Welcome back to The Big To-Do. No pressure, but meteorological summer (June, July, and August) hits its halfway point next week. Outdoors, there’s a promising weekend weather forecast, and indoors, the top streaming movie and TV options range from “Longmeadow native Meghann Fahy’s new flick to a star-studded documentary celebrating 50 years of ‘Jaws,’” writes the Globe’s Matt Juul. Or make your own oversize agenda using the Globe’s 2025 Best of the Best lists, featuring 28 categories from sushi to bakeries, kids’ activities to comedy clubs, boutique hotels to thrift shops.

Film & Movies

David Corenswet in “Superman.” WARNER BROS.

The “surprisingly entertaining reboot” “Superman” earns 3 stars from Globe film critic Odie Henderson.  The plot (no spoilers) “involves interdimensional portals, black holes, doppelgangers, evil plans for geopolitical war, and the scourge of social media and its influence on public opinion.” And David Corenswet, the best Man of Steel since Christopher Reeve, has “palpable” chemistry with Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane.

Writer-director James Gunn “fell in love with the Superman family” as a kid. Gunn, Nathan Fillion (Green Lantern), and Winchester native Anthony Carrigan (Metamorpho) chat with the Globe’s Matt Juul about childhood dreams, previous iterations of Superman, and the context of the reboot. “[I]t’s incredibly timely that we are reminding people that it’s important to be good, it’s important to stand up for what’s right, and to be kind, ultimately,” says Carrigan.

Sarah Friedland’s “Familiar Touch” is a “gentle meditation on dealing with the onset of dementia.” Following Kathleen Chalfant’s Ruth through the transition to assisted living, the film “accomplishes a lot in just around 90 minutes,” Henderson writes in a 3½-star review. “By no means should you expect a wallow in misery. Like its protagonist, the film refuses to go gentle into that good night.”

Technology imperiling humans is “a trope that goes back to Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent film classic, ‘Metropolis.’” Henderson, a former programmer, looks at films that feature “technology-based terror creeping into our daily lives” and finds evil AI, killer robots, and Sandra Bullock. “Think about how many movies about sinister technology you’ve seen, and how they commented on real world fears and concerns at the time.”

TV & Streaming

Megan Stalter, left, and Will Sharpe in "Too Much." ANA BLUMENKRON/NETFLIX

Lena Dunham tackles romantic comedy with “Too Much.” Megan Stalter (“Hacks”) and Will Sharpe (“The White Lotus”) star as Jess and Felix, stand-ins for Dunham and her husband. They’re “both prone to the kind of unsparing, emotionally fraught conversations that you’d expect from Dunham, but they’re wedged into the outlines of what we expect from a rom-com, and the two styles rest uneasily together,” writes the Globe’s Lisa Weidenfeld.

Petra Costa’s “Apocalypse in the Tropics” is “undoubtedly a political movie, but it’s also an assured, poetic work of quietly provocative aesthetics.” Examining “Brazil in the age of Jair Bolsonaro,“ the documentarian “transcends the realm of polemic or even politics with an entrancing look at how Christian Nationalism has largely taken over her native country,” writes Globe correspondent Chris Vognar.

The Big Day

New Orleans newlyweds Coby Venable and Olivia Rochman married on June 6, 2025, at Winnetu Oceanside Resort in Katama, Edgartown, on Martha's Vineyard. DOMINIQUE HOLLIDAY | CASTILLO HOLIDAY PHOTO + FILM

The Globe’s weddings column, The Big Day, tells stories of how couples found each other, fell in love, and said “I do.” Olivia Rochman and Coby Venable clicked right away when they met in 2022. “He is an excellent listener, and I am an excellent talker,” Olivia says. Within weeks, her father had signed off on Coby, saying “That’s the first man you’ve brought home in 32 years who has the potential of being a keeper.” The New Orleans residents married last month on Martha’s Vineyard, and Globe correspondent Rachel Kim Raczka has the details.

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

Tina Turner and Mick Jagger performed together as part of the starry Live-Aid lineup on July 14, 1985, in Philadelphia. RUSTY KENNEDY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Live Aid, which turns 40 on Sunday, “was an immense achievement.” The “16-hour intercontinental concert extravaganza,” broadcast live from London and Philadelphia, raised $140 million for Ethiopian famine relief and left its mark on the Globe’s Mark Shanahan. He chats with Cars drummer David Robinson, now a North Shore resident, and singles out nine “compelling moments” he watched on his family’s Zenith — and more recently on YouTube.

The Levitate Music and Art Festival returns to Marshfield this weekend, and there it plans to stay. “The character of the venue ... is a big part of the event itself,” says the fest’s Dan Hassett. “We think it might lose some of what it’s all about if we were to relocate.” Both headliners are local, Globe correspondent Victoria Wasylak writes for Sound Check: “Duxbury-born Levitate mainstays Stick Figure and Boston’s folksy jam band Dispatch.”

The Zombies are finished as a live band again, five-plus decades after they first broke up. “I’ve never been quite sure if the Zombies were a lucky band or an unlucky band,” says singer Colin Blunstone. The seminal British band is the subject of a new documentary and book, and Blunstone is jumping into life as a solo artist. Ahead of an appearance in Somerville, he sits for a nostalgic Q&A with Globe correspondent Noah Schaffer.

Os Mutantes and 74-year-old cofounder Sérgio Dias are on a mini-tour that hits New England next week. The Brazilian band made its reputation in the ’60s with “a singular brand of cosmic MPB (música popular brasileira) that combined bossa nova, go-go, acid rock, and a fractured take on show-tune melodies,” writes Globe correspondent James Sullivan. Although they “never had a golden album,” says Dias, “We were damn good, you know.”

Fashion

Local designer Thom Solo is photographed with his Opera platform in Newton on June 24. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff

Newton native Thom Solo’s Rodeo Queen thigh-high boots have a high-profile fan: Beyoncé. She wore the custom pair during a show in London last month, and, the designer says, “My heart just exploded out of my body.” The boots are “black nappa leather heels wrapped in gold belt buckles and bullet casings,” reports Globe correspondent Jeffrey Kelly. Says Solo, “There’s ... a lot of sacrifice, but it’s all so worth it, because everything I do is a love letter to women.”

Museums & Visual Art

A still from Christian Marclay's "Doors," 2022. CHRISTIAN MARCLAY/WHITE CUBE

“Whatever else it is, ‘Doors’ is great fun.” Christian Marclay’s film, at the ICA, “extracts hundreds of moments from generations of cinema, linked together by the intuitive logic of entry and exit,” writes Globe art critic Murray Whyte. “One door closes, another opens — over and over in the 55-minute amalgam of in-between moments, across a gamut of film history that lodges you, the viewer, firmly and forever in liminal space.”

Jennifer Day’s sculptures “are full of riddles.” The miniatures in “Scaffold,” at Bromfield Gallery, are “facsimiles of something being made. Something being fixed. Something being reconsidered. Something being questioned,” she tells Globe correspondent Cate McQuaid, writing for the Working Artist series. “I want to subvert [the verisimilitude]. Particularly something that’s cute, small, likable, accessible.”

“All Stars,” at Harvard’s Houghton Library, is unexpected. And that’s putting it mildly. “The focus ... is on the very long tradition of athletic endeavor as entertainment more than competition,” writes the Globe’s Mark Feeney. From Harvard’s collections of rare books and manuscripts, the curators have extracted a “gathering of wonders” — a Harlem Globetrotters pennant, an Ice Follies souvenir program, a poster for the Bruce Lee vehicle “Enter the Dragon” (yes, really).

Theater

David Josefsberg (Doc Brown) and Lucas Hallauer (Marty McFly) in "Back to the Future." EVAN ZIMMERMAN FOR MURPHYMADE

“Back to the Future: The Musical” “reminds you why journeys from screen to stage are often a bad idea.” Globe theater critic Don Aucoin subjected himself to the show’s “nonstop musical and video bombardment,” and he’s not holding back. “The best adaptations have something to say,” he writes. “‘Back to the Future’ doesn’t have much more to say than: Give us your money.”

Paul Melendy and Thomika Marie Bridwell play the title characters in “The Garbologists,” a two-hander by Lindsay Joelle. Gloucester Stage Company’s production “combines the archetypal odd-couple pairing with the scorpions-in-a-bottle atmosphere that often ensues when mismatched people are locked within a confined space — in this case, a garbage truck," writes Aucoin. “The payoff, emotionally speaking, is substantial when we arrive at the play’s destination.”

The Williamstown Theatre Festival opens next week. “The desire to experiment can often reap a lot of amazing rewards for people who are also trying to ask questions about society at large, and that’s what I think Williamstown should be doing,” says new creative Jeremy O. Harris (“Slave Play”). Globe correspondent Christopher Wallenberg previews the season, which includes two seldom-performed plays by Tennessee Williams.

“The Victim,” by Lawrence Goodman, “is built on three interconnected monologues among women of three different generations.” In the Shakespeare & Company production, “[e]ach of the performances contains its own stand-alone force, while also adding to the cumulative impact,” Aucoin writes from Lenox. Annette Miller, Stephanie Clayman, and Yvette King “give performances that are compelling by dint of their sheer discipline.”

Books

Check out these hot beach reads this summer. PROVIDED

A paperback is “the perfect size for a beach bag, not too heavy a load for your bike basket.” Kathleen Hanna’s “Rebel Girl” is finally available in softcover; Lev Grossman’s latest (“The Bright Sword”) is, too. Kate Tuttle, who edits the Globe’s book section, spotlights “25 of the hottest new paperback releases — all ready for wherever this summer takes you.”

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