Your weekly guide to staying entertained any day of the week

April 25, 2025

Welcome back to The Big To-Do. As April winds down and allergies rage, the spring cultural season is firing on all cylinders, complete with a music festival (in Lowell) and a race against the clock to see the MFA’s collection of Benin Bronzes before the gallery that displays them closes. If you’re staying in, the Globe’s Matt Juul highlights “new and good TV shows and movies now available to stream.” And for the over-30 crowd, Globe correspondent Haley Clough has a look at a hot nightlife trend — hitting the bar or club in the late afternoon for “a ‘night out’ that doesn’t end in a nightcap.”

Film & Movies

Jon Bernthal and Ben Affleck in "The Accountant 2." Warrick Page/Amazon MGM Studios

“The Accountant 2,” starring Ben Affleck as the titular number-cruncher-slash-vigilante, earns 2½ stars from Globe film critic Odie Henderson. Eight years after the original, the accountant reunites with his brother (Jon Bernthal), and “the siblings are thrown into another violent caper.” Amid the expected blood and gore, their squabbling is “a welcome diversion while we await the film’s violent, bullet-filled climax.”

In “The Shrouds,” video screens on headstones “show the deceased’s present: underground, decomposing, in real time.” You might not be surprised to hear the writer-director is David Cronenberg. In time, “[w]hat had been a meditation on mortality, love, and grief starts to take on aspects of a paranoid thriller,” writes the Globe’s Mark Feeney, awarding 3 stars.

Nominally a children’s movie, “The Legend of Ochi,” about mythical creatures in the Carpathian mountains, is a “slow-moving slog.” Even Willem Dafoe “running around in armor and yelling about how the Ochi must die” can’t save it, Henderson writes in a 1½-star review. “At least Dafoe chewing the scenery is fun to watch.”

Twenty-four years after directing his first feature, Daniel Minahan is back at the helm of “On Swift Horses,” opening Friday. Adapted from Shannon Pufahl’s novel, the film, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Jacob Elordi, is “a very earnest love story,“ Minahan says in an interview with Globe correspondent Stuart Miller. ”[T]he story addresses a lot of really relevant contemporary ideas — identity and sexuality and whether it’s possible to love more than one person at a time."

TV & Streaming

Charlotte Gainsbourg in "Étoile." Philippe Antonello/Prime Video

Four episodes in, “Étoile,” about ballet companies in New York and Paris that swap star dancers, “finally figures out what it’s doing.” Early on, the leads of the latest from the creator of “Gilmore Girls,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” and “Bunheads” “aren’t quite as compelling as the show needs them to be.” But, the Globe’s Lisa Weidenfeld writes, with apologies for the cliché, “[I]t does in fact get good.”

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Keira Knightley version of “Pride & Prejudice.” It’s “one of the most popular adaptations of Jane Austen’s classic novel — which is saying something, given how many there have been,” writes Globe correspondent Caroline Framke. Her list of “five TV options available to stream now” starts exactly where you expect it to and heads in delightfully unexpected directions.

“Carême” tells “the real-life story of ... the world’s first celebrity chef.” As the title character, Benjamin Voisin “reads like a cross between Jeremy Allen White and Timothée Chalamet; both brashly demanding and boyishly charming,” writes Globe correspondent Caroline Siede. The eight-episode French-language series, which strikes a tone “somewhere between knowingly ridiculous and emotionally committed,” premieres next week.

The Big Day

Newlyweds Alejandra Zarazua and Kellan Gibboney got married at Cambridge City Hall in January 2025. Riley West Photography

The Globe’s weddings column, The Big Day, tells stories of how couples found each other, fell in love, and said “I do.” Kellan Gibboney and Alejandra Zarazua married at Cambridge City Hall in February, almost four years after connecting on Tinder. “I remember thinking that this person not only can keep up with what I’m talking about, but also is showing depth of knowledge and passion for things that I was really excited to hear them talk about,” Alejandra tells Globe correspondent Rachel Kim Raczka.

To apply to be featured, recently married and engaged couples (vow renewals and commitment ceremonies, too!) with ties to New England can click here for the application form.

Dance

Natalya Baine clowned around with her daughter Nasya Baine, 17, after an intensive dance class at the OrigiNation Cultural Arts Center in Jamaica Plain. Natalya drives the 17-year-old several times a week to New York, to train with the pre-professional program of the Ailey School. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is in town for the weekend, but Nasya Baine of Dorchester won’t be in the audience. Four days a week, her mother, Natalya, drives the 17-year-old to Manhattan, where Nasya is enrolled in Ailey’s pre-professional school year program, and back. “I love seeing the reactions on people’s faces when I tell them,” Nasya says. Globe correspondent Alyssa Vaughn delivers a story about all kinds of devotion.

Theater

Bette Midler in “Hello Dolly” at the Shubert Theater in New York, April 15, 2017. NYT

“The history of the American theater abounds with memorable hats that have been used to swiftly establish character, time, and place.” Case in point: Regina Taylor’s “Crowns,” currently bringing millinery exuberance to Arrow Street Arts. Globe theater critic Don Aucoin starts at the top and stays there, exploring the importance of hats to shows as disparate as “Death of a Salesman” and “Wicked.”

“The Spitfire Grill,” a musical based on the 1996 film, “is really a character-driven show.” Director-choreographer Ilyse Robbins says the characters “are very real people, with very real flaws. Every one of them has made questionable choices and has something to hide.” Globe correspondent Terry Byrne has a preview of the show, opening Friday at Concord’s Umbrella Stage.

Set in a Harlem salon, “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” uses humor to make a bigger point. “We’re laughing at the recognition of truth that we’ve all experienced, and sometimes that recognition is funny, sometimes it’s heartbreaking, sometimes it’s devastating or sad,” playwright Jocelyn Bioh tells Globe correspondent Christopher Wallenberg. “That’s always my center of gravity as a writer.” The SpeakEasy production opens next week.

The Huntington’s 2025-26 season is set, and it’s packed with “great stories that are going to speak to us today.” Artistic director Loretta Greco tells Aucoin, “[T]here are too many humor-free things happening today. We have to be able to laugh.” He breaks down the schedule, which includes the Tony-winning musical “Fun Home.”

Comedy

Comedian and podcaster Paul F. Tompkins is touring with "Varietopia." Courtesy

Paul F. Tompkins visits Boston next week for a show “that’s as varied as we can make it, with great entertainers from all different places, and a terrific house band.” The veteran comedian and frequent podcast guest tells Globe correspondent James Sullivan the show is “a way for me to do all the things I love to do — standup, sketch stuff, singing with the musical guests. It’s just entertainment.”

Music

Somerville singer-songwriter Ezra Furman helps kick off The Town and The City Festival on Thursday at Taffeta. Eleanor Petry

The Town and the City Festival takes over Lowell this weekend, with more than 65 acts on the schedule. “Massachusetts-based performers with top billing this year include Ezra Furman, Couch, The Sheila Divine, and Heretix,” Globe correspondent Victoria Wasylak writes for Sound Check. “Lowell acts comprise roughly one-third of the lineup, ranging from 2024 Rock and Roll Rumble winners The Ghouls to the bluesy R&B of Dom the Composer and soul-based hip-hop from The Evolutionists.”

“Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory” is “a seventh album and a debut all at the same time.” Van Etten’s “new” band, which plays Boston next week, is “largely just her previous touring band, now given a proper name and co-billing,” reports Globe correspondent Marc Hirsh. Van Etten says her bandmates “were naturally playing things that I was very inspired by. It felt very intuitive.”

Museums & Visual Art

Artist Artist Alison Croney Moses works on a scale model of her installation in her Allston studio as she prepares for the Boston Public Art Triennial. Lane Turner/Globe Staff

The Boston Public Art Triennial kicks off next month “with two dozen new works displayed downtown and across the city.” The city’s “reputation as an international cultural center is rooted in its past, and its public art landscape reflects that,” writes Globe art critic Murray Whyte. “Partnered with the city’s venerable art museums as well as the city itself, the Triennial’s ambitions fit with a city refashioning a new sense of self.”

Sitka, a native of Turkey who now makes his home in the South End, “seems to paint nonstop, crafting canvases that match the sunny colors of his childhood.” This week’s Working Artist, who has also worked as a textile designer, aims “[t]o make you feel good,” he tells Globe correspondent Cate McQuaid. “It’s all musical notes when I paint by strokes and scratches and all that. It’s like I’m conducting the whole story.”

Amy Sherald, best known for her iconic image of Michelle Obama, “is a portraitist — devotedly, exclusively." The paintings that make up her first career survey, “American Sublime,” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, capture her subjects’ “mystery, empathy, and complications,” Whyte writes from New York. “If there was ever a show for this very moment, this is it.”

Books

"Godzilla vs. America: Boston" cover B art by Jesse Lonergan. Courtesy IDW

After literally hitting Chicago and Los Angeles, Godzilla is headed to Boston. The comic book “Godzilla vs. Boston” drops July 30, and the Globe’s Matt Juul has a preview (complete with Green Monster reference). Says Allston resident Hayden Sherman, whose contribution includes an homage to the Coolidge Corner Theatre, “That their building gets torn down in the story [is] the highest compliment I could give them, hopefully.”

The 2024 film “Conclave,” adapted from Robert Harris’s 2016 novel, became even more relevant when Pope Francis died on Monday. “I was a political journalist, and most of my novels revolve around politics and power in some way.” Harris says in a Q&A with Globe correspondent Kate Tuttle. “If you’re interested in politics, [the papal conclave] is the ultimate election.”

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