Five of the best ... films
1 The Killing of a Sacred Deer (15)
(Yorgos Lanthimos, 2017, UK/Ire) 121 mins
It takes a certain commitment to maintain the standard of clinically crafted oddness that Lanthimos manages. Like The Lobster, this feels set in an alternate, emotionally vacant world where more bad things happen than good ones. It starts with Colin Farrell’s heart surgeon, and his mysterious friendship with a teenage boy (Barry Keoghan), who gives him an almost Biblical ultimatum.
2 Call Me By Your Name (15)
(Luca Guadagnino, 2017, Ita/Fra/Bra/US) 133 mins
Tapping into the collective memory of idyllic holiday romances, this sensuous drama is one the year’s highlights. The setting is a cultured Italian-Jewish palazzo, where dashing American student (Armie Hammer) and bored, precocious teenager (Timothée Chalamet) are steadily drawn together.
3 Thor: Ragnarok (12A)
(Taika Waititi, 2017, US) 130 mins
Sensibly figuring that the only way to play Thor’s adventures is for laughs, this Marvel movie has a ball, hurling Chris Hemsworth’s Norse god through a 1980s-inflected fantasy. It might not add up to a great deal, but its comic timing is spot on.
4 Thelma (15)
(Joachim Trier, 2017, Nor/Fra/Den/Swe) 116 mins
A Norwegian cousin to Carrie, perhaps, this coolly executed not-quite-horror follows a naive young woman (Elli Harboe) from a fundamentalist religious home, whose entry into student life opens her mind to more than just academia. Expect sex, drugs, and seizures that trigger bizarre paranormal powers.
5 78/52 (15)
(Alexandre O Philippe, 2017, Fra/UK/US) 91 mins
There’s always room for another documentary on the mastery of Alfred Hitchcock, and this one zooms in close – on Psycho and its celebrated shower scene in particular. Film-makers and experts shed new light on the iconic, analysis-friendly film, bringing it back to life in the process.
SR
Five of the best ... pop and rock gigs
1 Princess Nokia
Having recently signed to Rough Trade, the amazingly named Destiny Nicole Frasquer, AKA the equally amazingly monikered New York-based rapper Princess Nokia, recently rereleased her boisterous mixtape 1992 with eight new tracks. Expect a run through of those and plenty of self-aggrandising freestyles.
Electric Brixton, SW2, 10 November
2 Bananarama
With a naturally shambolic edge that most modern girlbands would kill for, the original Bananarama lineup of Siobhan Fahey, Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward reunited earlier this year amid an intoxicating plume of nostalgia. Rumours are there are new songs coming, but for now they’ll be reliving the glory days around the UK.
The SSE Arena, Belfast, 9 November; touring to 9 December
3 Sean Paul
There are two certainties in music: at least one Ed Sheeran song being in the UK Top 40 on any given week, and Sean Paul elevating any song by honking “bidda-bang-bang-bang” over the top of it. Having been involved in 13 massive UK Top 10 singles since his debut in 2000, music tastes may change, but Sean Paul is evergreen.
Manchester, 7 November; Birmingham, 8 November; London, 9 November
4 Torres
Mackenzie Scott started life as a very 90s indie singer-songwriter, all widdly guitar figures, first-person testimonials and PJ Harvey’s producer. New album Three Futures, however, expands her sound, fusing more robust electronic experimentation to lyrics that deal with celebrating the body.
Manchester, 7 November; London, 8 November; Brighton, 9 November
5 Amadou & Mariam
Once known only as The Blind Couple from Mali, Amadou & Mariam have gone on to be Grammy-nominated, record a song for the World Cup and support everyone from Blur to the Scissor Sisters. Their recent, guest-heavy albums have continued their love of genre fusion.
Troxy, E1, 4 November
MC
Four of the best ... classical concerts
1 Berio: Theatre of the World
The London Sinfonietta continue their 50th-anniversary celebrations with a concert of small-scale works by one of the greatest composers associated with the orchestra in its early years, Luciano Berio. The programme focuses on Berio’s fascination with folk song from around the world, including a performance of Naturale for solo viola and tape.
Kings Place, N1, 4 November
2 Leonard Bernstein at 100
Of all the London orchestras, it was the LSO that had the longest and closest relationship with Leonard Bernstein as both conductor and composer. It’s appropriate, then, that it gets the city’s celebration of his centenary off to a start with two concerts under Marin Alsop that pair Bernstein symphonies – the Third, “Kaddish”, and the First, “Jeremiah” – with music by Mahler.
Barbican Hall, EC2, 5 November and 8 November
3 Tabula Rasa
The Scottish Ensemble joins forces with the theatre company Vanishing Point for a production built around the music of Arvo Pärt. The focus is on his intensely evocative early concerto for two violins, exploring its use in the care of terminally ill patients.
Glasgow, 4 November; Edinburgh, 8-11 November; touring to 24 November
4 Elder Conducts Brahms
With its cycle of Beethoven symphonies well advanced, the Britten Sinfonia sets out on another symphonic journey. Mark Elder will conduct performances of Brahms’s four symphonies using much smaller orchestral forces than we usually hear today, with unexpected juxtapositions of other music – Finzi and a Britten arrangement of Mahler in this first concert.
Norwich, 8 November; London, 9 November; Saffron Walden, 10 November
AC
Five of the best ... exhibitions
1 Codebreakers and Groundbreakers
In the second world war, the breaking of the Germans’ Enigma code was a turning point: its heroes were not soldiers but mathematicians. This exhibition compares the genius of Alan Turing, who led the codebreakers at Bletchley Park, with the achievements of Michael Ventris, who in the same years deciphered the ancient language Linear B. Turing revealed the road to the digital future; Ventris opened up the remote past and cast light on the nature of language. One with which to feed your head.
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, to 4 February
2 Marcel Broodthaers
This Belgian artist was one of the most beguiling visionaries of the 20th century. You will find him in art history books under “conceptualism”, but he was so much more than any catch-all term can convey. Broodthaers began as a surrealist, his bizarre humour directly descended from his friend Magritte. He invented his own museum, whose dreamlike classifications resemble a Borges story. This revival of his renowned A Winter Garden reveals his enormous influence on the art of our own time.
Hauser & Wirth, W1, to 18 November
3 Haim Steinbach
Art critic Robert Hughes once wondered if the shallow 1980s would ever enjoy a revival. Well, here it is – and, in the Trump era, Reagan’s decade might seem a golden age. Steinbach’s ironic displays of consumer goods share the attitude of Jeff Koons. It is also apparent how much his art of collecting inspired Damien Hirst. In this show he revisits and remixes early works.
White Cube at Mason’s Yard, SW1, to 20 January
4 Ages of Wonder
Art collecting in Scotland goes back to the early Renaissance when 15th-century global art star Hugo van der Goes was commissioned to paint an altarpiece for Trinity Chapel in Edinburgh. Flemish art succumbed to a taste for Italian masters, as works by Titian and Da Vinci came to Scotland. By the Romantic age, the nation was producing its own powerful work. This history of collecting is an insight into changing tastes.
The Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 4 November to 7 January
5 Imagining the Divine
Two thousand years ago, art was searching for ways to depict a new kind of humanised God. Should Christ be a remote deity or a vulnerable man? Should the Buddha be a figure of suffering or ethereal grace? Unexpected crossovers between Greco-Roman pagan art, early Buddhist sculpture and Christian imagery emerge in this excavation.
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford to 18 February
JJ
Five of the best ... theatre shows
1 The Tin Drum
This anarchic assault on Günter Grass’s postwar novel is Kneehigh in the highest spirits, even as it tells a story of dark times spread over half a century. It is recounted by unreliable narrator Oskar, the boy born into tumultuous times who makes the decision not to grow up. Oskar is cleverly represented as a puppet in an evening that may sprawl but is full of energy, and which remakes the original as a glitteringly dark pantomime for our own difficult times.
Bristol Old Vic, 7-18 November; touring to 23 December
2 Real Magic
Taking the form of a TV gameshow, with three contestants who fail to realise they are engaged in a scenario from which they can never hope to emerge the winners – even when they are given the correct answers – this is Forced Entertainment at its best. It’s a brilliantly simple idea, wringing infinite complexity from what comes down to three performers, six words, a multitude of facial expressions and the same scenario repeated over and over like some exquisite torture. Hellishly entertaining.
The Junction, Cambridge, 7 November; touring to 1 December
3 Minefield
First seen at Lift in 2016, this raw yet artful piece of theatre returns, bringing together six veterans of the Falklands war who fought on opposite sides. Thirty-five years on, they have more in common with each other than they ever had with the politicians who sent them to kill. It’s a clever, compassionate evening, raising questions about the ownership of stories and the function of theatre and its ability to heal.
Jerwood theatres at the Royal Court, SW1, to 11 November
4 Albion
Doctor Foster writer Mike Bartlett is a great playwright and the complexities of the British psyche are explored in this richly engaging drama. It’s set in the wrack and ruin of the garden of an English country house, bought by a successful businesswoman who hopes to make it bloom again. Yep, it’s a metaphor, but one that is skilfully spun in an evening that dissects the state of the nation with Chekhovian delicacy.
Almeida theatre, N1, to 24 November
5 Frogman
Hull’s year as City of Culture has brought some ground-breaking theatre to the city and Curious Directive’s psychological thriller is certainly that in the way it uses virtual reality to tell part of the story. It’s more immersive than most theatre that makes such claims and if the switch between live action and VR can be clumsy, it brings a fascinating dimension to the storytelling.
Block C, C4DI, Hull, to 11 November
LG
Three of the best ... dance shows
1 Royal Ballet Triple Bill
A generous spread of contemporary ballet for this mixed bill, featuring Arthur Pita’s reinvention of silent movie The Wind; Twyla Tharp’s new version of her seminal work As Time Goes By, The Illustrated “Farewell”; and a revival of Hofesh Shechter’s Untouchable.
Royal Opera House, WC2, 6-17 November
2 Darbar festival
An intriguing short season of south Asian dance and music that has been programmed by Akram Khan.
Sadler’s Wells, EC1, 9-12 November
3 Anjali Dance Company: Genius
Smart, inventive commissioning for Anjali’s new double bill, which pairs Gary Clarke’s portrait of Beethoven and Lea Anderson’s take on horror icon Nosferatu.
Leicester, 4 November; Leeds, 7 November; Lancaster, 9 November
JM
