In Museums/Galleries…

After two years of renovations, the Renwick Gallery has officially reopened! Tacky new sign aside, the Renwick’s reopening marks a new era for the storied Smithsonian museum, but its first new exhibition, “Wonder,” may not signal a bold new era. As Kriston Capps writes in his review of “Wonder,” the Renwick’s latest is certainly sprawling but is nonetheless a “warm-up exercise [that] misses the mark.” In short, the Renwick’s grand return is “clinical, anodyne, ordered, sterile, inoffensive, antiseptic, market-ready, and safe, safe, safe.”

At the Art Museum of the Americas, an exhibition of the work of Chilean artist Jorge Tacla may seem hard to approach, but that’s the point. As Beth Shook notes in her review, “structures appear reduced to rubble or bombed out; figures languish in the midst of chaos. Such images may feel acutely familiar to the contemporary eye, but it’s Tacla’s treatment of materials that challenges our understanding of them.” “Hidden Identities: Paintings and Drawings by Jorge Tacla” may be the better of the two new galleries to scope out this weekend.

In Film…

Two of the strongest films of the year open in select D.C. theaters today. If you were a fan of last year’s Birdman—or at its novel cinematography, which cleverly presented itself as one continuous shot—you might appreciate the German dramatic thriller Victoria, which is actually one continuous tracking shot, unlike Birdman. Tricia Olszewski calls the film “entertaining and visceral,” with its single shot technique serving as “more of an impressive asterisk,” rather than the real draw of the film, which is its impressively naturalistic acting and acute writing.

“Pretty soon, they won’t make movies like Spotlight anymore, and that will be a shame,” Noah Gittell quipped in his review of the buzzy film about The Boston Globe‘s investigative journalism team. The film is already poised to be a big contender at the Oscars this year and for good reason. As Gittell notes in his review, “Tom McCarthy’s superb film is not just set in the world of printed news, but it also functions as a thoughtful argument for its necessity.” Featuring stellar performances, Spotlight is the must-see movie of the weekend.

In Theater…

Between 2010 and 2013, Richard Nelson wrote and directed four “hyper-contemporary” plays centered around the fictional Apple Family, each one focused on a recent moment in history—an election or some sort of significant historical anniversary, like the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Two years later, Nelson brings the Apple family back with Sorry and Regular Singing, both following their preceding production’s format. In his review, Chris Klimek praises the subtle power of Nelson’s latest, writing “Whether or not you’ve an appetite for a collective four hours of strangers’ family meals at the beginning of family-meal season is something only you can know. But the quiet brilliance of the writing and acting on display in this stirring pair of chamber dramas makes them urgent, if not essential.”

In Music…

The highly anticipated follow-up to GoldLink‘s future bounce triumph The God Complex, And After That, We Didn’t Talk, dropped this week. Did it live up to the hype? Mostly. As Briana Younger notes, “At times, it feels good; it’s scathingly smart and occasionally sexy. But in other places, it drifts into shameless obscenity: Most of the women are still bitches, and anyone can still get popped. It’s enough to make you wonder which version of GoldLink is the real one.”