and the desire to entertain that I sincerely wished that the script by Christina Friel and Connor Wright was a lot funnier,” Henderson writes in a 2-star review. “My lack of good taste is why I’m disappointed in ‘STOP! THAT! TRAIN!’”

“STOP! THAT! TRAIN!” star Airline Inthyrath, who performs as the drag queen Jujubee, attended Lowell High and UMass Amherst. “I’m probably the most well-known Laotian drag queen at the moment,” the repeat “RuPaul’s Drag Race” competitor tells the Globe’s Devra First over lunch in Lowell. “I love the complex flavors of Laotian food, but I will also jump on the bandwagon of a great American meatloaf,” he says. “It’s love in a different language.”

“Pennies from Heaven” is “just a superb movie.” What makes Dennis Potter’s 1981 musical this week’s One Special Thing is Steve Martin, then a wildly successful comedian. “[P]laying such an unsympathetic character in such a grim movie amounted to not just a career change-up for Martin, but an act of genuine professional daring,” writes the Globe’s Don Aucoin.

The Roxbury International Film Festival starts next week with Dan Egan’s documentary “Transforming the Beautiful Game: The Clyde Best Story.” Following the “Jackie Robinson of English football” from teen to elder statesman, it’s “well worth your time,” Henderson writes. The festival schedule includes “free and ticketed screenings as well as events focusing on filmmaking and discussions.”

The Noir City Boston festival begins today, bringing “journeys into the heart of darkness” to Cambridge. Henderson breaks down the slate of double features on the theme “Face the Music,” which covers everything from “Gilda” to “Sweet Smell of Success” to “Anatomy of a Murder.”

TV & Streaming

A mysterious hum only some people hear sets “The Listeners” in motion. Starring Rebecca Hall as Claire, a teacher who can hear it, the series “deepens as it progresses and embraces a more experimental style the further Claire falls under the sway of the hum,” writes Globe TV critic Chris Vognar. It “creates a mood as much as it tells a story, and finds creative ways to depict characters losing contact with external reality.”

To list the best TV actors, start by answering: “What exactly is a TV actor?” Vognar lands on “actors who have made a home on the small screen, not exclusively but regularly.” He names five women and five men “whose presence I always welcome in my home” — former teen stars, a few Brits, a Bay State native, and an actor who possesses “the intangible quality of making just about everything he says sound funny.”

The latest British import classing up American streaming is “Alice and Steve.” Nicola Walker and Jermaine Clement star as best friends who have a serious falling-out. “[H]e starts dating her 26-year-old daughter ... and it’s war time,” Vognar writes. “British TV is more readily available than ever,” he observes, citing “Baby Reindeer,” “Slow Horses,” and more. “Not every show is great, but you can usually count on a high level of writing, performance, and overall attention to craft.”

Music

The Boston Higashi School jazz band is “a proper jazz ensemble.” The school emphasizes music in its curriculum for individuals with severe autism, and students who demonstrate aptitude make up the band along with alumni and teachers. “Playing music makes me feel joyful and good,” saxophonist Isaiah Pina, 14, tells the Globe’s Mark Shanahan, who goes along for the ride. “But it takes a lot of practice.”

Logistics fans, you’re up. The Boston Pops gave way to “Squash@Symphony Showdown” this week at Symphony Hall, which transformed into a squash venue, and the Globe’s A.Z. Madonna has the details. Retired pro Ali Farag, a four-time world champ and Harvard alum, sounded eager to jump in. “I was really hoping it would happen in my prime time so I would get to play in it but better late than never!”

Summer music festival season in Massachusetts and Rhode Island kicks off next week and plays into early September. “Though two of the bigger New England festivals, Boston Calling and Fresh Grass, are taking the summer off, there are still plenty of options for fans of just about any taste,” Globe correspondent Eric R. Danton writes. He has the scoop on 14 events, most of them outdoors.

Concert etiquette works in two directions. Having already offered advice to audiences, Globe correspondent Marc Hirsh follows up with pointers for artists. In his words: “Performers, consider the following to be a few handy rules of thumb for being respectful and considerate to the people you claim (nightly, and oh-so-sincerely) to love more than even the fame and especially the money.”

Museums & Visual Art

The new mural overlooking Dewey Square is “The Midnight Ride,” by Rixy. For the first time, the commission came with a theme, the 250th anniversary of the US. “The palette — red tendrils of rope, the soft creamy white of the warrior’s gown, the blue horsehide — is by design,” Globe art critic Murray Whyte writes. “I’m not really a red, white, and blue kind of person,” says Rixy. “Those colors feel political. So I’m reconstructing the flag.”

The works in “Avital Sagalyn: Mid-Century Provincetown” “reveal a confident hand, eye, and imagination.” But, writes Globe correspondent Cate McQuaid, “not many people are familiar with her art.” Sagalyn (1925-2020) had her first solo show when she was in her 90s. “[S]he didn’t want to exhibit her work because she didn’t want her work to be influenced by what would sell,” says her son Dan. At the Provincetown Art Association and Museum.

Architecture

The state wants the Government Services Center redeveloped for “housing, retail, and leisure,” “a challenge for even the most vivid imagination.” The complex, off Cambridge Street near Government Center, is “a bleak behemoth of stippled gray concrete,” writes Murray Whyte. “The specifics of any housing scheme remain to be seen as the state prepares to field proposals, but one thing seems clear: There’s potential here.”

Theater

“Black Swan,” at the ART, adapts Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 movie into “the kind of contradictory work that’s insistent yet uninvolving.” Globe theater critic Don Aucoin saves his praise for Melanie Moore. “You cannot ask more of a performer, in terms of both acting and dancing, than what Moore gives in her fearless, transfixing portrayal of Nina, a young ballerina who spirals into madness as she immerses herself in the lead role of ‘Swan Lake.’”

The setting of “No Recombination Without Representation” is Cambridge City Hall, which is also the performance space. Set in 1976, Patrick Gabridge’s play re-creates a lengthy debate over a proposed Harvard lab and draws the audience into the action. “There were some very strong personalities in the room that night, so the theatrical stakes are high,” director Debra Wise tells Globe correspondent Terry Byrne, who has a fascinating preview.

Books

A tongue-in-cheek attempt to assume the responsibility of portraying Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond has ended — in failure, but with some laughs. Actor Melissa Aquiles threw her straw hat in the ring on social media and soon went viral. She and her husband and comedy partner, Jack Frederick, recently visited Concord, where they saw what she’ll be missing. Globe correspondent James Sullivan has a recap.

In “Villa Coco,” Andrew Sean Greer (“Less”) spins a fish-out-of-water tale of a young man working for a “92-year-old Baronessa in her crumbling Tuscan villa.” Departing from the “satirical bite” of his earlier work, Greer “clearly set out to produce a novel packed with warmth, wit, and charm, and he pulls this off admirably,” writes Globe reviewer Malcolm Forbes.

Eighteenth-century naturalist George Forster’s life “was defined by a restless, early exposure to the world’s vastness.” In “The Traveler,” by Andrea Wulf, Forster “emerges not as a mere chronicler of discovery but as the primary intellectual ancestor of our contemporary ecological and humanitarian conscience,” writes Globe reviewer John Kaag. The book “is an invitation to step out of our studies and experience the world — with its attendant risks and rewards.”

Today’s newsletter was written by Marie Morris and produced by the Globe Living/Arts staff. Marie Morris can be reached at marie.morris@globe.com. Thanks for reading.

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