Film: The British neurologist Oliver Sacks’ popular case studies have made good fodder for Hollywood (1990’s Awakenings), and in The Music Never Stopped, one of Sacks’ essays (The Last Hippie) is the source of the story. Gabriel (Lou Taylor Pucci), long estranged from his father (J.K. Simmons, taking a break from all those Farmers Insurance commercials), shows up in a hospital with a brain tumor that prevents him from forming new memories. With the help of a music therapist (Julia Ormond, taking a break from Law & Order: CI and keeping her American accent), father and son try to reestablish their relationship through the pop music Gabriel loves, especially the Grateful Dead. The film, directed by Jim Kohlberg (Trumbo), mines territory that would have been easily accessible to an outing on the recently deceased Hallmark Hall of Fame, but it does raise interesting questions about how memory works, and about the power of music. At Movies of Delray and Movies of Lake Worth.
Theater: Before there was Hoarders, there were the Collyer brothers of New York, two eccentrics found dead in 1947 in their Harlem home, which was filled with decades of trash through which the men had to tunnel. Playwright/actor Michael McKeever turns his attention to this story for his latest comedy, Stuff, which opens in previews Wednesday at the Caldwell Theatre in Boca Raton. The show, which stars McKeever, Nicholas Richberg and Angie Radosh, runs through July 31. Tickets range from $38-$50, performances are Wednesday through Saturday nights with Wednesday and Sunday afternoon matinees. Call 241-7432 or visit www.caldwelltheatre.com.
Music: One of the more interesting New Wave bands to come out of the early 1980s was the Pyschedelic Furs, led by the unmistakable rasp of Richard Butler (Love My Way, Pretty in Pink). They were popular on college campuses in those days not least because that last-named song got used as the title song for a well-known John Hughes movie. But the Furs had good songwriting on their side, too, and nice touches of instrumental color like that xylophone in Love My Way. The band plays Fort Lauderdale’s gritty Culture Room tonight at 9 (doors open at 8). Tickets are $25 through Ticketmaster.com.
There’s nothing more all-American for the Fourth than celebrating it the way generations of us have by going to a concert by a wind band. This Fourth, Kyle Prescott’s Florida Wind Symphony plans a patriotic effusion at 7:30 on the lawn outside the University Theatre. That’s preceded at 4 p.m. by a showing of The 1940s Radio Hour, a musical revue, inside the theater. Fireworks start at 9 p.m., and being out under the stars (bring blankets and chairs) on this great holiday is a perfect way to think about the whole fabric of American culture. For more information, call 393-7806.