Your weekly guide to staying entertained any day of the week

May 9, 2025

Welcome back to The Big To-Do. College graduation season starts this weekend, the Celtics’ playoff adventure continues, and the Sunday forecast looks great. That’s fortunate, because it’s Mother’s Day as well as Lilac Sunday at the Arnold Arboretum. AAPI Heritage Month is at a full roar, with plenty of lion dances among the events on the jam-packed schedule, and Globe correspondent Haley Clough has the details. Staying in? Turn to the Globe’s Matt Juul for advice about what’s new on streaming.

Film & Movies

Josiane Balasko, Pierre Lottin, and Hélène Vincent in “When Fall Is Coming.” Music Box Films

François Ozon’s “When Fall Is Coming” is “a master class in keeping an understated tone that’s more unsettling than sinister.” The French-language thriller earns 3½ stars from Globe film critic Odie Henderson, who especially likes the cast, headed by Hélène Vincent. “We’re not sure what they’re up to, but even the most mundane events raise questions.”

For his birthday, Henderson has a present for readers — the answers to the most common questions people ask when they meet him. “You already know my favorite movie of all time is ‘All About Eve,’ so we’ll skip that one,” he begins, moving on to how he works and what advice he gives to aspiring film critics. Bonus: His origin story involves a “terrible” movie that apparently sent his pregnant mom into labor.

In “Lilly,” Patricia Clarkson plays the namesake of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. “I think people need to see a woman who wasn’t winning,” the veteran actress says of the accidental trailblazer for wage equality. “Lilly was standing for all of us. ... Because when women make equal pay, everybody benefits.” She chats with Globe correspondent Natalia Winkelman about the film, her career, and the time Brian de Palma did her a solid.

TV & Streaming

Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in "Poker Face." Sarah Shatz/PEACOCK

“Poker Face” season 2 features cameos by “every celebrity under the sun.” Natasha Lyonne returns as Charlie, a “Columbo”-style human lie detector turned itinerant murder-solver. “The joys of the show come from how much you enjoy Lyonne’s whole New York-y wisecracking persona, some clever and funny writing, and the oft-Rube Goldbergian setups for how these poor victims meet their ends,” writes the Globe’s Lisa Weidenfeld.

“Saturday Night Live” wraps up its 50th season on May 17. It’s delivered plenty of memorable moments, including the longest monologue in the show’s history, unscripted on-air (audience!) profanity, and high-profile musical performances. The Globe’s Matt Juul spotlights a dozen of “the biggest cameos, controversial moments, and most memorable sketches.”

Julianne Nicholson has been landing breakout roles for years, “and now,” she says, “I realize it’s one foot in front of the other.” The Bay State native, 53, is currently playing a villain in “Paradise” and “a goofy TikTok-sensation/Hollywood-rube” on “Hacks.” She talks about her career, her unconventional upbringing, and the “pervasive joy” on the set of “Hacks” in a wide-ranging Q&A with Globe correspondent Lauren Daley.

AI-themed series like “Murderbot” which premieres next week, derive “their moral and philosophical tension” from “notes of humanity.” The series is part of a wave of AI-themed TV that includes “Black Mirror” and “Sunny.” “As the promise and threat of AI loom over headlines and debate within creative communities ... TV can’t seem to get enough of our potential robot overlords.” Globe correspondent Chris Vognar takes a look.

The Big Day

Watertown newlyweds and Union College sweethearts Jacinta Utubor and Anthony Boone Jr. wed on March 30 at Avenir in Walpole. One in a Million Weddings./One in a Million Weddings

The Globe’s weddings column, The Big Day, tells stories of how couples found each other, fell in love, and said “I do.” Jacinta Utubor and Anthony Boone Jr., now Watertown residents, met in their first year at Union College and moved out of the friend zone during study abroad in Brazil two years later. At their March wedding, Jacinta tells Globe correspondent Rachel Kim Raczka, her favorite moment came after the jumping-the-broom ceremony: “We were staring at each other like, ‘We did it. We finally did it.’”

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.

Music

The Jiraphes band members (from left) Owen Granger, now 11, on drums, Silas Granger, 13, on guitar and vocals, and Caleb Strauss on bass, rehearsed in the basement of the Granger family home on April 15 in Medford. Erin Clark/Globe Staff

The neighbors are in a rock band — after they finish their homework. When local preteens gathered in a basement “with instruments they barely knew how to play,” the Globe’s Mark Shanahan didn’t mind. “The clamor was comforting,” he writes. “I smiled every time, reminded that adolescence is a maze of heavy emotions — anxiety, anger, joy, sadness — and music is the superpower that can make it OK.” A wonderful story even if you’ve never picked up an instrument.

Fashion designer Antonio Corrales will be there when Kendrick Lamar plays Foxborough next week — wearing his designs. “Corrales couldn’t have locked in a bigger artist for his first celebrity collaboration,” writes Globe correspondent Victoria Wasylak of the budding designer and his Worcester-based label, CorruptKid.

At Saturday’s Somerville PorchFest, “there’s room for more musical styles than many other large-scale music events around town.” The hundreds of artists “might have the chance to curate a bill that combines contrasting genres in a way that’s atypical of club shows, which tend to be more stylistically cohesive,” Wasylak previews in Sound Check.

“We came from right here and I’m back with a 30-person entourage,” says Millyz. The rapper, who grew up in Cambridge’s Central Square and moved to New York a decade ago, plays Boston Saturday. “[N]ow it is possible to make it out of Boston, because with outlets like TikTok, you can pop from there, but you would still have to go spread your wings and mingle in other places,” he says in a Q&A with Globe correspondent Noah Schaffer.

Devo’s 50th-anniversary tour brings the seminal new wave band’s “purposeful absurdity” to Boston Friday. “We’re protesting stupidity,” bassist and principal lyricist Gerald Casale tells Globe correspondent James Sullivan. “That often takes a political dimension, because everything ultimately is political, so you see stupidity and fear and superstition manifest itself in the political realm first.”

Country megastar Vince Gill “plans on continuing to do what he’s been doing for half a century.” Ahead of a solo show in Boston next week, he talks with Globe correspondent Stuart Munro about touring as a member of the Eagles, releasing a new supersize album, and other plans. “I’m as creative now at 68 as I ever have been,” he says. “I sing better than I ever have. I play better than I ever have, with more restraint and more purpose.”

Museums & Visual Art

Salvator Oliva, "[Portolan charter of the Mediterranean and coast]." Harvard Map Collection

“Renaissance Treasures of the Harvard Map Collection” affords visitors “the opportunity to visit a time when maps, however unintentionally, also provided surprise and even mystery.” Dating from 1493 to the late 1600s, they convey “a sense of the otherness, even uncertainty, that contemporaries must have felt, looking at renderings of a world expanding and altered suddenly in an unprecedented fashion,” writes the Globe’s Mark Feeney.

Helena Wurzel quit her teaching job in 2022 to pursue art. The mother of two is also “navigating all the stuff, the mental load, the parenting, working.” In her paintings and collages, this week’s Working Artist tells Globe correspondent Cate McQuaid, “I’m trying to build a real world with connections between all the images.”

The images in “Eric Antoniou: Rock to Baroque — Four Decades of Music Photography” run the gamut. “With Antoniou,” writes Feeney, “you get rock and jazz and classical and reggae and disco and rap and whatever it is Tom Waits does.” Also included are “multiple local heroes: Peter Wolf, Aerosmith, Dropkick Murphys, Morphine, Donna Summer, Leonard Bernstein.” At Panopticon Gallery through June 30.

Theater

Dru Sky Berrian, MarHadoo Effeh, Kwezi Shongwe, and Crystin Gilmore in "Jaja's African Hair Braiding." Nile Scott Studios.

“Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” is “comedic until it isn’t.” Jocelyn Bioh sets her play in a Harlem salon, where most of staff and patrons are immigrants. The action eventually “takes a sudden hairpin turn with a development quite literally torn from the headlines,” writes Globe theater critic Don Aucoin. “SpeakEasy Stage Company’s vibrantly alive production offers a showcase of ensemble acting at its best.”

The Tony-winning musical “Kimberly Akimbo” is “funny and heart-piercing by turns, managing to both entertain and move us.” As a teen with a rapid-aging condition, Carolee Carmello delivers “nary a false note,” writes Aucoin. “The production at the Colonial sags and thins out a bit in Act Two — that perennial Achilles heel of musical theater — but not enough to diminish the show’s overall impact.”

Artistic director Loretta Greco put “The Light in the Piazza” on the Huntington’s schedule because she “wanted to do a big ass musical.” The show, a complicated romance set in Florence in 1953, has the director “shaking in my boots every day. I’ve been directing for a long time, but this is a whole other beast.” Globe correspondent Christopher Wallenberg has a preview.

In the Lyric Stage’s production of “Hello, Dolly,” opening next week, “[t]here is no fourth wall.” Aimee Doherty plays Dolly, a matchmaker, and “at any moment,” director Maurice Emmanuel Parent says, “it should feel like Dolly could say to an audience member, ‘Hey, I have this wonderful person for you. Here’s my card.’” Wallenberg has a behind-the-scenes preview of the show, opening May 16.

Books

The St. Jean Baptiste Church. Marte Media

If you’re not a Zach Bryan fan already, you probably will be soon. The country-music star just bought St. Jean Baptiste Church in Lowell, which “is slated to become the home of the Jack Kerouac Center, a multi-purpose enterprise in honor of the city’s favorite son.” Bryan is 29, “but he’s an old soul,” Kerouac Estate official Sylvia Cunha tells Globe correspondent James Sullivan. “Kerouac is part of the reason he got into songwriting.”

Ron Chernow “specializes in big American lives,” and his latest book is indeed big. “Mark Twain” is “a comprehensive, enthralling, 1,000-plus-page biography,” writes Globe reviewer Elizabeth Taylor. “Though a tad longer than Chernow’s earlier biographies, his ‘Mark Twain’ flows like the Mississippi River, its prose propelled by Mark Twain’s own exuberance.”

Kevin Wilson’s “Run for the Hills” tells the story of an “unbelievably adorable sibling road trip.” Half siblings, actually, sharing a parent “who did such a fantastic job of fathering and then like clockwork, broke a little kid’s heart every 10 years.” Now they’re on the road in a PT Cruiser, writes Globe reviewer Marion Winik, “and the complex emotional valence of the reunion for each of the characters is managed insightfully.”

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