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(Photo: Wilson Webb/Courtesy of Bleecker Street Media (Captain Fantastic); Pamela Littky (Tegan and Sara); Virginia Sherwood/Courtesy of USA Network (Mr. Robot)) |
Movies
1. See Captain Fantastic
A diverting head-scratcher.
The story of a dad (Viggo Mortensen) who trains (gruelingly) his adorable redheaded brood to survive far from civilization (the bipolar mom has committed suicide), this movie is like Little Miss Sunshine rewritten by Noam Chomsky. Chomsky’s birthday is celebrated in the film, but as the family attempts to crash the mom’s funeral (the rich, angry grandfather — a superb Frank Langella — forbids them to come), it also raises a question: How little corporate-capitalist civilization is too little corporate-capitalist civilization? —David Edelstein
In theaters July 8.
Pop
2. Hear Sting and Peter Gabriel
Emoting elderly Brits!
Two ’80s-pop giants unite on tour this summer, but this isn’t your run-of-the-mill trip to the glory days: The duo will play each other’s music, swapping songs and integrating bands. Ever wanted to hear Sting do “Sledgehammer” or catch the onetime Genesis singer’s take on a Police classic? Try your luck at the new Amphitheater at Coney Island. —Craig Jenkins
The Amphitheater at Coney Island Boardwalk, July 3.
TV
3. Watch Mr. Robot
Few contemporary series are as cinematic.
When we last left our brilliant, socially anxious, drug-addicted hacker hero (Rami Malek), he was coming to terms with the truth about the title character (Christian Slater) as well as the fact that the secret ruling class behind the ruling class was even more sinister and powerful than he’d imagined. Sam Esmail’s sci-fi-tinged dramatic series overreaches on occasion and doesn’t always piece together its borrowed bits gracefully, but as an intellectual and sensory experience, it’s tough to beat. —Matt Zoller Seitz
USA, July 13 at 10 p.m.
Theater
4. See Oslo
Drama, with diplomats!
In Blood and Gifts, produced here in 2011, playwright J. T. Rogers unpacked the spy-versus-spy duplicity of American support for Afghanistan during the 1980s. Now, in Oslo, he turns his attention to diplomacy: specifically, the talks that led to the 1993 Israel-PLO peace accords. Jennifer Ehle and Jefferson Mays star as the shadowy Norwegian couple who stage-managed the breakthrough; Bartlett Sher directs. —Jesse Green
Lincoln Center Theater, through August 28.
TV
5. Watch Difficult People
Your favorite catty New Yorkers are back!
The struggling comics played by Julie Klausner and Billy Eichner are freestyle rappers of pop-culture judgment-calling, spitting opinions on everything from Game of Thrones to Puppetry of the Penis. Season two promises more of the funny same, plus another boatload of guest stars (Nathan Lane, Megan Hilty, Lin-Manuel Miranda). —Jen Chaney
Hulu, July 12.
Movies
6. Go to Rooftop Films
Movies in the moonlight.
It’s time to stretch out under the stars for Rooftop Films (“underground movies outdoors”), which will screen programs of not-for-kiddies “Dark Toons” July 7 and short NYC-based docs July 8. Grab tickets fast for the inspiring and infuriating doc Goodnight Brooklyn: The Story of Death by Audio, about the grand Williamsburg music venue pushed out by Vice Media (July 9). —D.E.
See rooftopfilms.com for dates and venues.
Art
7. See That Old School Dystopia
One-stop shopping for strong artists.
Beautiful aesthetic lights always shine in this East Williamsburg gallery. This show gives us seven, including Matthew Weinstein’s glowing copper paintings, Carolyn Marks Blackwood’s seductive photos of broken river ice, Lisa Beck’s cosmic paintings, and Oliver Wasow’s composite pictures, in which you realize he might have invented Photoshop in the mid-’80s. —Jerry Saltz
Theodore:Art, through July 24.
Pop
8. Listen to Love You to Death
Tegan and Sara bring the anthems again.
Tegan and Sara Quin’s 2013 Heartthrob was immaculate synth-pop that retained the raw, personal touch of the singer-songwriter sisters’ acoustic work. Their follow-up isn’t exactly a departure, but whether on a shimmery dance-fest like “Stop Desire” or a piercing piano ballad like “100x,” it’s still a perfect showcase for the Quins’ emotional directness and lush hooks.
Warner Bros. Records.
Books/Art
9. & 10. Read Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer, then See Diane Arbus: In the Beginning
Clicks of recognition.
The highly private Arbus estate has given her archives to the Met, so this is no doubt the first show of many: unseen pictures from the first phase of her career. They’re odd if you know the famous Arbus from later on — grainy rather than crisp, 35-mm. rather than square — but her eye for faces, stances, and the cringe-inducing awkwardness of humanity is completely familiar. Before you visit, spend some time with Arthur Lubow’s epic, sympathetic, but unsparing biography of Arbus.
Ecco; the Met Breuer, opening July 12.
Theater
11. Watch She Loves Me
The shop around the corner, on your screen.
The Roundabout’s splendid revival of She Loves Me closes on July 10, but if you can’t get to Studio 54 to see it, how about putting on a pair of happy striped pajamas, grabbing a pint of vanilla ice cream, and taking a seat at the computer instead? The Bock-Harnick-Masteroff musical becomes the first Broadway production to be live-streamed online, and what you miss in stage immediacy you may make up for in budget: A pass costs $10. —J.G.
broadwayhd.com/shelovesme, June 30 at 8 p.m.
Pop
12. Listen to Wanderlust
Little Big Town meets Pharrell.
Country quartet Little Big Town teamed up with Pharrell for this surprise mini-album that introduces the pop and rap maestro to Nashville while pushing the “Girl Crush” stars into funk, reggae, and dance music. The pairing might seem strange, but the singers’ depth and the producer’s golden ear and dogged perfectionism make for a string of fun, left-field pop confections. —C.J.
Capitol Records Nashville.
Books
13. Read In the Darkroom
Susan Faludi’s family comes into focus.
Pulitzer-winning journalist and author Susan Faludi was well positioned to stumble across the best story of her career: the transition of her estranged, overbearing father, Steven, a Hungarian Jewish survivor of the Nazis, into Stefánie as a 76-year-old woman. Faludi digs deep into history and beneath Stefánie’s self-mythologizing, going beyond the personal and examining gender fluidity from the perspective of a last-wave feminist whose worldview is shifting all over again. —Boris Kachka
Metropolitan Books.
TV
14. Watch BrainDead
A delightfully weird summer show.
It may be on CBS, but this horror-comedy series — in which a bunch of creepy-crawly things emerge from a meteor and into the ears of various Washington types — is as ambitiously weird as anything you’ll find on a streaming platform. As a documentary filmmaker thrust into mysterious circumstances, Mary Elizabeth Winstead radiates a quiet confidence (and chemistry with co-star Aaron Tveit). Tonally, it’s part House of Cards, part Veep, a teensy bit Walking Dead, and just whimsical enough to feel like a distant cousin of Pushing Daisies. —J.C.
CBS, Mondays at 10 p.m.
Theater
15. Listen to Close to You
What the world needs now.
What’s It All About? — a staged collection of “reimagined” Burt Bacharach tunes — was one of the best musical revues of recent New York seasons, with new arrangements by Kyle Riabko (who also starred) that revealed the complex theatricality of the songs without mitigating their immense surface pleasures. So it was a disappointment that the show was not recorded. Problem solved: A double CD of the London production — mostly the same but renamed Close to You — recaptures the rapture. —J.G.
Sh-K-Boom.
Movies
16. Watch Blood Simple
A thrilling thriller.
Back in 1984, when some people thought the term “American independent movie” was code for “young girl coming of age on a farm,” Joel and Ethan Coen electrified audiences with Blood Simple, here for two weeks in a restored director’s cut. It’s a tricky, amusingly self-conscious, scream-at-the-screen thriller, the beginning of the brothers’ inexhaustible exploration of blind self-interest and its catastrophic consequences. Joel’s future wife, Frances McDormand, is the beleaguered lead, Dan Hedaya her angry husband, and M. Emmet Walsh the private eye who becomes the movie’s terrifying wild card. —D.E.
Film Forum, July 1 through 14.
TV
17. Watch Coupled
A flawed but fascinating Bachelor antidote.
Attractive women with real jobs gather on an island where a bevy of attractive men with real jobs arrive to be assessed. The women choose, then the men choose, and then all the couples live together in a villa and try to make it work as new couples arrive daily. Yes, there’s catfighting and crying on reality wizard Mark Burnett’s latest gambit, but there’s also a chance to watch unions implode, and a few actually-ethnically-diverse people fall in love.
Fox, Tuesdays at 9 p.m.
Theater/Books
18. & 19. Read Then & Now, then Listen to Songs of Perfect Propriety
At 88, Barbara Cook’s just hitting her prime.
“I killed my sister when I was three years old,” begins Cook’s memoir. Clearly we’ve missed something while enjoying her years as the preeminent interpreter of the American songbook. But however grim the backstory — poverty, depression, alcoholism — the tone is still buoyant and down-to-earth. If she barely mentions her first solo recording, that may be because it’s such a unicorn in her discography. But the 1958 Songs of Perfect Propriety is a joy, and not just for its settings by Seymour Barab of 24 witty-sour Dorothy Parker poems. Stage Door’s beautiful remastering also reveals the astonishing youthful bloom of one of our greatest singers. —J.G.
HarperCollins; Stage Door Records.
Art
20. See Danny Lyon: Message to the Future
A long overdue retrospective.
One of the best least-known American photographers of the past half-century gets his first-ever comprehensive museum show. One hundred and seventy-five photos and films show that Lyon captured chain-gang culture better than anyone alive: He always spent time with his subjects — bikers and so many others on the margins — and knew them well. Lyon takes us to the center of things known about but not looked at, or shunned. —J.S.
Whitney Museum of American Art, through September 25.
Books
21. & 22. Read The Sun in Your Eyes, then Hear Deborah Shapiro
One to watch.
Like Emma Cline’s The Girls — another debut high on beach-read lists — Shapiro’s novel plumbs female friendship at its best and worst. Wallflower Viv was inseparable in college from charismatic Lee until romantic trouble broke them up; years later, Lee returns to embroil her in a quixotic road trip in search of a lost album by her father, a rock icon who died when she was 4. Come make friends with Shapiro on the Brooklyn leg of her reading tour. —B.K.
William Morrow; BookCourt, June 30.
TV
23. Watch Greatest Hits, 1980–1985
Press rewind.
Hitting the nostalgia bull’s-eye, the first episode of this new series is a K-Tel compilation of pop madeleines, taking viewers back to an era of shoulder pads, Jheri curls, and stubbly dudes dressed like Sonny Crockett. Arsenio Hall and Kelsea Ballerini host performances by musicians of their Reagan-era chart-toppers, like Kool & the Gang (“Celebration”), Rick Springfield (“Jessie’s Girl”), and Ray Parker Jr. (“The Chimes of Freedom” — just kidding. Of course he’s doing “Ghostbusters”). —M.Z.S.
ABC, June 30 at 9 p.m.
Pop
24. Listen to iiiDrops
Meet Joey Purp.
This debut from a member of Chance the Rapper’s Savemoney collective is rife with beats blending soul and jazz, the kind of album that can carry a summertime party all on its own.
SoundCloud.
Movies
25. Go to Films on the Green
Cinéma d’été.
Revisit the nouvelle vague and catch up on current French cinema at this series screening at city parks. On July 1, see the seminal 400 Blows, Truffaut’s portrait of a troubled youth in ’50s Paris; the following week, April and the Extraordinary World, an animated thriller featuring Marion Cotillard’s entrancing voice, is up.
Go to frenchculture.org for a full lineup and venues.