Composer Roberto Sierra (Facebook via Roberto Sierra) By PEGGY ANN BLISS Special to The STAR For Roberto Sierra, Puerto Rico’s most venerated living classical composer, this week represents a pinnacle: by Saturday he will have witnessed the world premiere of not one but two of his own creations in less than a week. Hot on the heels of the triumphant unveiling of his “Estudios Latinos” (Latin Studies) in Walt Disney Concert Hall with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra led

“The Flats” By DEVIKA GIRISH This month’s picks include an Argentine comedy based on a real-life incident, a queer story set in 1980s Chile, a documentary about the aftermath of the Troubles in Belfast and more. ‘27 Nights’ In 2005, Argentine artist and writer Natalia Kohen was committed to a psychiatric institution against her will by her children in what turned out to be a corrupt scheme to control her finances. That sordid tale provides the loose inspiration for Uruguayan

“Good Boy” (2025) By JASON BAILEY Lusty nuns, insecure writers and a brave pooch lead this month’s under-the-radar recommendations on your subscription streaming services. ‘Good Boy’ (2025) This tightly-constructed horror thriller from first-time feature director Ben Leonberg has, first and foremost, one of the most accurate titles of recent memory: Its star Indy is, indeed, a very good boy. That’s because Indy is a dog, and the clever conceit of “Good Boy” is that it’s a hor

By MIGUEL SALAZAR A selection of summaries from The New York Times Book Review: SUPERBLOOM: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart, by Nicholas Carr. (Norton. 272 pages. $19.99.) “Social media is not successful because it goes against our instincts and desires,” Carr writes. “It’s successful because it gives us what we want.” His jeremiad lays some blame with tech companies that feed us digital junk food and draw us deeper into our feeds by pushing content that whips up

Quarteto Borikén (Facebook via Programa Radial Salud, Cultura y Algo Mas.) By PEGGY ANN BLISS Special to The STAR When King Solomon said there was nothing new under the sun, he hardly could have been thinking of Raymond Torres-Santos, one of Puerto Rico’s most versatile and eclectic composers. But those who attend the next Casals Festival concert will witness not only the prestigious debut of a new (well, almost new) string ensemble but also a recycled 48-year-old composition

Nicolas Cage plays the title character, a version of Spider-Man who lives in 1930s New York and works as a private investigator. By ESTHER ZUCKERMAN “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” the latest movie featuring the web-slinging Marvel hero, arrives in theaters in July. But last week a very different Spider-Man came to television. “Spider-Noir” premiered Monday, May 25 on the MGM+ cable channel and began streaming on Amazon Prime Video last Wednesday. Nicolas Cage plays the title ch

Cellist Emanuel Graf (landesjugendorchester.de) By PEGGY ANN BLISS Special to The STAR Just when everyone is packing up for the summer, musicians are working themselves into a frenzy of creativity and exuberance. Take Matthew, a 17-year-old Maryland high-schooler of Chinese ancestry. The youngest of 25 students enrolled in British keyboard genius Ian Hobson’s 12th International Piano Festival at the Puerto Rico Steinway Society headquarters in Jan D’Esopo’s Gallery Inn this w

The Mexican-American singer-songwriter Julieta Venegas in Los Angeles on April 27, 2026. On her new album, “Norteña,” Venegas embraces regional traditions and unlocks her most personal songwriting yet. (Amanda Hakan/The New York Times) By JON PARELES Separations, homecomings and memories — personal and historical — fill the songs on “Norteña,” the ninth studio album by Mexican American songwriter Julieta Venegas and her most personal one. Música norteña is a regional genre th

By GLENN KENNY This movie begins, as so many contemporary espionage pictures do, with men at laptops being interrupted by men with guns: In Dubai, a covert intelligence outpost is infiltrated by a small posse of men with high-caliber fast-shooting weapons. Their stolid, silver-haired commander has given only one instruction: “No hesitation.” The carnage is considerable. And so, Wendell Pierce as an intelligence leader, James Greer, heads to New York’s Greenwich Village to tra

In “Fjord,” once child protection services opens an inquiry, an ostensible family matter becomes headline news and, in turn, a proxy war between religious conservatism and social liberalism. By MANOHLA DARGIS The 79th Cannes Film Festival came to a close Saturday when the Palme d’Or was awarded to “Fjord,” Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu’s multilingual drama starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as a devout Christian couple accused of physically abusing their children