An invigorating and stunning performance of strings
The Danish String Quartet has drawn critical praise for its performances since its 2002 debut at the Copenhagen Summer Festival. Its four members--violinists Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen and Frederik Øland, violist Asbjørn Nørgaard, and cellist Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin--are renowned for their wonderful balance in their performances, a difficult feat to pull off. I confess that I am indifferent to string quartets but the Saturday evening performance warmed me up to the sound and timbre of strings.
Meet Augustine Early, your resident journalist sleazebag
The Atheist is a snide reminder about integrity and moral responsibility to journalists who are granted the power to control the flow of information.
The space between this film and perfection is quite vast
Watching The Space Between Us is akin to the sitting through an unintelligible lecture. Not quite sure where the logical jumps were, you merely nod and move on, understanding that it would take some work to decipher the mess of notes you scrawled.
Wait, you mean it’s not “Hack, Pun, Tool?”
Listen to Story Jack tell the tale of the greatest, most elaborate inside joke of the world: MIT’s hacker culture.
Broken ties with fries on the side
The Founder, yet another “based on a true story” drama film, chronicles the story of McDonald’s from a single diner into a national fast food corporation. The riveting, fast-paced film hit theaters on Jan 20.
If you don’t like it, it’s your fault
Nine different characters. Sixteen different possible life trajectories. Over 10 hours of theatrical content. All of this managed by a cast of two.
Suvaai, offering rich rewards, demands a journey north
Specializing in South Indian and Sri Lankan dishes, Suvaai offers up sumptuous subcontinental soul food for a price that won’t make your eyes water – even if its punchy curries might.
Two lives intersect through empathy
The film I, Daniel Blake is a declaration. These words, spray-painted across the walls of the job centre, capture the compelling story of 59-year-old carpenter Daniel Blake (Dave Johns) who is forced to fight for his welfare rights after a heart attack.
It’s all fun and games... unless you’re George and Martha
The script has held up well. With its raunchy humor and intensely flawed characters, Virginia Woolf? is reminiscent of modern television dramedies like You’re the Worst. Dysfunctional families and tragic marriages seem like modern staples, but for a play performed in the 1960s, it generated controversy for its language and portrayal of such flawed, unlikeable characters.
Hidden Figures has a worthwhile message despite its flaws
Hidden Figures follows the struggle of three African American women working for NASA in the 1960s. Even faced with rampant sexism and racism at work and in society, with dogged perseverance and a firm belief in themselves, they overcome barrier after barrier. Don't worry, that's not a spoiler. That our plucky protagonists will emerge victorious is no surprise in this feel-good dramatization of historical events.
Oh great, another singing competition
Illumination Entertainment’s latest animated film, Sing, is jumping on the singing competition train, following the journey of theater owning koala Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) as he tries to revive his theater’s financial woes by staging a city-wide singing competition.
Technology and music intertwine in a stellar performance
His homemade YouTube videos reflect one of the great things about MIT: the boldness to innovate and a humane compassion for the world.
Tales of misunderstood witches
The illustrations in A Monster Calls are enchanting – colorful and mystical, like the illustrations out of your favorite children’s book.
Brace yourselves, The Coldest Winter is coming
In the midst of all of this secrecy, Johnston paces the reveals remarkably, leaving enough information for the reader to piece together this narrative without too much exposition.
Kaleidoscopic colors, flashy lights, exhilarating moves
The two-hour show is filled with color, spazztastic music and moves, and enough hooting and howling from the fanatical audience to fill up the MIT night scene.
La La Land: a fresh style of musical for the big screen
For those who frown upon the illogicalness of random fits of song and dance, La La Land with its mix of the trivial and the real dares to reinvent the musical as a genre.
The Brand New Testament surprises with a refreshing twist on religious satire
The film follows Ea, God’s disgruntled 10-year-old daughter, who is of course, Jesus Christ’s (JC for short) younger sister. Groyne instills each dead-eyed stare with both weariness and willfulness, playing the role with a quiet gravity that belies her age. Her voice-over narrations are pitch perfect, too, in their monotonous tone and quintessentially blasé teenage demeanor.
D.C. drama casts light on shady lobbying
If 2016 has taught us anything, it’s that politics today is all about performance — a conclusion inescapably reached in Miss Sloane, the new Beltway-based political thriller from John Madden.
Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition comes to life
What Makes It Great? with Rob Kapilow and NEC Philharmonia — Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition Presented by Celebrity Series of Boston NEC Jordan Hall Dec. 2, 2016
Revenge is a dish best served cold and with magical rain
It’s not the first time that Prospero’s gender was switched in an adaptation. In 2010, Julie Taymor’s film The Tempest cast Helen Mirren as the protagonist Prospero (known in the film as Prospera), a role traditionally acted by a man in Shakespeare’s original play of the same title. Here, the Actors’ Shakespeare Project has cast Marya Lowry, who juggles the various sides of our protagonist seamlessly and fits naturally into the script.