Welcome back to The Big To-Do. Today is Black Friday, and whether you’re shopping till you drop or headed back to bed after some breakfast pie, you’re going to need a break. Happily, the Globe’s experts have plenty of ideas for staying entertained into next week. The weekend weather gets worse as it goes along, with Saturday cool and pleasant, and Sunday relatively warm and trending wet. And Monday is December!

Movies

From left: Josh O'Connor and Daniel Craig in "Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery." COURTESY OF NETFLIX

Rian Johnson’s “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” earns 4 stars from Globe film critic Odie Henderson. Not just the best of the series so far, it’s “one of the year’s best movies.” Investigator Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) enters late, but Josh O’Connor’s Rev. Jud takes up the slack, “narrating and filling us in on who’s who and what’s what.”

In his 4-star review of Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet,” Henderson writes, “I was equally moved and horrified, and I loved every minute of it.” Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel about the death of William and Agnes Shakespeare’s young son, it’s “the latest 2025 movie where a female lead gives a heightened, maximalist performance.” As Agnes, Jessie Buckley “does her best work.”

The animated feature “Zootopia 2” picks up where the 2016 original left off. “[T]he animation is exceptional,” Henderson writes in a 3½-star review, “and the voice talent is once again at the top of its game.” Even better, the script “manages to blatantly refer to the theft of land by an invading majority, and the revision of history designed to cover up the crime.”

“Eternity” stars Elizabeth Olsen as Joan, who’s torn between two men — in the afterlife. Miles Teller and the nearly indistinguishable Callum Turner play the men, “macho stereotypes who treat Joan like their property.” Although “there are some interesting and funny ideas inside this movie,” it doesn’t rise above 2 stars from Henderson.

It’s the day after Thanksgiving, so Henderson is “on the hook to bring up holiday movies.” He zeroes in on five “obscure and unusual choices” — “a gem by a director who should be better known, a raunchy 1980s comedy, a family dramedy crossed with food porn, a tribute to aunties, and Humphrey Bogart.”

“Few cultural institutions are more cherished — and few cultural institutions are fewer than independent movie theaters.” The independent Capitol Theatre turned 100 this week, minus its original pipe organ but woven into “the fabric of Arlington.” The Globe’s Mark Feeney tells a tale of survival.

Wes Anderson is “so distinctive a filmmaker he’s effectively his own genre.” A new Criterion Collection box set and the catalog of an exhibition drawing from Anderson’s archives explore that genre, and their release moves Feeney to consider the work of a polarizing filmmaker with “an eye for detail so thorough and exacting — so unblinking — it becomes a sensibility."

TV & Streaming

Hu Ge as Ah Bao in "Blossoms Shanghai." THE CRITERION CHANNEL

“Blossoms Shanghai,” the legendary Wong Kar-wai‘s first foray into TV, “bears the aesthetic hallmarks of Wong’s films.” The 30-episode series is “a study of cutthroat economic scheming,” Globe TV critic Chris Vognar writes, “[W]hile the small screen inevitably shrinks the filmmaker’s palette, the long-form storytelling gives him more room to play.”

The fifth and last season of “Stranger Things” is here, and nearly 10 years in, “the show feels almost unrecognizable.” Fans “might have been able to guess that the final season would rely more heavily on action than anything else‚” writes the Globe’s Lisa Weidenfeld. But hang in there: “I found the final moments of the final episode coming out this month both genuinely thrilling and genuinely moving.”

You don’t have to set foot in the mall to get a Black Friday deal — on a streaming service. For fans of blockbuster movies, world-building series, anime, and more, discounts on big-name and niche streamers for terms as long as a year are on the menu, but only through Monday or Tuesday. The Globe’s Matt Juul has the lowdown.

Wondering why streaming services are so pricey in the first place? Globe technology writer Hiawatha Bray explains.

The expanded version of the 1995 Beatles documentary “Anthology” “looks and sounds very good without seeming antiseptic or artificial.” The series “proceeds chronologically: growing up in Liverpool, working in Hamburg, success in England, you know the rest‚” writes the Globe’s Mark Feeney. “Editing down the material must have been a bear. What remains is pretty irresistible.”

The Big Day

Boston newlyweds Rachel Dillon and Jackson Tuck married at Timber Hill Farm in Gilford, N.H. LINDSEY TOPHAM

The Globe’s weddings column, The Big Day, tells stories of how couples found each other, fell in love, and said “I do.” Rachel Dillon and Jackson Tuck married in Gilford, N.H., in August, 12 years after becoming friends as Brandeis freshmen. “I think the people around us from the start had a sense that we were into each other, but we didn’t prioritize [romance]” at first, Rachel tells Globe correspondent Rachel Kim Raczka. In 2023, when Jackson proposed, he asked her to be his “best friend forever.”

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.

Theater

From left: Jon Vellante, Paul Melendy, and Christopher Chew in "A Sherlock Carol." NILE HAWVER

Sherlock Holmes and Ebenezer Scrooge “rank among the best-known fictional figures of all time.” Mark Shanahan’s “A Sherlock Carol” finds Holmes investigating Scrooge’s death. “There’s fun to be had in the Lyric Stage Boston production,” writes Globe theater critic Don Aucoin. But including 20 characters “engenders an atmosphere that goes beyond fast-paced to hectic.”

Worlds collide for Rob Crean on Dec. 16. The actor, comedian, and Freedom Trail Foundation tour guide will play Samuel Adams in the annual reenactment of the Boston Tea Party at the Old South Meeting House. “Live performance — there’s nothing like it,” this week’s Working Artist tells Globe correspondent Cate McQuaid. “You just feel human.”

Nearly five decades after storming Broadway, “Annie” remains “more serviceable than sublime.” Wheelock Family Theatre’s production is a “big-hearted but uneven effort,” says Aucoin. Sky Vaux Fuller is a standout, bringing her “ebullience, confidence, and powerful voice” to the title character. “Fuller belts out ‘Tomorrow’ as if it were written for her.”

Music

French classical accordionist Théo Ould makes his local debut on Dec. 2 at Longy School of Music's Pickman Hall in Cambridge. ANGIE-KREMER

Théo Ould plays an instrument “almost completely unknown in the United States”: classical accordion. “I was a bit surprised,” the 27-year-old says of discovering the disparity. Ahead of a performance Tuesday in Cambridge, he talks with Globe’s A.Z. Madonna, who says Ould is “injecting a sense of fun into the sometimes-staid world of classical music.”

Black Friday also brings Record Store Day and a new Talking Heads collection, “Tentative Decisions.” One track is a demo of “Psycho Killer” that’s so old the band wasn’t even Talking Heads yet. The Artistics recorded the song in 1974, and “I think the real fans will recognize the songs in their demo form,” drummer Chris Frantz tells the Globe’s Christopher Gavin.

A new Berklee archive exists to “collect clips of instruments, stories, and sound expressions from Indigenous communities worldwide.” The Berklee Intersectional Soundbox Archive contains more than 350 samples, Globe correspondent Victoria Wasylak writes for Sound Check. “I wanted to give respect to the hands that preserved this body of instruments,” says assistant professor Jimmy Lim.

Change is coming to the Western Mass. cultural scene. “Hope Center for the Arts in Springfield and De La Luz in Holyoke are booking national touring acts that don’t often appear in Northampton as part of an effort to provide arts education — and potentially a career path — to teens in those communities,” writes Globe correspondent Eric R. Danton, who tells the inspiring story.

Books

Ann-Sophie De Steur for the Boston Globe

The holiday shopping season is underway, and what’s a better present than a book? With “something for pretty much anybody on your gift list this year,” Globe correspondent Kate Tuttle spotlights 20 titles, from the latest Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary to Stephen King’s take on “Hansel and Gretel,” complete with Maurice Sendak illustrations.

Cambridge is the backdrop of “The Award,” Matthew Pearl’s “cleverly plotted literary satire.” The author “is interested in the price of success,” writes Globe reviewer Julia M. Klein. The novel, “which melds the improbability of farce with a claustrophobic horror reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe, grips the reader and never lets go.”

Today's newsletter was written by Marie Morris and produced by the Globe Living/Arts staff. Marie Morris can be reached at marie.morris@globe.com. Thanks for reading.

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