Cowboy Heaven, in MOMA’s Westerns Series

The series “Universal Westerns,” astatine MOMA done July 3, reveals the fruitful cinematic idiosyncrasies that Universal Pictures, founded successful 1912, fostered successful its heyday. John Ford, the ultimate manager of the Western, got his commencement there, astatine property twenty-four; successful his archetypal feature, “Straight Shooting” (screening June 6 and June 16), from 1917, his creator property is already connected crisp display. The communicative involves a household of homesteaders—small-time farmers portrayed arsenic peaceful and law-abiding—facing the hired guns of a cattle rancher who wants their onshore for grazing. The pb gunman (Harry Carey) grows disgusted and changes sides, arsenic does a young cowboy, resulting successful romanticist complications with a farmer’s daughter. Ford, a moralist of precocious principle, creates an instant fable with his lofty depictions of righteous violence—yet with his adjacent movie helium rapidly punctured the pomp of crowd-pleasing heroism. “Hell Bent” (June 6 and June 16), from 1918, starts with a Western novelist getting a missive from his steadfast requesting realistic characters with mixed motives. The remainder of the movie involves the novelist’s imaginings, featuring Carey arsenic a gunman whose actions again—and adjacent much ambiguously—veer betwixt noble and ignoble.

In “Trail of the Vigilantes” (June 8 and July 2), from 1940, the freewheelingly inventive manager Allan Dwan turns an intricate play into a hectic comedy, starring the urbane Franchot Tone, arsenic an upper-crust peculiar researcher who heads West, from Kansas City, and awkwardly poses arsenic a cowpuncher successful bid to find a journalist’s killer. The action, some loopy and violent, features breathtaking rooftop stunt enactment framed successful starkly graphic images; again, the villains are cattlemen seeking to monopolize land.

King Vidor, who, successful 1949, had filmed Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead,” some flaunts and questions his libertarian bona fides successful “Man Without a Star” (June 12 and June 28), from 1955. It’s a dashingly flamboyant Technicolor communicative of a wandering gunslinger (Kirk Douglas) who heads to Wyoming successful hunt of wide-open spaces and gets embroiled successful a scope warfare betwixt a big-time rancher and tiny cattlemen who obstruction retired large herds—and successful the schemes of 2 almighty women (Jeanne Crain and Claire Trevor). An unusual subplot of bath humor, involving the invention of indoor facilities, symbolizes the changing times. Vidor envisions irreconcilable conflicts of state and order, and shrugs.—Richard Brody

About Town

Alternative Rock

The 3rd question of emo euphony was successful afloat plaything astatine the crook of the millenium, but the dam preventing its implicit taste penetration wasn’t breached until the Arizona set Jimmy Eat World’s bittersweet single, “The Middle,” from its self-titled 2001 album, besides known arsenic “Bleed American,” came flooding onto radio. The band’s erstwhile LP, “Clarity” (1999), was a curious, intricate cult classical that got it dropped from its label; taking note, the follow-up’s much straightforward popular songcraft was generational successful its articulation of youthful disillusionment. Proving it truly wasn’t conscionable a phase, the set celebrates the album’s twenty-fifth day with compatriots from the heyday of the emo unchangeable Vagrant Records: the Get Up Kids and Hey Mercedes.—Sheldon Pearce (Brooklyn Paramount; June 16.)

Off Broadway

“Small” is simply a one-man amusement astir Robert Montano’s brief, blazing, and achy teen vocation arsenic a jockey. It’s besides a nifty showcase for the resilience of its star, who, with tiny shifts of his spine and eyebrows, embodies each role, mincing flirtatiously arsenic his Puerto Rican parent and adopting a matador’s hauteur arsenic his mentor astatine the Belmont Raceway. The amusement begins arsenic a corny boomer bildungsroman, but Montano’s athleticism and the show’s clever staging alteration it into thing cooler, capturing the precocious of the thrust and the fearfulness of “the monster”—racetrack slang for the scale. As Montano strokes an invisible horse’s snout, past crouches arsenic we perceive the hammer of hooves, the assemblage is catapulted toward the decorativeness line.—Emily Nussbaum (Pershing Square Signature Center; done July 24.)

Off Broadway

The carbonated, TikTokified modern adaptation of Jean Genet’s 1947 play “The Maids” is acceptable successful an influencer’s aerie draped successful chiffon, with screens arsenic literal walls and iPhones arsenic metaphorical windows. The Australian manager Kip Williams recasts Genet’s sister-maids (a rock-solid Phia Saban and Lydia Wilson) arsenic seething Gen Z underlings, pressed beneath the thumb of the atrocious Madame (Yerin Ha). The archetypal was a shocker, a fable of people warfare that jump-started absurdist theatre; the caller production, reusing the tools of Williams’s superior staging of “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” feels little novel, but inactive has a mesmeric kick. As the maids kinkily cosplay as—and strategy to poison—their boss, you cheer for them, if lone to termination the algorithm astatine its source.—E.N. (St. Ann’s Warehouse; done June 14.)

Art

There’s thing scrumptious astir Jessi Reaves’s work, but it’s not ornate. She has a fondness for the theatrical—cushioned platforms that enactment arsenic beds and stages, some the spot of fantasy, of desire—which plays beautifully successful her show space, a vaulted classical room. Reaves gives a batch of thought to however the creator reuses materials successful bid to springiness them a 2nd oregon 3rd life. It’s refreshing to observe however she uses objects—water bottles, an aged vanity—not to denigrate consumerism but to amusement however consumerist goods are aspirational objects, and what happens to us, the viewer, erstwhile we remake the mean into the signifier of a dream. You tin unbend successful Reaves’s installation due to the fact that she wants you to unrecorded successful the beingness she’s created—and enjoy.—Hilton Als (American Academy of Arts and Letters; done July 3.)

Dance

This year, Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City is the Summer of Dance. In summation to the accustomed social-dance occasions connected the outdoor creation floor, there’s a brand-new contemporary-dance festival (June 18-July 5) that features a beardown lineup of planetary companies, including those of Rachid Ouramdane and Akram Khan. Before that, connected June 10, comes “Rhapsody,” 1 of Larry Keigwin’s amusive wide orchestrations of assemblage members, and a swing-dance enactment with Caleb Teicher and the Eyal Vilner Big Band. “Inayat: A Duet for Four,” starring the kathak dancer Tarini Tripathi, runs June 10-12. It’s each escaped oregon choose-what-you-pay.—Brian Seibert (Lincoln Center; June 10-Aug. 8.)

Movies

The accent of a treble beingness weighs heavy connected a French teen-ager successful Hafsia Herzi’s play “The Little Sister,” based connected an autofictional caller by Fatima Daas. The energetic and pensive Nadia Melliti, successful her archetypal movie role, plays Fatima, a high-school elder of Algerian descent, who lives successful a suburb of Paris. A bully pupil and an athlete, Fatima is attracted to women and begins to enactment connected her desires, keeping her backstage beingness a secret: she’s surrounded by homophobic sermon and, arsenic a practicing Muslim, is alert that her behaviour is forbidden. Herzi subtly conveys the hostility of Fatima’s furtive soundlessness portion emphasizing the nationalist systems—educational, medical, religious—that signifier her interior beingness and spark her literate ambitions.—Richard Brody (Film astatine Lincoln Center; opening June 5.)

On and Off the Avenue

Rachel Syme slips backmost into summer’s favourite shoes.

The footwear of the summer, similar the opus of the summer, is simply a soggy superlative—it shifts with the breeze, depending connected wherever you are and whom you ask. But the manner world—and those who basal to nett disconnected of it—love a consensus, if lone to merchantability the thought of an unmissable trend. A fewer years back, the chatter was each astir Birkenstocks and the granola-core aesthetic. Then, attraction shifted to puffy foam slides—essentially orthopedic excavation noodles—which leapt from their accepted usage arsenic dorm ablution cogwheel to morganatic streetwear. (I americium inactive haunted by the flatulent dependable they marque portion squishing against concrete.) In 2025, it was the mesh ballet flat, spotted connected celebrities from Nicole Kidman to Gigi Hadid (it’s not excessively precocious to effort them; Loeffler Randall inactive sells a demure, cream-colored mentation for $250). This summer, the blistery footwear du jour is, somehow, the reliable aged flip-flop, a footwear that has been kicking astir since 4000 B.C. and comes roaring backmost each fewer years similar El Niño. The modern flip-flop—with its polyurethane body, thong shape, and signature bottommost thwack—dates to the nineteen-fifties and sixties, erstwhile companies began adapting accepted Japanese zōri sandals for beachgoing consumers. Now, the flop has gone precocious fashion. The Row’s coveted Beach Flip Flop Sport 2 retails for $920. A brace of sunny yellowish Miu Miu thongs volition acceptable you backmost $795, portion a brace of YSL Pool Flip-Flops spell for $690. But fret not; cheaper varietals are besides trending. Flops from Rainbow, a California purveyor launched successful the seventies, are allegedly each the rage with Gen Z (a brace of their fashionable Flirty Braidy benignant goes for $71). You tin besides find fresh-looking flops astatine the Gap ($34.95), Madewell ($98), and, of course, astatine the Brazilian juggernaut Havaianas, whose caller collaboration with decorator Isabel Marant yielded a handsome ikat brace ($120) and different studded with metallic balls ($190). Enjoy your flop era.