Film: Director-screenwriter Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories) has made an involving yet disturbing new film about one man’s gradual drift into mental illness, Take Shelter. Michael Shannon (Bug, Reservation Road) again plays a guy who may not be playing with a full deck, a construction worker whose life becomes unraveled when he begins having nightmares about a coming apocalyptic storm. His wife, workaholic Jessica Chastain (The Tree of Life, The Help, The Debt), is understanding and concerned, but only up to the point when she and her young daughter seem threatened by Shannon. While this could have been just an extended Twilight Zone episode, Nichols’ assured hand and the actors’ deft touch turn this into a portrait of modern life that is hard to shake off. Opening at area theaters this weekend.
Theater: Lake Park’s Mos’Art Theatre occasionally features live theater and it is currently high on an open-ended weekends booking of a show spoofing that increasingly common institution for seniors, Assisted Living: The Musical. Aimed at theatergoers brave enough — or with sufficient sense of humor — to view what probably lies ahead for them, the revue hits such topics as elder romance, senior drivers as a highway hazard, and meals for the dentures-challenged. Yes, it sounds a lot like a sequel to Menopause: The Musical, but go see it anyway. Authors Betsy Bennett and Rick Compton perform the show for the first few weekends of its run. Tickets are $25, show times are 7 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Call (561) 337-6763 for reservations.
Music: Like many composers and artists generally, Richard Wagner found inspiration for his music in Eros, and his infatuation in 1857 with Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of a retired merchant in Zurich, has left us with a beautiful sonic love letter. Wagner himself was married at the time to his first wife, Minna, but whether or not his love for Mathilde ever progressed into the realms of all-out affair is not clear. But the five songs he wrote for her inspired him two years later to write Tristan und Isolde, and you can hear the great flowering in the music that would leave its mark so indelibly on the pages of his most celebrated love story. The fine American soprano Christine Brewer, who has sung Isolde, is the soloist this weekend with Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony. Also on the program is the Brahms First Symphony and Richard Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel, for just the right sort of trickster energy we need before Monday’s observance of Halloween. 8 p.m. Saturday at the Knight Concert Hall in the Adrienne Arsht Center, Miami. Call 305-673-3331 or visit www.nws.edu.
On Sunday night, the Spire concert series at the Pink Church (First Presbyterian) in Pompano Beach offers its annual Halloween “monster concert,” which of course involves favorite monsters rather than huge numbers of players. It’s an organ recital by several area players of creepy music, or at least very dramatic stuff, and it always caps off when Count Dracula slithers out of his hiding place to play the Toccata and Fugue in D minor of J.S. Bach. Tickets are $10, and you’re encouraged to wear costumes. Call 954-941-2308, ext. 112, for more information.