The grim spectacle of bullfighting is displayed with an unflinching, intimate glory in Albert Serra’s documentary “Afternoons of Solitude,” which follows the torero Andrés Roca Rey through fourteen corridas in the course of three years. Serra details the ritualized battles, from the wounding of bulls by picadors to the matador’s climactic kill, and observes Roca being dressed in his elaborate costumes by a skilled associate. But the core of the film involves extended scenes of Roca in the ring, taunting and luring and evading the enraged beasts with death-defying maneuvers—turning his back on bulls, wiggling his hips at them—that are as graceful as dance but as dangerous as combat, sometimes leaving Roca bashed and bloodied, yet unyielding. The aesthetic of bullfighting is revealed to be as exquisite as it is terrifying.—Richard Brody (Film at Lincoln Center.)
Soul
Photograph by Sylvain Chaussée
The singer Jasmine Rose Wilson first teased a full-bodied soul sound in 2017, when she released the mixtape “From Dusk ’Til Dawn,” as Baby Rose. Her music is built around her distinct voice, which is husky yet smooth, exuding both subtlety and power. Rose’s début album, “To Myself,” from 2019, set the terms of her sound with measured post-breakup reflections, and in its songs a growing command of her singular instrument gives her music its own gravity. Four years later, the follow-up, “Through and Through,” showed greater mastery over this force, now in service of sumptuous, lounge-ready songs about budding romance. Baring classic R. & B. and funk overtones, its hazy ballads draw you into their embrace and don’t let go.—Sheldon Pearce (Sony Hall; June 27.)
Art
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, more than two million Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, and Finns migrated to the U.S., many of them settling in the upper Midwest. The exhibit “Nordic Echoes” explores the quirky, forest-forward legacy of Scandinavian folk culture on contemporary artists in the U.S.’s northern heartland. On display is a birch-bark guinea-pig carrier, à la BabyBjörn (replete with bite marks); a COVID-era painting depicting masked North Dakotans at a farmers’ market; and a stunningly intricate paper cutting of animals fleeing a forest fire, a nod to recent climate catastrophes. Among the lighter fare, standouts include a polychromatic, aurora-esque abstract drawing, by a Minneapolis-based artist of Sami and Finnish descent; and a pair of ale hens—bird-shaped special-occasion carved drinking gourds. Skål! (Cheers!)—Jennifer Wilson (Scandinavia House; through Aug. 2.)
Pick Three
Jennifer Wilson on three new poetry books.
1. The poetry of Bernadette Mayer (1945-2022) is as whimsical and difficult as raising children, one of her main subjects. In 1978, Mayer published “The Golden Book of Words”—newly reissued by New Directions—a few years after she moved from New York City to Massachusetts, to start a family (with the fellow-poet Lewis Warsh). Mayer’s avant-garde, fragmentary language echoes the cacophony of a full house, or is it the other way around? “Broo ah ha ha / thoughts unravel / run after her.”
2. In life and on the page, the Palestinian poet Nasser Rabah searches through rubble. In “Gaza: the Poem Said Its Piece,” a new translation of his work that includes writings from the onset of the current war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza, he offers, “There you are, giving a silent sermon over a heap / of the dead and move on, just like when you ask the grocer / for something, and move on.”
Illustration by Derek Abella
3. The title of “The Wickedest,” the latest collection from the Nigerian British poet Caleb Femi, comes from a long-running house party in South London’s “shoobs” scene. The party’s history is narrated in verse by an Uber driver picking up a young woman, perhaps taking her home to a working-class council estate—the setting for much of Femi’s poetry, including his début, “Poor.” “The Wickedest” finds poetry in all corners of the club. Someone types lonely verses on his Notes app. The d.j. spits love poetry on the mike: “big up the couple lipsing by the window / you lot been there all night though / you’re blocking the breeze.”
What to Watch
Bill McKibben on the best nature shows.
The new documentary “Ocean” (on Disney+) is vintage David Attenborough, and not many vintages have aged better; he turned ninety-nine last month, which means we should be savoring whatever he produces. But what made this movie so powerful was one scene: the up-close video of the damage done by a trawler as it lawn-mows the sea bottom, over and over. It’s a reminder that at its best—all the way back to Jacques Cousteau—nature filmmaking does its job when it captures not just abundance but absence.
“My Octopus Teacher,” 2020.Photograph from Netflix / Everett Collection
For those who need more underwater content, “My Octopus Teacher,” from 2020, is streaming on Netflix. The story of a South African diver who falls under the spell of an octopus in a kelp forest, it’s the micro-view to Attenborough’s wide angle. Coming onshore at least a little, the 2024 documentary “My Mercury” (for rent on Prime, free on Pluto) chronicles a conservationist who spends eight years on a tiny island off Namibia, chasing away—controversially—an invasion of seals, who endanger the penguins, gannets, and cormorants that have long inhabited its cliffs.
On HBO, you can watch “All That Breathes,” a 2022 documentary account of a pair of Indian brothers who run a bird hospital focussed on rescuing black kites, a common New Delhi species increasingly falling victim to the city’s incredible congestion. The cinematography, the soundtrack (by Roger Goula), and the sound recordings (of, among other things, a band of dump-dwelling rats) are intense; you get an Attenboroughian sense of the sprawling human wilderness that is the Indian capital city.
Another sterling account of an urban bird, this one from the National Film Board of Canada and available, in an abbreviated version, as a Times Op-Doc, “Modern Goose” follows Canada geese through Manitoba (from which thousands of people recently evacuated, to escape vast forest fires). Urban development has made it hard to be a goose; the director Karsten Wall tracks them through strip malls, highway off-ramps, and an awful lot of parking lots. There’s no English accent to guide you—no narration at all, except the soft honking of the geese, somehow carrying on amid it all.
P.S. Good stuff on the internet:
Premium IPTV Experience with line4k
Experience the ultimate entertainment with our premium IPTV service. Watch your favorite channels, movies, and sports events in stunning 4K quality. Enjoy seamless streaming with zero buffering and access to over 10,000+ channels worldwide.
