17 hours ago
10
Going out: Cinema
Project Hail Mary
Out now
Novelist Andy Weir’s brand of comic, semi-plausible sci-fi led to Ridley Scott’s The Martian – now Phil Lord and Christopher Miller will be hoping to repeat something of the same success. Ryan Gosling is the lead of a caper in which a science teacher wakes up on a spaceship on a desperate mission in deep space.
La Grazia
Out now
Italian star Toni Servillo reunites with director Paolo Sorrentino for another collaboration exploring conflicts between personal freedom and public obligations. This time, an Italian president must navigate various moral dilemmas, including potentially pardoning two murderers.
Broken English
Out now
Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s documentary about Marianne Faithfull eschews convention to explore its topic through devices including the Ministry of Not Forgetting – an imaginary space where actual memories can collide with myth-making. Contributors include Tilda Swinton, George MacKay, Nick Cave and Courtney Love.
Dead Man’s Wire
Out now
Gus Van Sant directs this crime thriller based on the true story of Tony Kiritsis, a kidnapper who took his mortgage broker hostage for 63 hours, setting up a “dead man’s wire” contraption that meant that if anyone shot Kiritsis, the mortgage broker would be shot too. Bill Skarsgård stars. Catherine Bray
Going out: Gigs
Gunna
25 to 31 March; tour starts London
Gunna’s sixth album, The Last Wun, cemented the Georgia rapper as one of hip-hop’s newest superstars. After a UK Top 10 – his fifth in a row – he arrives in arenas this week, offering a suitable environment for atmospheric trap anthems such as One of Wun and FukUMean. Michael Cragg
6 Music festival
Various venues, Greater Manchester, 25 to 28 March
Spotlighting independent venues including Band on the Wall, YES and the Eccles Town Hall Ballroom, this year’s festival features established acts such as Bloc Party and Courtney Barnett, as well as newcomers Jacob Alon and Wesley Joseph. MC
Dave Holland and Lionel Loueke
Union Chapel, London, 23 March
With United, their widely acclaimed 2024 album, guitarist Lionel Loueke and bassist Dave Holland showed how much global-jazzy lyricism, dazzling improv and urgent edginess two musicians with their vast collective experience can conjure. John Fordham
Tansy Davies: The Passion of Mary Magdalene
Barbican Hall, London, 24 March
Adventurous period-performance ensemble the Dunedin Consort present a major world premiere. This new oratorio revisits the Passion story from Mary Magdalene’s perspective. John Butt conducts, with Anna Dennis as Mary Magdalene. Flora Willson
Going out: Art
Frank Bowling
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 27 March to 17 January
This mesmerising visionary paints on a heroic, historical scale in haunting abstract veils of molten colour. He was a contemporary of Hockney and other British pop artists but, unlike them, embraced the sublime modernism of the American abstract expressionist school, whose grandeur helps him to evoke personal and global maps.
Hurvin Anderson
Tate Britain, London, 26 March to 23 August
Paintings that subtly nudge realistic, well-observed scenes, indoors and out, into a lyrical poetry of colour. Greens and blacks, blues and yellows bloom on Anderson’s brush. His landscapes lead your eye deeper and deeper into worlds that at first seem ordinary and quiet but reveal multitudes. A very fine artist.
Bruegel to Rembrandt
Compton Verney, Warwickshire, to 28 June
The visions of Pieter Bruegel the Elder delight and fascinate with carnivals and monstrous wonders. Yet his fine drawings reveal what a precise and organised artist he is. This exhibition takes his designs as its starting point to survey north European Renaissance and baroque drawings up to Rembrandt’s great sketches.
Catherine Opie
National Portrait Gallery, London, to 31 May
Identity is held up to the light in Opie’s full-faced, highly formal yet profoundly ambiguous photographs. Her people look at you defiantly, and she honours them with portraiture in a grand vein, in pictures that echo such old masters as Ingres and even Rembrandt – but queered. A provocative, powerful artist. Jonathan Jones
Going out: Stage
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
National Theatre, London, to 6 June
A new staging of Christopher Hampton’s astute adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos’ vicious novel. Lesley Manville and Aidan Turner star as the two scheming aristocrats in this brooding production from Marianne Elliott. Miriam Gillinson
Henry V
Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-on-Avon, to 25 April
Astonishingly, Tamara Harvey is the first woman to direct Shakespeare’s powerful history play at the RSC. Starring Alfred Enoch, the production asks urgent questions about the nature of leadership. MG
Scottish Dance Theatre: Scottish Roots
Dunvegan Community Hall, Skye, 25 March; Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, Skye, 26 March
Scottish Dance Theatre celebrates its 40th anniversary this year and is currently roaming the Inner Hebrides with a triple bill that includes director Joan Clevillé’s piece O Chiadain An Lo, set to music by piper Brìghde Chaimbeul. Lyndsey Winship
David Elms
The Old Hairdresser’s, Glasgow, 22 March; touring to 30 May
David Elms Describes a Room is a soothing improvised show whose premise – the comedian fields contributions to build up a picture of an imaginary room – is both emotionally involving and understatedly clever. Rachel Aroesti
Staying in: Streaming
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen
Netflix, 26 March
Produced by the creators of Stranger Things, this camply ominous thriller is set in the week leading up to a wedding. The bride (Camila Morrone) is consumed by dread; soon her instincts are proved correct. Adam DiMarco and Jennifer Jason Leigh co-star.
Saturday Night Live UK
Sky One & Now, 21 March, 10pm
It’s a big swing: our very own version of the 50-year-old comedy juggernaut, staffed by a raft of brilliant writers and performers. There’s no telling how good tonight’s opener will be (they’re probably still writing it) but, if successful, this could be a major shot in the arm for British entertainment.
Bait
Prime Video, 25 March
Riz Ahmed showcases his comedy chops and screenwriting skills with this genre-blending, whiplash-inducing satire about a London actor who spirals after flubbing his James Bond audition. Patrick Stewart cameos and the reliably hilarious Guz Khan co-stars as a wheeler-dealer cousin.
The Pitt
HBO Max, 26 March
Until now, most HBO shows were available via Sky; from Thursday they’ll be on their own streaming service too (though HBO Max is still included as part of Sky subscriptions). Arriving as part of the launch is this real-time medical drama, which has dominated the discourse and awards season in the US. RA
Staying in: Games
Life Is Strange: Reunion
Out 26 March, PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
The time-warping narrative adventure returns with original characters Max and Chloe reuniting to face a new apocalyptic threat. Series fans are concerned about some retconning to the story, but developer Deep Nine has promised a highly authentic final chapter. Expectations – and emotions – will be high.
Project Songbird
Out 26 March, PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S
A struggling musician is offered the chance to record a new album in a remote cabin, deep in the Appalachian forest – but there’s more out there than wildlife and silence. A deliciously creepy horror adventure from Conner Rush, the solo developer behind acclaimed supernatural thriller Summerland. Keith Stuart
Staying in: Albums
Grace Ives – Girlfriend
Out now
On her third album, co-produced alongside Ariel Rechtshaid (Sky Ferreira, Haim), New Yorker Ives explores the personal fallout following the success of 2022’s second album Janky Star. On single Avalanche, this is housed in a towering alt-pop confection, while My Mans peers into the abyss via blown-out balladry.
BTS – Arirang
Out now
An all-star supporting cast, including Diplo and Mike Will Made-It, join the K-pop boyband behemoths on this hugely anticipated comeback album. Made after BTS fulfilled their military service duties, and following a string of solo projects, Arirang has a lot to live up to.
Underscores – U
Out now
Eschewing the concept-heavy, folk-pop mashup of 2023’s Wallsocket, US musician April Harper Grey returns to gonzo electronic textures on this riotous third album. Splenetic single Music channels 2010s EDM, Do It is pure robo-Britney, while Tell Me (U Want It) is described by Grey as “music for my iPhone spy movie”.
Naomi Scott – FIG
Out now
The star of music industry-set horror film Smile 2 moves from fictional pop star to the real deal on this debut album. Sweet Nausea and Losing You channel the tactile alt-pop of Blood Orange, while the playful Cherry hints at a 90s Janet Jackson obsession. MC
Staying in: Brain food
National Gallery of Art Images
nga.gov/artworks
Washington DC’s National Gallery of Art has made available to download a trove of more than 60,000 high-resolution images from its collection. Explore everything from Mark Rothko’s sketchbooks to Rembrandt self-portraits.
Inheritance: Samsung
Podcast, from 23 March
Tackling real-life succession stories, this engrossing series from BBC World Service examines the family saga behind South Korean tech giant Samsung. Elise Hu tracks the Lee family story from grocers to toppling a government.
The American Buffalo
PBS America, 24 March, 1.15pm
Ken Burns’s two-part film on the history of the US’s national mammal is typically comprehensive, tracing Indigenous people’s spiritual connection to the buffalo then colonial settlers’ near-extinction of the entire population. Ammar Kalia
