The Stranger

Jiro Ono is 85 years old. He still works at his sushi bar—10 seats, located in a basement next to a Tokyo subway station, recipient of three Michelin stars—every day. His commitment to his craft—to being a shokunin, to striving for impossible perfection—is complete. “It has to be better than last time,” Jiro says of his sushi, and he means every time, day after day after day. The filmmakers behind this documentary show this truth in everything that Jiro says and does, in every glossy and yielding piece of fish shown, in the important matter of rice. You must see Jiro Dreams of Sushi. (See Movie Times) by Bethany Jean Clement

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It’s a rare occasion in music writing that superlatives are justified. Radiohead is one of them. Starting with OK Computer and never stopping, Radiohead have defined—via music—a generation, if not a century, of the human experience. Don’t like The King of Limbs? Listen to it in a year and deny its brilliance. Who else articulates the tedium, isolation, and chaos of modern urban life with such precision? Answer: no one. (KeyArena, Seattle Center, www.ticketmaster.com, 7:30 pm, $66.50, all ages) by Grant Brissey

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The only thing better than watching Scarface is watching Scarface with a cap gun. That’s right: This is your only opportunity to see the movie that launched a million rap careers in glorious shoot-o-rama. You’re issued a cap gun and caps at the door, and then every time the movie erupts in gunfire, you’re encouraged to fire your pistol at the screen. By the time Al Pacino’s climactic gun battle closes out the film, the theater will be cloaked in a blanket of sulfurous smoke and the satisfaction of a job well done. (SIFF Cinema at the Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave N, www.siff.net, 7 pm, $10) by Paul Constant

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No one does the greatest-hits extravaganza like Elvis Costello. In addition to a sturdy band of Imposters, Costello’s 2012 Revolver Tour features the return of the Spectacular Spinning Songbook, an honest-to-God Wheel of Fortune–style contraption emblazoned with song titles drawn from across Costello’s 35-year career and spun by lucky audience members. Whatever song comes up, the band bangs out. No two shows are the same, and all of them are great. (My top mama-needs-a-new-pair-of-shoes song hopefuls: “New Lace Sleeves” [1981], “I Want You” [1986], “Lipstick Vogue” [1978].) (Paramount Theatre, 911 Pine St, www.stgpresents.org, 8 pm, $35.75–$75.75, all ages) by David Schmader

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Honestly, the less you know about The Cabin in the Woods before you watch it, the better off you are. The basics: Sexy young people—a stoner, a jock, a sex kitten, a nerd, and a virgin—take a vacation. Then things go wrong. Lots of things. Everything. Imagine every horror movie you’ve ever seen played on the screen at the same time, and you’re getting warm. But this isn’t some smirky, Scream-style, self-aware cuddlefest—it’s a genuinely scary movie. Toss a delightful performance from Bradley Whitford in there, and you’ve got everything you should know. (See Movie Times) by Paul Constant

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The first thing you see in the group exhibition Making Mends is a cloud rising from gallery floor to ceiling. It’s a mushroom cloud, but it’s so fluffy that it beckons anyway, and when you get close, you see a ladder dangling down, inviting you up as into a tree house. The stated theme of Making Mends is art and healing, so you know that this sculpture (Playhouse, by Dietrich Wegner), despite its darkness and horror, wants to make you feel better. The whole show is like this: an effective invitation to be moved by art’s ability to respond to the awfulness it cannot change. This art is made of sand, feathers, clay, paint, video. The artists are people who are dying soon, or later, or who have gone to war and are making paper out of their uniforms. Don’t skip this show. (Bellevue Arts Museum, 510 Bellevue Way NE, Bellevue, www.bellevuearts.org, 11 am–5 pm, $10) by Jen Graves

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