There are plenty of shows, films, and concerts to attend this week. Here’s some of what we recommend:
Mon 4/23: “[JPEGmafia‘s Veteran contains] one of the best opening tracks I’ve heard all year, a brawny, succinct shot of bristling noise-rap. An air-force vet who decamped for Charm City after serving in Iraq, Hendricks moved to Los Angeles about a year ago, but Veteran is Baltimore to its core—a grimy collage of unconventional shards of samples that comes together to form something both gnarly and beautiful.” —Leor Galil 6 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $13, 4/22 sold out, all-ages
Mon 4/23-Thu 4/26: “There are many parallels between Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976). Each film explores the seedy underworld of its contemporary Manhattan through the fractured mind of a traumatized war veteran. In Taxi Driver, Robert De Niro plays Travis Bickle, a depressed, laconic cabbie who befriends a teenage prostitute and decides that saving her will be his salvation. In Ramsay’s film, Joaquin Phoenix is Joe, a depressed, laconic hit man who specializes in rescuing underage girls from white-collar sex rings and bonds with one child who reminds him of himself. Both movies contain jaw-dropping sequences in which the hero storms into a brothel to retrieve the girl and obliterates every complicit man in his path.”
—Leah Pickett Various times, various locations
Mon 4/23-Thu 4/26: “Screenwriter Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) set out to write the international thriller [Beirut] that harked back to John LeCarrĂ© but was properly scaled to a feature film, and his script strikes a perfect balance between suspense and geopolitical context. In 1972, a U.S. diplomat in the title city (Jon Hamm) hosts a high-level cocktail party attended by his wife and the 13-year-old boy, rescued from a Palestinian refugee camp, whom they plan to adopt; to their horror, the party is attacked by terrorists led by the boy’s grown brother, and the diplomat’s wife is killed.” —J.R. Jones Various times, various locations
Wed 4/25: “Saxophonist Caroline Davis was based in Chicago for seven years before relocating to New York in 2013, and her five years there have demanded serious adjustment. She’s spent much of that time gigging as a side person while forging new partnerships and developing new music of her own. Last month she revealed what she’s achieved since leaving on Heart Tonic (Sunnyside), the first recording she’s released under her own name since 2015’s Doors (Ears & Eyes), a session made with Chicago musicians and inspired by veteran Chicago musicians like Lin Halliday and Von Freeman.” —Peter Margasak 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $10, 18+
Thu 4/26: “Eclipse Theatre kicks off its season of William Inge plays with a game attempt at one of his lesser works, [Natural Affection]. Sue’s life is turned upside down when the son she sent to an orphanage as a teenage mother shows up at her doorstep and topples the fragile existence she has constructed as a career woman living with a failure of a younger man who won’t marry her.” —Dmitry Samarov 7:30 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-935-6875, eclipsetheatre.com, $35, $25 students and seniors.