Film: Its expansion delayed for a couple of weeks to maximize its impact and exposure for Oscar consideration is a small, but powerful film, Spotlight, certainly one of the year’s 10 best and a sure competitor for Best Picture honors. Spotlight is the name of the Boston Globe’s small, elite investigative team, which launches a major project to look into the city’s … [Read more...]

  Music: The British have a great classical music tradition, but their jazz chops are just as strong. The latest example is chanteuse Polly Gibbons, who makes her American debut tonight at the Arts Garage before continuing on to New York and Boston. She’s got one of those husky, dark singing voices that wraps nicely around a standard like “After Hours,” and it’s worth noting … [Read more...]

Art: Kyoko Hazama is a contemporary Japanese artist who specializes in creating sculptures from washi paper, and she brings to her delicate art a wonderful sense of whimsy. From a Quiet Place, an exhibit of her tiny sculptures at the Morikami Museum running through Aug. 31, features many small scenes involving a winsome-looking Japanese girl in the company of extraordinary … [Read more...]

Film: Filmed in exquisite, though bleak black-and-white by Polish writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski, Ida is a curious hybrid of Holocaust tale, road trip movie and odd couple drama. The title teenage character is a nun-in-training who is ordered to meet her only living relative, a distant aunt named Wanda, before she can take her vows. So Ida treks to meet Wanda and from her … [Read more...]

Film: A new film based on a magic realism-infused novel by Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima, focuses on a small boy, Antonio (Luke Ganalon), who is introduced to the spirit world by his grandmother, Ultima (Miriam Colon), who is sort of a witch doctor, a conjurer of spells and an alternative healer. The compelling, if disorienting film is directed by Carl Franklin, probably best … [Read more...]