What to do this weekend in L.A. Critics Picks: Nov 10 - 16, 2017

'BPM (Beats Per Minute)'

France's foreign-language film Oscar submission is a sprawling flashback to the early days of the AIDS activist group ACT UP Paris, passionately realized by writer-director Robin Campillo with a riveting focus on tactics and procedures. (Justin Chang) Read more

‘Novitiate’

A hit at Sundance and already nominated for a Gotham breakthrough director award, this drama about the emotional content of nuns’ lives in the mid-1960s sure-handedly takes us inside the world of belief with care, concern and a piercing, discerning eye. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'Blade Runner 2049'

You can quibble with aspects of it, but as shaped by Denis Villeneuve and his masterful creative team, this high-end sequel puts you firmly and unassailably in another world of its own devising, and that is no small thing. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)'

Funny, moving and psychologically complex, this is writer-director Noah Baumbach’s latest foray into the intricate paradoxes of dysfunctional family dynamics, and, starring Dustin Hoffman, Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller, it ranks with his best. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'Battle of the Sexes'

This enjoyable and entertaining film, with the gifted and innately likable actors Emma Stone and Steve Carell as Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, is most involving when it deals not with sports or society, but with the personal struggles both players, especially King, were going through in the run-up to their 1973 tennis match. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'Faces Places'

A participatory art project takes director Agnès Varda and photographer-artist JR on a tour of the French countryside in this wonderful documentary, which, like Varda’s other personal essays, becomes an exquisite trip down memory lane. (Justin Chan) Read more

DVD picks: Two documentaries about classic Hollywood

When they are good, documentaries on the film business take us deeper into movies in unexpected ways, and two new docs on DVD do exactly that. "Red Hollywood," written and directed by Thom Anderson and Noel Burch and distributed by Cinema Guild, takes a look at the films written and directed by the members of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten and reveal more political content than has been previously noticed. "John Ford: Dreaming 'The Quiet Man' " is an Irish Film Board production distributed by Olive Films. It offers an intimate look at the career of the great director and how he came to make a film that was particularly close to his heart. (Kenneth Turan) Read more

'A Ghost Story'

Casey Affleck dons a bedsheet and stars opposite Rooney Mara in writer-director David Lowery's quietly compelling low-budget experiment, a simple story of love and loss that gradually pries open a window onto eternity. (Justin Chang) Read more

'The Florida Project'

Absorbing us in the day-to-day rhythms of life at a dumpy Florida motel complex, home to a wildly spirited 6-year-old girl named Moonee (the startling Brooklynn Prince), Sean Baker (“Tangerine”) goes to a place few of us know and emerges with a masterpiece of empathy and imagination. (Justin Chang) Read more

'Jerry Before Seinfeld'

Seinfeld returns to the stage of the Comic Strip, the New York comedy club he worked for no money and many hamburgers while getting his act together in the 1970s. Much – most? – of the material he performs here predates the series that took his name and magnified it: "Seinfeld," which translated a comic's obsession with life's illogical annoyances into a world-conquering situation comedy. (Robert Lloyd) Read more

'Mike Judge Presents: Tales From the Tour Bus'

The creator of "Beavis and Butt-head" and co-creator of "King of the Hill" and "Silicon Valley" finds the dark, crazed heart of country music and turns it into a cartoon, literally.As a historical meditation that adds new visuals to a soundtrack of casual speakers, it is a kind of ensemble cousin to "Drunk History," with the difference that here the speakers — represented in cartoon form — are straight and the subjects messed up. (Robert Lloyd) Read more

'The Tick'

Fandom has demonstrated repeatedly that a not completely serious superhero may be taken seriously; indeed, for some of us, it is the completely serious superhero that cannot be taken seriously. And so I greet with interest Amazon's new take on "The Tick," the story of a super-strong, addlepated big lug in a blue suit – such a nice change from all that black – and the nervous accountant he encourages into partnership. Like its insect namesake, “The Tick” is a tenacious beast — it dug its teeth, or pincers, or whatever it is ticks have, into the culture and held on. (Robert Lloyd) (Amazon Prime, anytime) Read more

'Atypical'

Those who’ve raised, loved or cared for someone autistic will recognize their story in Netflix’s “Atypical,” a series that understands the minutiae and big picture of living on the spectrum. (Lorraine Ali) (Netflix, anytime) Read more

'Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play'

Making spectacular use of Sacred Fools’ triple-stage complex, Anne Washburn’s dark futurist epic traces three phases in the 70-year post-apocalyptic mutation of a pop culture artifact — “The Simpsons’” “Cape Feare” episode — from nostalgic amusement to structuring narrative for a rebuilt civilization. (Philip Brandes) (Ends Saturday, Dec. 9) Read more

Sacred Fools Theatre Company, 1076 Lillian Way, Hollywood

‘Taking Sides’

Does passive acquiescence in the face of an evil regime become tantamount to complicity in its atrocities? Art, politics and moral accountability collide in Sir Ronald Harwood’s gripping 1995 drama based on a post-WWII inquiry into conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler’s possible Nazi collaboration. If anything, the questions seem all the more relevant today. (Philip Brandes) (Ends Sun., Nov. 12) Read more

Rubicon Theatre, 1006 E. Main St., Ventura

'Rhinoceros'

With darkly hilarious urgency, this superbly staged and disconcertingly timely revival illuminates playwright Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist warning about the seductively corrosive lure of herd mentality, and the fragility of civilized norms we take for granted. (Philip Brandes) (Ends Sun., Nov. 19) Read more

Pacific Resident Theatre, 703 Venice Blvd., Venice

‘I Am Not a Comedian… I’m Lenny Bruce’

In this meticulously researched solo biography tracing the life and prosecution of the groundbreaking early 1960s comic provocateur, actor Ronnie Marmo and director Joe Mantegna offer subsequent generations not only a sense of who Bruce was but more importantly why he mattered. (Philip Brandes) (Ends Sunday, May 13) Read more

Theatre 68, 5112 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood

‘The Madwoman of Chaillot’

With this tricky balance of sharp-edged social satire and utopian fantasy, master stylist Stephanie Shroyer’s direction shows why Jean Giraudoux’s classic fable resonates most vividly in times of beleaguered idealism. (Philip Brandes) (Ends Sat., Nov. 11) Read more

A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena

'La Razón Blindada'

Presented in Spanish with English supertitles, this sharply political play sheds light on Argentina’s infamous “Dirty War” as filtered through the deeply personal perspective of writer-director Aristídes Vargas, who experienced the madness first-hand. Vargas’ harrowing, surprisingly funny piece centers on two political prisoners who escape into the world of Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” during their incarceration. Hallucinatory, trance-inducing and surreal, this deeply humanistic production hammers home man’s gross capacity for inhumanity — and his transcendent ability to endure. (F. Kathleen Foley) (Ends Fri., Nov. 17). Read more

Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., L.A.

Box set: ‘Bob Dylan — Trouble No More — The Bootleg Series Vol. 13 / 1979-1981’

Bob Dylan’s so-called Christian period in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s is the focal point for the next installment in the ongoing “Bootleg Series” of archival releases, with the deluxe box set featuring eight CDs and one DVD that bring to light a raft of live recordings from his tours of that era along with previously unreleased studio takes. “Bob Dylan — Trouble No More — The Bootleg Series Vol. 13 / 1979-1981,” due Nov. 3, explores in unprecedented depth the trio of albums he recorded after delving deeply into Christian theology: “Slow Train Coming” (from 1979), “Saved” (1980) and “Shot of Love” (1981), a trilogy that sparked as much debate over Dylan’s direction and relevance as his dramatic shift from acoustic folk music to electric rock ‘n’ roll a decade and a half earlier. (Randy Lewis) Read more

Album: 'Gone Now'

Five years ago, Jack Antonoff reached an audience of millions thanks to “We Are Young,” the Grammy-winning No. 1 single by his band Fun. And this week he’s likely to do it again with Friday’s release of “Melodrama,” the highly anticipated Lorde album that he co-produced with that young New Zealand pop star. (Mikael Wood) Read more

Album: 'Joan Shelley'

Amid today’s onslaught of breaking news notifications, it’s comforting to know that this Louisville singer and songwriter’s brand of pastoral beauty is out there. Shelley’s new self-titled album continues her focus on earthen themes that are as relevant today as they were centuries ago when another Shelley, poet Percy Bysshe, was romanticizing them: love and desire, dawning and fading light, natural beauty and the delicacy of emotion. (Randall Roberts) Read more

Album: 'You Don’t Own Me Anymore'

The third album from Muscle Shoals, Ala.-reared sisters Laura and Lydia Rogers (the Secret Sisters) shows no hint of anyone going Hollywood. Here, they’ve turned to Brandi Carlisle to co-produce with brothers Tim and Phil Hanseroth after being guided on their previous two efforts by their mentor, T Bone Burnett. If anything, they’ve stripped things down further with hauntingly spare arrangements of songs that revel in Southern Gothic themes, which soar through their exquisite sibling harmonies. (Randy Lewis) Read more

'The Perfect American'

“The Perfect American” is the operatic portrait of an idealist American artist as a less-than-perfect old man, which is to say a blend of sunshine, supremacy and insecurity. In Philip Glass’ most recent portrait opera (a great lives series that has included Einstein, Gandhi, Akhnaten, Columbus, Galileo and Kepler), Walt Disney takes stock as he confronts a virulent lung cancer. (Mark Swed) Read more

Terrace Theater, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach

Single: 'Sign of the Times'

Heeeeeere’s Harry! Months after his bandmates in One Direction launched their inevitable solo careers, Harry Styles finally released his debut single under his own name Friday. It’s a sweeping power ballad called “Sign of the Times” that strongly recalls music from the early 1970s, such as David Bowie’s album “Hunky Dory” and “All the Young Dudes” by Mott the Hoople (which Bowie helped create). (Mikael Wood) Read more

Album: 'Bob Dylan — The Cutting Edge'

Among the many things Thomas Edison famously said, he remarked that "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration," and he also insisted that "I have not failed once. I have simply found 10,000 ways that do not work." Both precepts are clearly evident in "1965-1966: Bootleg Series Vol. 12," the revelatory latest release of Dylan archival recordings that comes out Nov. 6. Culling a mind- and ear-boggling wealth of outtakes, alternate versions and rehearsal snippets during sessions over the 14 months of an astonishingly fertile period for Dylan, which yielded three of the most influential albums in rock history — "Bringing It All Back Home," "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde on Blonde" — the new set throws open a panoramic window into the creative process of one of the 20th century's greatest artists. (Randy Lewis) Read more

Album: '25'

When Adele sings on her new album, "25," about an emotional experience so vivid that "It was just like a movie / It was just like a song," she's probably thinking of a tune by one of her idols: Roberta Flack, say, or Stevie Nicks. But for fans of this 27-year-old British singer, such a moment could only be captured by one thing: an Adele song. With her big hair and bigger voice, Adele broke out in 2008 as part of the British retro-soul craze that also included Duffy and Amy Winehouse. Her debut album, "19," spawned a hit single in "Chasing Pavements" and led to a Grammy Award for best new artist. Yet she outgrew any style or scene with the smash follow-up, "21," which presented Adele as a great crystallizer of complicated feelings, an artist writing intimately about her own life (in this case about a devastating breakup) in a way that somehow made the music feel universal. Clearly, the pressure is on to duplicate that commercial success with "25," which comes after a long period of public quiet in which Adele recovered from throat surgery and gave birth to a son (and tweeted no more than a few dozen times). "Hello," the record's brooding lead single, set a record when it was released last month, racking up 1.1 million downloads in a week. But the song's enthusiastic embrace only underscored the other, more pressing demand on the singer as she returns: that her music still provide its trademark catharsis. Put another way, Adele's fans have been waiting for years for new Adele songs to explain their experiences to them. And they get a worthy batch on "25." (Mikael Wood) Read more

Favorite dishes from Food Bowl 2017

I’m not sure what you’ve been doing this month. I’ve been spending most of my evenings at the first edition of Food Bowl, The Times’ month of food events that’s been a welter of special dinners, film screenings, art displays, farmers market events, visiting chefs from some of the best restaurants in the world, panel discussions on everything from Filipino cooking to sustainable seafood to the problem of food waste, and a vast night market in the glow of City Hall. I’ve mourned dozens of dinners and events I was unable to attend. And I’ve eaten really well. Read more

Pizzana

Pizza, as every New Yorker is fond of telling you, is the food of the people; cheap, tasty sustenance sold by the slice. But in Los Angeles, pizza has another dimension, as anyone who has ever considered dropping six grand on a custom pizza oven can attest — in certain circles a wood-burning Italian-made behemoth is as necessary as a fire pit or a screening room. Famous pizza virtuosi make regular stops at the homes of talk show hosts and sitcom auteurs, who know that a perfectly made Margherita is worth its weight in osetra caviar. Pizza is also the food of the rich. Daniele Uditi, chef of the chic Brentwood pizzeria Pizzana, earned his bones at his family’s bakery near Caserta, the buffalo mozzarella capital of Italy, and in Naples, home of modern pizza, before he moved to Los Angeles. He probably became well known when actor Chris O’Donnell rescued him from a dead-end restaurant job and hired him to cook for him and his friends. Uditi’s pizza was a poorly kept secret, even among a lot of people who don’t run in Hollywood circles — he was regularly touted as a celebrity chef in Italian newspapers. So it became almost inevitable that he end up with a Brentwood restaurant of his own, in partnership with O’Donnell, wife Caroline O’Donnell, and Candace and Charles Nelson of Sprinkles Cupcakes. People line up for hours outside Pizzana’s blue, tiled dining room. Read more

Pizzana, 11712 San Vicente Blvd., Los Angeles

Mas’ Chinese Islamic Restaurant

Have you stopped by Mas’ Chinese Islamic Restaurant? Because it’s kind of wild on a Sunday afternoon, a world of head scarves and bright dresses, skinny suits and skullcaps, and children dumbstruck at the massive piles of sizzling black-pepper beef. The green-onion flatbreads — every table has one! — are as big as birthday cakes, and when you pick up a wedge you can see dozens of strata. Crisp shards of beef short ribs, cut laterally and thin in what Korean restaurants call “L.A. style,” are stacked 6 inches high. The air is heady with garlic and cumin, burnt chiles and charred meat. The tables are set with forks — you have to ask for chopsticks. Jamillah Mas’ cooking is hearty and full flavored, spicy except when it isn’t, and unafraid of excess. Read more

Mas' Chinese Islamic, 601 E. Orangethorpe Ave., Anaheim

Holbox

In Los Angeles, Holbox is the new Yucatán-style seafood restaurant from Gilberto Cetina Jr., whom you may know from Chichen Itza, which he founded with his father. (Gilberto Sr. is back in the Yucatán at the moment, building his own island dream house.) Like Chichen Itza, Holbox occupies a corner of the Mercado La Paloma complex near USC, sharing tables with a vegan Ethiopian restaurant and a Oaxacan juice bar. Read more

Holbox, 3655 S. Grand Ave. (inside the Mercado La Paloma complex), Los Angeles

Maestro

The morning after my last meal at Maestro, Danny Godinez’s new Mexican restaurant in Old Pasadena, I pulled the leftover barbacoa out of the refrigerator to see if I could salvage enough for a taco. There were still a few scraps of lamb left, but the container seemed half-filled with a mysterious goo. I was about to abandon the project – congealed lamb fat is no fun. I dipped in a spoon to see whether it might be worth reheating. And I was flabbergasted to discover that what I’d thought was grease was in fact beautifully jellied consommé, clear and as richly flavored as a demi-glace, without a speck of fat. This was Mexican food with a different point of view. And while I’m not sure I don’t prefer the magnificent hangover barbacoa from the beloved Aqui es Texcoco in Commerce or the dense, oily barbacoa from My Taco in Highland Park, Godinez’s version is very, very good — more delicate than its counterparts, slightly stringy, and without the insanely delicious pockets of fat that burst on your tongue, but still lovely and substantial. Read more

Maestro, 110 E. Union St., Pasadena

Where to dine in Southern California if you love tasting menus

You can call it a tasting menu. You can call it omakase. You can call it dégustation, a banquet menu or modern kaiseki. What it tends to be is a meal made up of dozens of small tastes, served in exquisite rhythm, where the courses, their order and their precise composition has been determined for you the second you walk in the door, so that your only choice is really whether you want to gut it out with a bottle of Lodi Verdelho or submit to a relentless wine pairing. The chef is the artist and your belly is her canvas. And when a tasting menu is done well, it can be the summit of cuisine. Read more

The Tsujita

Have you, by chance, tasted tonkotsu ramen? Because the Kyushu-style noodles may be at their peak in Los Angeles at the moment: thin, straight noodles served in a pork broth of maximum intensity. Tonkotsu ramen is often layered with slices of soft braised pork, garnished with simmered bamboo shoots and served with a soft-boiled egg. It is invariably a gut bomb that will stay with you longer than a double chili-cheese from Tommy’s. A Tokyo-based friend claimed that he once dropped 20 pounds just by cutting tonkotsu ramen out of his diet, and I believe him. The king of tonkotsu ramen in Los Angeles is probably Tsujita, a branch of a well-regarded Tokyo noodle shop that has clotted traffic on Sawtelle Boulevard since it opened half a dozen years ago. And now there is the Tsujita in Glendale’s Americana at Brand mall, a severely modern restaurant that gleams like a Tokyo dessert parlor, a place of long banquettes, long tables and coffered ceilings; theatrical lighting and a waitstaff that seems slightly stunned by the crowds. Read more

The Tsujita, 769 Americana Way, Glendale

6 Great Restaurants for Spicy Food

Spicy food is glorious stuff, particularly in times of duress or when the weather is unreasonably chilly or when you’ve misplaced that bottle of Double Chicken Brand Sriracha you still keep in your bag. So which restaurant to head for when the need for a dose of chiles calls? Here are a half-dozen places around town where what’s on the menu can blow both your mind and the Scoville scale. Read more

Dinh Q Le: The Scrolls: Distortion

Le’s work is driven by the unresolvability of competing narratives — personal experience, collective memory, historical record, fictional accounts, propaganda and more. He’s best known for photographic weavings that unite disparate images into a pixellated field. Here, a selection of those compelling works is joined by gigantic, photo-montaged scrolls suspended high overhead and unfurling onto platforms. Visual logic is subverted, legibility is compromised, but the glossy images keep unspooling. (Leah Ollman) (Through Dec. 23.) Read more

Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica

Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell

This show, the Los Angeles artist’s first full survey, could serve as the Pacific Standard Time poster child, so vividly does it fulfill the Getty initiative’s mission to flesh out the plot and diversify the cast of characters in the art history of Latino Los Angeles As a Latina, lesbian and large-bodied woman, Aguilar personifies representational neglect. In more than 130 photographic works, mostly portraits and self-portraits, she stirringly examines identity and belonging, the friction of unworthiness and the peace of self-acceptance. (Leah Ollman) (Ends Sat., Feb. 10) Read more

Vincent Price Art Museum, East Los Angeles College, 1301 Avenida Cesar Chavez, Monterey Park

'We the People: Serving Notice'

This brave, rousing show narrows the gap between making and making a difference. Dozens of artists were invited to weigh in on the tumult and divisiveness of this political, cultural moment — in clay. The responses: functional objects reflecting upon the nation’s present dysfunction; decorative pieces that deal with indecorous realities. (Leah Ollman) (Through Dec. 30) Read more

American Museum of Ceramic Art, 399 N. Garey Ave., Pomona

The Nintendo Switch

Not since the debut of its original Nintendo Entertainment System has the Japanese company released a home video game console with as much potential to shake up how we play as the Nintendo Switch, which is out Friday. Thirty years ago, Nintendo reinvented the video game medium. Not only did the NES lead to such genre-defining interactive entertainment as “Super Mario Bros.” and “The Legend of Zelda,” but it also liberated games from the arcade and brought them to the American living room. Where they could increasingly be played for hours, days, weeks, months. Rather than intense, cliffhanger-like action that demanded the next 25 cents, home games had pace, tempo and rudimentary stories. They were also accessible — no obscenely pricey home computer or trip to a teenage-infested arcade needed. The Switch takes that livability to another level. It is a home video game console that’s connected to a television. But it’s also a hand-held device designed for ultimate mobility. And at least one of its games barely requires the use of a screen at all. Read more

Playstation VR

I’m Batman. I’ve waited years — since the release of 1989’s “Batman” — to say those words and mean them. Considering that I’ve spent the bulk of my professional life writing rather than building a superhero’s physique, it seemed unlikely, save for Halloween, that such a day would come. This year we saw the release of the Oculus Rift and HTC’s Vive, which makes it possible to put on a pair of goggles and disappear into a digital landscape — as long as you have a high-priced, top-of-the-line computer. Now with Sony’s PlayStation VR, an add-on to the PlayStation 4 so many of us already have hooked up to our TVs, virtual reality is coming to the masses. Read more

'Virginia'

The opening screen of the new Variable States video feature "Virginia" welcomes players to a small town named Kingdom. It's laid before us as if it were a board game, with little trails leading to a cave or a gas station, a schoolyard or an observatory, all presented with the simple, cheery look of a brightly filled-in coloring book. Come in, stay awhile and bask in the beauty of small-town life, it seems to say. Press play, however, and things get twisted, and not with the typical things-are-not-what-they-seem subversion. Read more

'No Man's Sky'

Fourteen minutes and 54 seconds. I'm on a distant planet, and I need to get to my spaceship. Yet "No Man's Sky" is telling me that the vessel is a 14-minute, 54-second hike away. So I settle into the couch. But after three minutes of strolling through a salmon-colored rocky surface — and admiring some lavender plant life — I need a break, perhaps for good. This was the second time in one week I had quit "No Man's Sky." That's because there's another, more important number to mention when it comes to discussing "No Man's Sky": 18.4 quintillion. That is, there are more than 18.4 quintillion planets to discover in "No Man's Sky." You will not live long enough — here on Earth, that is — to collect them all. Read more

'Abzu'

There are peculiar stone structures in the shape of sharks throughout the game "Abzu." They exist not to be investigated or warn of foreboding territory ahead. Instead, these objects are built for meditating. Have a seat, they beckon, and take in marine life. Play voyeur to a whale, a jellyfish, a shark or any number of undersea inhabitants. While "Abzu" is far from a documentary or a simulation, perhaps no other video game has ever been so singularly focused on re-creating the vast, majestic and mysterious nature of an aquatic universe. It does this with no voice, no text and no conflict. Your character in "Abzu" cannot "die" in the traditional video-game sense. Instead, the game centers on postcard-worthy imagery — swarming, silver schools of fish or sparkling green leaves or warm, orange coral — and Austin Wintory's thoughtful, patient score. Read more