Welcome back to The Big To-Do. Whether you think of the next few days as Patriots Day weekend, Marathon weekend, the start of school vacation week, or time to stock up on allergy meds, spring has definitely sprung. It’s NBA and NHL playoff season, with the Celtics playing host to the 76ers and the Bruins visiting the Sabres, both on Sunday. This week’s One Special Thing is a 1999 film that feels bitterly relevant in 2026. “The Pitt” and Jerry West are the biggest names among the latest streaming picks from the Globe’s Matt Juul. And the arts brief section The Rundown includes a 24-hour music marathon by cellist and performance artist Keefer Glenshaw, who’s inviting members of the public to jam with him.

Film

“The Christophers,” starring Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel, “starts out as a heist movie before morphing into a rewarding treatise on the power and influence of art.” Playing a terminally ill artist tangling with his horrible kids “may be the best work of McKellen’s career,” writes Globe film critic Odie Henderson, awarding 3½ stars. “No slouch herself, Coel meets his every acting challenge and issues one of her own.”

Fair warning: “The first half of ‘Normal’ is quite good.” Bob Odenkirk plays the acting sheriff of a small Minnesota town where something’s a little off. “All the strangeness is either presented matter of factly or kept off to the side,” writes the Globe’s Mark Feeney, who gives the film 2½ stars. Then things turn violent, and “the extended reveal of the abnormality wastes much of what was good about the first half of the movie.”

In the documentary “Lorne,” about “Saturday Night Live” creator Lorne Michaels, director Morgan Neville “leans into the premise that he’ll never ‘figure out’ his subject.” The result “might be sufficiently enjoyable” if you don’t know much about the show, Henderson writes in a 2-star review. “But if you know a bit of history, you’ll find nothing new or enlightening here.”

April sees the release of the new documentary “Noah Kahan: Out of Body” (streaming now) and the singer-songwriter’s fourth album, “The Great Divide” (April 24). Directed by Nick Sweeney, the film offers “an intimate look at his relationship with his family, his Vermont upbringing, and his meteoric rise as a music superstar,” the Globe’s Matt Juul writes. He spotlights four takeaways.

Boots Riley’s “I Love Boosters” opens the 23rd International Film Festival Boston Wednesday. “With Riley, it’s best to expect the unexpected,” writes Henderson, who offers an annotated rundown of the schedule. “[Y]our choices range from Sundance festival darlings to South by Southwest standouts.” Among them is “one of the best movies of the year,” Sophy Romvari’s “Blue Heron.”

“The Insider,” the 1999 journalism thriller directed by Michael Mann, is this week’s One Special Thing. Russell Crowe plays a whistleblower and Al Pacino the “60 Minutes” producer “fighting his bosses as CBS gets cold feet,“ writes Globe critic Chris Vognar. The film is “a smart, high-stakes grown-up drama that wrings thick tension from the act of reporting and delivering the news and tilting at corporate media windmills.”

TV & Streaming

“Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” like other David E. Kelley productions, is “a little old-fashioned and a little newfangled, slickly entertaining, witty and casually progressive.” Elle Fanning stars as a college student and single mom making money as a webcam model and living with her parents (Michelle Pfeiffer and Nick Offerman). The series, Globe critic Chris Vognar writes, is “not quite wholesome, but peppy, hopeful, and rather eager to please.”

The reboot “Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair” is missing one important original cast member. Erik Per Sullivan, who played Dewey, “has traded Hollywood for Harvard,” reports the Globe’s Mark Shanahan. Now 34, the retired actor is “currently — and quite happily, apparently — studying Victorian literature.”

Music

More than a few releases for Record Store Day tomorrow have a Boston — well, New England — accent. From the Cars in Houston in 1984 to Berklee alum Laufey in New York last year, there’s something for almost everyone. “We’re going to stock almost all of the releases — we’ve never ordered more stuff,” says Phil Wilcox of Tres Gatos. Globe correspondent Victoria Wasylak, writing for Sound Check, has the details.

The marching band uniform jacket looked familiar — white, red, and black, with “a single, familiar word embroidered on the wrist in looping red cursive.” Could it be? Yes, it could. “By some impossible roll of the cosmic dice, all the moving parts had aligned.” From Maplewood, N.J., to a rack outside a New Orleans art gallery, the Globe’s A.Z. Madonna spins a mesmerizing tale with a supremely satisfying twist ending.

Remember the gentleman on the South Shore who wanted live viola music at his gas station? Quincy Gas recently turned into a performance space for four violists who made Harvey Kertzman’s dream come true. “It’s definitely one of the most unconventional gigs I’ve come across,” Luke Norman told Madonna. Said Noreen Kertzman, Harvey’s wife, “We’re living out a little fantasy here.”

La Peste, a leading light of Boston’s late-’70s punk scene, released two songs but made a long-lasting impression. To coincide with today’s release of “I Don’t Know Right From Wrong: Lost La Peste 1976-1979 Vol. 1,” Globe correspondent James Sullivan looks back at the trio that made what cofounder Peter Dayton calls “the best single maybe ever out of Boston.”

Lindsey Jordan, who performs as Snail Mail, steered clear of music about relationships on her latest album, “Ricochet.” “I felt like I was pigeonholing myself to a certain degree ... I need to find inspiration in other kinds of lyricism,” she says in a Q&A with Globe correspondent Sam Shipman. “A lot of it for me was finding poetry and movies and music that sits outside of that realm.”

Making their second album, “From the Pyre,” the Last Dinner Party “felt like being darker and also more playful.” The British quintet is a domestic hit, but “the knowingly exaggerated drama that fuels their material makes them a more niche appeal stateside,” writes Globe correspondent Marc Hirsh. Singer Abigail Morris says, “I feel like the only way that I can be honest is to be that dramatic.” They play Boston tomorrow.

Museums & Visual Art

Once as prominent as Mark Rothko or Jackson Pollock, Jules Olitski is hardly a household name today. “Spray: Jules Olitski in the 1960s,” at the Currier Museum in Manchester, N.H., is “a captivating capsule treatment of Olitski’s most fertile moment, when he picked up an industrial spray gun and made a mark on the evolving realm of abstract painting,” Globe art critic Murray Whyte writes. “But it left me hungry for what lay beyond it, before and after.”

Exhibitions related to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence are cropping up all over. “1776: Declaring Independence,” at the Massachusetts Historical Society, features numerous artifacts as well as six copies of the Declaration. “Revolutionary Legacies,” at the Concord Museum, “takes that second word in the title seriously — really, the show is about the materiality of historical memory,” writes the Globe’s Mark Feeney.

“What’s better than fantasy? Something which seems like fantasy but turns out to be real.” In “Click! Photographers Make Picture Books,” at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, you get both. Feeney writes, “As appealing as the fantastical can be, and that’s very appealing, the familiar or aspirational can on occasion work even better.”

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s horticulturists found some new fans this week. The signature nasturtium display came down, and gorillas and lemurs at the Franklin Park Zoo had edible flowers added to their diets. “Everybody was excited about the idea of the nasturtiums getting a bit of a second life,” horticulturist Cass Bidwell said in an interview with Claire Thornton. Bonus: great photos by the Globe’s Jessica Rinaldi.

Fleeing the drug cartels, Ileana Doble Hernandez left Monterrey, Mexico, for the Boston area in 2011. The immigration crackdowns that started last year made her see her adopted country differently. “Fearing persecution for the work I do and racial profiling for the language I prefer to speak with my family forced me to lie,” she tells Globe correspondent Cate McQuaid. “I cannot find a way to feel safe here.”

Theater

Matthew Lombardo’s comedy “When Playwrights Kill” “combines the broadness of farce with a welter of inside theater jokes.” The “fast-moving, uproarious” Huntington production could be a revenge comedy, but “Lombardo has moved beyond self-referentiality to create something more intricate, surprising, and ultimately compassionate,” writes Globe theater critic Don Aucoin. Through tomorrow.

The musical “Swept Away” and a dance-theater adaptation of “The Secret Sharer” open in Boston next week. They don’t seem to have much in common besides being set at sea, but only at first. Directors Jeremy Johnson and Daniel Banks discussed how they prepared for their shows and the productions’ surprising commonalities in a Q&A with Globe correspondent Nicole Estvanik Taylor.

Spring brings announcements of fall — extending into winter and spring — cultural calendars. The ART’s 2026-27 schedule opens with Eugène Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros,” directed by Diane Paulus. Across the river, the Huntington season includes the ninth and final play in Mfoniso Udofia’s Ufot Family Cycle, “Adia & Clora Snatch Joy.” Aucoin has the lowdown on both slates.

Podcasts

Ian Coss “is no longer worried about running out of Boston-based ideas for his series.” The host of “The Big Dig” has tackled the titular mega-project, the state lottery, and crime in the local fishing industry. “There was a time when I felt the localness of the show would be limiting,” the Medford resident tells Globe correspondent James Sullivan. “But I feel like the deeper we get into the world-building of Boston, I find the localness of it just makes it richer.”

Comedy

“Ramy Youssef: In Love” finds the actor-writer “[r]iffing on everything from dogs to the controversial Riyadh Comedy Festival.” He draws the audience in, writes Globe critic Chris Vognar, “because he’s funny, and also because he seems like a genuinely good guy,” The special “showcases an undervalued comedic strength: a warm, mellow delivery that makes it easy to say pretty much whatever you want.”

Books

Changing perspectives propel Craig Fehrman’s “This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark.” The author’s “character-based approach pays enormous dividends, as Fehrman weaves a tale that uses human stories to go beyond hard facts and calcified myths,” Globe critic Chris Vognar writes. “Fehrman’s approach to this well-trodden historical chapter is fresh and inclusive. It also makes for a ripping good read.”

At 39, Lena Dunham is “relishing her own survival.” Her new memoir, “Famesick,” addresses “the consequences of trying to separate your mental and physical health from your public persona,” the “Girls” creator and star says in a Q&A with Kate Tuttle, who edits the Globe’s Books section. “[I]t finally felt comfortable to talk about all of this, and hope that it might resonate for people who have had similar experiences.”

Lidie Newton is back. Twenty-eight years after “The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton,” Jane Smiley returns to mid-19th-century Kansas with “Lidie.” And then she makes “an unusual choice,” writes Globe reviewer Matthew Keeley. “In moving Lidie to England, she also precipitates her into another, quieter, genre of novel entirely. ... the second Lidie Newton novel concerns healing, recovery, and reflection.”

Today’s newsletter was written by Marie Morris and produced by the Glo