“The Last House” (Netflix) By MAYA PHILLIPS Being trapped is a reliable premise in horror films and psychological thrillers, with good reason. It’s a primal fear, the type of situation that strikes right into our animal brain. And it has become an apt metaphor, representing the fears and traumas of a younger generation who has surged back into theaters this year to see its own anxieties reflected. The terrors of monotony Familiarity is usually synonymous with safety. What’s m

Dave Marsh, an influential and idiosyncratic rock critic who championed passion over polish, helped catapult Bruce Springsteen to fame and damned the Grateful Dead as “the worst band in creation,” died Aug. 14 at his home in Norwalk, Connecticut. He was 76. (Facebook via Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music) By ALEX WILLIAMS Dave Marsh, an influential and idiosyncratic rock critic who championed passion over polish, helped catapult Bruce Springsteen to fame

An image of Rob and Michele Reiner is displayed during the 98th Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday, March 15, 2026. (Philip Cheung/The New York Times) By DERRICK BRYSON TAYLOR Rob Reiner, who with his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, was killed at his home in Los Angeles in December, won the Emmy Award for outstanding guest actor in a comedy series for his work on the FX high-pressure dramedy “The Bear.” The win was announced Sunday as a part of a two-da

University of Puerto Rico-Carolina professor Yanira Delgado has built a reputation for insisting on one deceptively simple premise: nothing in drawing is accidental. By THE STAR STAFF In the classrooms of the University of Puerto Rico in Carolina, where design students learn to translate space, form and light into visual language, Prof. Yanira Delgado has built a reputation for insisting on one deceptively simple premise: nothing in drawing is accidental. Every curve, every s

The jazz singer Cassandra Wilson performs at the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center in Manhattan on Sept. 30, 2011. With a self-possessed vision, Wilson married her easy and intimate tone to jazz, blues and folk experiments, opening the door to a new postmodernism. (Brian Harkin/The New York Times) By GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO There is a quality of almost holy slowness in Cassandra Wilson’s music that belies the speed and force with which it changed jazz history. Wilson’s was a voice t

Bad Bunny leads a cast of musicians and dancers for the first Super Bowl halftime set performed nearly entirely in Spanish, in Santa Clara, Calif., Feb. 8, 2026. A copyright suit against stars including Bad Bunny and Daddy Yankee came from the producers behind a trio of songs foundational to the reggaeton genre. (Doug Mills/The New York Times) By BEN SISARIO The most closely watched lawsuit in music, which has ensnared Bad Bunny, Justin Bieber, Daddy Yankee, Karol G and dozen

“Exorcist II: The Heretic” (1977) (Warner Bros.) By ROBERT ITO John Boorman, the celebrated director of “Deliverance” and “Hope and Glory,” is one of David Kittredge’s favorite filmmakers. But when Kittredge, a Los Angeles director and writer, got the idea for a documentary about his hero, he didn’t want to focus on either of those Oscar-nominated movies or on the times Boorman won best director at Cannes. No, Kittredge wanted to look at Boorman’s “Exorcist II: The Heretic.”

A jury in Las Vegas found a man guilty of orchestrating the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur, delivering a conviction nearly 30 years after one of hip-hop’s most notorious killings. (X via Tupac Shakur) By JULIA JACOBS and ANUSHA BAYYA A jury in Las Vegas on Monday found a man guilty of orchestrating the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur, delivering a conviction nearly 30 years after one of hip-hop’s most notorious killings. Duane Keith Davis, 63, was accused of obtaining the gun used i

In Alexander Ullom’s unpredictable horror film “It Ends,” four friends driving home from college realize that they’re on an endless road. (Neon) By NICOLAS RAPOLD The open road has a grand tradition in American movies. You hit the highway, meet people along the way, see some sights and get where you’re going with a fresh perspective. The future is yours. This is not how “It Ends” works. In Alexander Ullom’s unpredictable horror film, four friends driving home from college rea

Maximiliano Valdés returns for his 19th year as music director of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra. (www.prso.gov) By PEGGY ANN BLISS Special to The STAR Puerto Rico concertgoers will have the chance of their lives to critique the island’s classical music soloists beginning Saturday with a precedent-shattering parade of local superstars, seven in one concert season. Concerts of viola, clarinet, sopranos, bassoon, violin, harp, and cuatro; members past or present of the Pue