The Critics

Word pictures at a gallery

Paintings are appreciated best when there are few people around to spoil the view

Two sides of the weird frontier

The archly neutral now stands on the margins, looking out at a society of fear and outrage

Poor old Carmen

This update of a classic from the Royal Opera House is a reminder of why messing with great pieces is so risky

The untalented Mx. Ripley

In a story of a fiendishly successful performance, Eliot Sumner proved an extremely unconvincing man

The grand tour

Sex and the cities

Netherworld

The Dutch golden age could be anything but for the painters

Ghostbusted

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is heroically pointless

Justin’s dilemma

Spears got slutshamed; Timberlake was the stud

A great conductor leaves the stage

No conductor from China or Japan ever commanded world orchestras before Seiji Ozawa, and none has since matched his impact

Off with the fairies

Unsurprisingly, the most brilliant of all English music-theatre pieces are mostly overlooked