What to do this weekend, from Sentimental Value to a Galentine’s night out

A few minutes (or a few hours)

@dylan_skips, TikTok

Blame the algorithm for getting me hooked on the disarmingly wholesome thirst-trap videos of this cheery, moustachioed New Yorker, aiming to convert queer men everywhere to the joys of skipping-rope dance workouts with his exuberantly bouncy routines set to a wildly shuffling elder-millennial playlist that runs the gamut from Bananarama to Bat for Lashes. Has he persuaded me to order a skipping rope and a pair of retro side-split short shorts? Yes. Can I complete more than one jump before tripping over my own ankles? No. But practice (and further scrolling) will surely make perfect.

A leisurely afternoon

Isaac Julien: All That Changes You. Metamorphosis at Victoria Miro, London

From today, this stealthily tucked-away Islington gallery – located just behind the City Road McDonald’s, to give inelegant directions – is hosting the world premiere of the latest installation by the veteran British artist and film-maker. Playing out across five screens, and featuring actors Sheila Atim and Gwendoline Christie, it’s described as “a vivid, sweeping, visual poem about change, what it means to transform, to adapt and to survive".  That could mean more or less anything, but teaser images of the work (shot at the lavish Palazzo Te in Mantua, Italy) promise a visual banquet at the very least.

Click here for more information.

A Galentine’s night out

Kate Berlant: Live! at the Soho Theatre Walthamstow

Since opening last year, the Soho theatre’s new easterly outpost has become something of a hotspot for world-class comedy, and underlines that reputation by hosting two nights with this American actor-writer-standup, whose riveting brand of disconcertingly absurd, off-the-cuff performance has seen her collaborate with the likes of Bo Burnham and John Early. If you saw her one-woman show KATE at the Soho theatre a few years back, or her Emmy-nominated streaming special Would It Kill You to Laugh?, you may expect off-kilter reflections on identity, show business and family trauma. If you didn’t, just roll with her.

Tickets here.

A Valentine’s night out

Mississippi Masala at the BFI Southbank, London

Back in 1991, Indian film-maker Mira Nair made two things for which we’re grateful today. The first was her son Zohran Mamdani, now New York City’s first Muslim mayor and America’s great socialist hope. The second was this terrific romantic drama, which gave us the outrageously hot screen pairing of Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury as Black and Indian-American lovers in small-town Mississippi whose interracial relationship is opposed by their families and communities. Sharp, sexy and still relevant, it’s an inspired choice for the prime Valentine’s Day screening at the BFI Southbank, also marking the film’s 35th anniversary. (For those who can’t get to Waterloo, it’s also readily streamable on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV.)

A night in

Sentimental Value on Mubi

For those of you playing awards-season catch-up from home, a key contender is available to watch in your living room from today. A bittersweet, gently bruised study of fraught father-daughter relationships and the perils of having an iconoclastic artist in the family, Norwegian writer-director Joachim Trier’s latest plays a little like an easier-on-the-emotions Ingmar Bergman, and perhaps even more like Woody Allen in his own Bergman tribute mode. Either way, it’s tender, affecting and beautifully acted, particularly by Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve: there’s a reason nearly half its nine Oscar nominations are for its ensemble.

Illustration by Charlotte Durance