The band, called Old Dominion in honor of the members’ ties to Virginia, formed in 2007 and has reached great heights since. Its members have written songs for some of country music’s biggest stars including Keith Urban, Blake Shelton and Kenny Chesney, and just this month they were named Group of the Year by the Academy of Country Music for the sixth time.

The families and friends of sailors were invited onto the ship to enjoy the show. The concert and music video are part of their promotion of their new single, “Coming Home.”

The Ford is the Navy’s newest and most advanced warship, and recently returned from a deployment to the Mediterranean Sea.

Gavin Stone, 757-712-4806, gavin.stone@virginiamedia.com

In rare cases, a misadventure is so awful it becomes news, such as climber Aaron Ralston’s self-amputation in 2003 to unpin his right arm from a boulder. Yet as any search-and-rescue team can share, there are countless stories every day of ordinary people who find themselves in precarious situations while trying to enjoy time outdoors.

And they’re now being told in a variety of podcasts.

Some of these stories are inherently a lesson without the need for a teaching moment spelled out. Others might include a footnote about how to properly prepare for even the simplest outing so there can hopefully be a safe rescue, if needed, or what the reality is of being up close to wild animals.

“One of the common themes in our survival stories — that I don’t think I would have fully appreciated if we weren’t making so many of them — is that it’s almost never just one thing that goes wrong,” shared Peter Frick-Wright, host of the Outside Podcast, in an email interview. “Most people who come close to dying in the wilderness are unlucky or unprepared in two or three different ways that compound on each other to cause a crisis. You lose your firestarter AND fall in the freezing river AND you don’t have a dry set of clothes. You can overcome any two of those problems, but when all three happen you’re in trouble. It’s amazing how consistent it is.”

The Outside podcast is part of Outside Magazine, which is now based in Boulder, Colorado, and not all of its episodes involve accidents. In fact, many of the episodes are the opposite: people who have pushed themselves physically and conquered challenges in the outdoors and now they are sharing how they did it.

“Way, Way Too Close to a Whale” is an episode from earlier this year about two women who go kayaking off the coast of California to chase humpback whales. The story builds with why they went kayaking, what fears and experience they had beforehand, and the dramatic moment when they were suddenly swallowed by a whale. Lesson: Keep your distance from wildlife.

Colorado-based adventure photographer Pete McBride is also interviewed for a brief episode that highlights his startling encounter with an orca.

While many of these stories are told solely from the perspective of the individuals who experienced the near mishap, some episodes get the other side of the story from rescuers. For example, “A Bold Rescue on a Moab Cliff” is not about the BASE jumper whose chute got snagged on the cliff when he struck the rocks and was seriously injured, but the mountain biker who literally swung into action to save his life.

KZMU Community Radio in Moab has decided to take the stories from Grand County Search and Rescue (GCSAR) for a new podcast that will debut later this year.

“The goal of this podcast is to entertain and also educate,” said Molly Marcello, news and public affairs director at KZMU. “There are so many ways to recreate here, which is one of the reasons that Moab is so special for outdoor enthusiasts. That also means there are so many ways to get into trouble.”

Upcoming episodes will highlight the many (!) broken ankles that happen on a popular hike where, despite signs warning against doing so, people jump into a small pond at the bottom of a waterfall; mountain bikers experiencing extreme dehydration on Whole Enchilada Trail; and inventive ways to self-rescue from a slot canyon using your pants.

“The stories that I’ve heard involve a mixture of tourists and locals,” Marcello said. “People can get into trouble by not being prepared or by making sketchy decisions, but accidents do also just happen. We’re hoping people will plan for the worst even if it’s a short hike.”

It’s important to note that search-and-rescue organizations like this are typically made up of volunteers and there can be costs to your rescue, depending on what resources are needed.

Wyoming Public Radio’s HumaNature podcast is recorded in Laramie, and it also has stories of people from anywhere, not just in Wyoming, who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances in the wild. Maybe you just want to hear about the guy who broke a record by pushing a peanut with his nose up Pikes Peak (the summit is 14,115 feet above sea level), but you can also listen to episodes about an experienced hunter who gets lost in the woods or more tales of people who learned the hard way that you need to keep your distance from wildlife.

If you have a wild tale to tell, you can submit it to HumaNature and possibly be featured on a future episode. Frick-Wright said that the majority of their stories come from contributors to Outside — or even just when a producer hears a good story around the campfire.

The next time you live to tell after a narrow escape in the great outdoors, consider which podcast you want to interview you about the nitty-gritty details.

Fun Fridays on the Square, featuring children’s games, activities and more. 10:30 a.m. Friday at City Square Plaza, 412 N. Boundary St., Williamsburg. Free. For more information, visit wrl.org.

Thank Goodness It’s Ocean View featuring The Tiki Bar Band, community barbecue and more. 6 to 9:30 p.m. Friday at Ocean View Beach Park, Norfolk. For more info, visit oceanviewbeachpark.org.

Groovin’ by the Bay, a summer concert series, featuring J & the Band. 4 to 8 p.m. Sunday at Mill Point Park, 100 Eaton St., Hampton. Free. For more information including the series lineup, visit visithampton.com.

Train and REO Speedwagon bring their “Summer Road Trip” tour to Virginia Beach. Opening the show will be Yacht Rock Revue. 6:25 p.m. July 31 at Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater, 3550 Cellar Door Way. Tickets start at $48.65. To buy online, visit livenation.com.

“The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised] [again].” 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Sundays Aug. 9 through Aug. 25 at Little Theatre of Norfolk, 801 Claremont Ave. Tickets: $18, advance; $20 at the door. For more info, visit ltnonline.org.

Events may change. Check before attending.

O’Brien died Saturday after a long illness, according to a statement by her publisher Faber and the literary agency PFD.

“A defiant and courageous spirit, Edna constantly strove to break new artistic ground, to write truthfully, from a place of deep feeling,” Faber said. “The vitality of her prose was a mirror of her zest for life: she was the very best company, kind, generous, mischievous, brave.” She is survived by her sons, Marcus and Carlos.

O’Brien published more than 20 books, most of them novels and story collections, and would know fully what she called the “extremities of joy and sorrow, love, crossed love and unrequited love, success and failure, fame and slaughter.” Few so concretely and poetically challenged Ireland’s religious, sexual and gender boundaries. Few wrote so fiercely, so sensually about loneliness, rebellion, desire and persecution.

“O’Brien is attracted to taboos just as they break, to the place of greatest heat and darkness and, you might even say, danger to her mortal soul,” Booker Prize winner Anne Enright wrote of her in The Guardian in 2012.

A world traveler in mind and body, O’Brien was as likely to imagine the longings of an Irish nun as to take in a man’s “boyish smile” in the midst of a “ponderous London club.” She befriended movie stars and heads of state while also writing sympathetically about Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams and meeting with female farm workers in Nigeria who feared abduction by Boko Haram.

O’Brien was an unknown about to turn 30, living with her husband and two small children outside of London, when “The Country Girls” made her Ireland’s most notorious exile since James Joyce. Written in just three weeks and published in 1960, for an advance of roughly $75, “The Country Girls” follows the lives of two young women: Caithleen (Kate) Brady and Bridget (Baba) Brennan journey from a rural convent to the risks and adventures of Dublin. Admirers were as caught up in their defiance and awakening as would-be censors were enraged by such passages as “He opened his braces and let his trousers slip down around the ankles” and “He patted my knees with his other hand. I was excited and warm and violent.”

Fame, wanted or otherwise, was O’Brien’s ever after. Her novel was praised and purchased in London and New York while back in Ireland it was labeled “filth” by Minister of Justice Charles Haughey and burned publicly in O’Brien’s hometown of Tuamgraney, County Clare. Detractors also included O’Brien’s parents and her husband, the author Ernest Gebler, from whom she was already becoming estranged.

“I had left the spare copy on the hall table for my husband to read, should he wish, and one morning he surprised me by appearing quite early in the doorway of the kitchen, the manuscript in his hand,” she wrote in her memoir “Country Girl,” published in 2012. “He had read it. Yes, he had to concede that despite everything, I had done it, and then he said something that was the death knell of the already ailing marriage — ‘You can write and I will never forgive you.’”

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She continued the stories of Kate and Baba in “The Lonely Girl” and “Girls in Their Married Bliss” and by the mid-1960s was single and enjoying the prime of “Swinging London”: whether socializing with Princess Margaret and Marianne Faithfull, or having a fling with actor Robert Mitchum (“I bet you never tasted white peaches,” he said upon meeting her). Another night, she was escorted home by Paul McCartney, who asked to see her children, picked up her son’s guitar and improvised a song that included the lines about O’Brien “She’ll have you sighing/ She’ll have you crying/ Hey/ She’ll blow your mind away.”

Enright would call O’Brien “the first Irish woman ever to have sex. For some decades, indeed, she was the only Irish woman to have had sex — the rest just had children.”

O’Brien was recognized well beyond the world of books. The 1980s British band Dexy’s Midnight Runners named her alongside Eugene O’Neill, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde and others in the literary tribute “Burn It Down.” She dined at the White House with first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jack Nicholson, and she befriended Jacqueline Kennedy, whom she remembered as a “creature of paradoxes. While being private and immured she also had a hunger for intimacy — it was as if the barriers she had put up needed at times to be battered down.”

O’Brien related well to Kennedy’s reticence, and longing. The literary world gossiped about the author’s love life, but O’Brien’s deepest existence was on the page, from addressing a present that seemed without boundaries (“She longed to be free and young and naked with all the men in the world making love to her, all at once,” one of her characters thinks) to sorting out a past that seemed all boundaries — “the don’ts and the don’ts and the don’ts.”

In her story “The Love Object,” the narrator confronts her lust, and love, for an adulterous family man who need only say her name to make her legs tremble. “Long Distance” arrives at the end of an affair as a man and woman struggle to recapture their feelings for each other, haunted by grudges and mistrust:

“Love, she thought, is like nature but in reverse; first it fruits, then it flowers, then it seems to wither, then it goes deep, deep down into its burrow, where no one sees it, where it is lost from sight and ultimately people die with that secret buried inside their souls.”

“A Scandalous Woman” follows the stifling of a lively young Irish nonconformist — part of that “small solidarity of scandalous women who had conceived children without securing fathers” — and ends with O’Brien’s condemning her country as a “land of shame, a land of murder and a land of strange sacrificial women.” In “My Two Mothers,” the narrator prays for the chance to “begin our journey all over again, to live our lives as they should have been lived, happy, trusting, and free of shame.”

O’Brien’s other books included the erotic novel “August Is a Wicked Month,” which drew upon her time with Mitchum and was banned in parts of Ireland; “Down By The River,” based on a true story about a teenage Irish girl who becomes pregnant after being raped by her father; and the autobiographical “The Light of Evening,” in which a famous author returns to Ireland to see her ailing mother. “Girl,” a novel about victims of Boko Haram, came out in 2019.

O’Brien is among the most notable authors never to win the Nobel or even the Booker Prize. Her honors did include an Irish Book Award for lifetime achievement, the PEN/Nabokov prize and the Frank O’Connor award in 2011 for her story collection “Saints and Sinners,” for which she was praised by poet and award judge Thomas McCarthy as “the one who kept speaking when everyone else stopped talking about being an Irish woman.”

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Josephine Edna O’Brien was one of four children raised on a farm where “the relics of riches remained. It was a life full of contradictions. We had an avenue, but it was full of potholes; there was a gatehouse, but another couple lived there.” Her father was a violent alcoholic, her mother a talented letter writer who disapproved of her daughter’s profession, possibly out of jealousy. Lena O’Brien’s hold on her daughter’s imagination, the force of her regrets, made her a lifelong muse and a near stand-in for Ireland itself, “the cupboard with all things in it, the tabernacle with God in it, the lake with the legends in it.”

Like Kate and Baba in “The Country Girls,” O’Brien was educated in part at a convent, “dour years” made feverish by a disorienting crush she developed on one of the nuns. Language, too, was a temptation, and signpost, like the words she came upon on the back of her prayer book: “Lord, rebuke me not in thy wraith, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure.”

“What did it mean?” she remembered thinking. “It didn’t matter what it meant. It would carry me through lessons and theorems and soggy meat and cabbage, because now, in secret, I had been drawn into the wild heart of things.”

By her early 20s, she was working in a pharmacy in Dublin and reading Tolstoy and Thackeray, among others, in her spare time. She had dreams of writing since she sneaked out to nearby fields as a child to work on stories, but doubted the relevance of her life until she read a Joyce anthology and learned that “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” was autobiographical. She began writing fiction that ran in the literary magazine The Bell and found work reviewing manuscripts for the publishing house Hutchinson, where editors were impressed enough by her summaries to commission what became “The Country Girls.”

“I cried a lot writing ‘The Country Girls,’ but scarcely noticed the tears. Anyhow, they were good tears. They touched on feelings that I did not know I had. Before my eyes, infinitely clear, came that former world in which I believed our fields and hollows had some old music slumbering in them, centuries old,” she wrote in her memoir.

“The words poured out of me, and the pen above the paper was not moving fast enough, so that I sometimes feared they would be lost forever.”

An asterisk (*) indicates that a book’s sales were barely distinguishable from those of the book above. A (b) indicates that some bookstores reported receiving bulk orders.

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FICTION

1. A DEATH IN CORNWALL, by Daniel Silva. (Harper) The 24th book in the Gabriel Allon series. Gabriel forges six Impressionist canvases and enlists an unlikely team of operatives to go after a new foe.

LAST WEEK: —

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

2. THE WOMEN, by Kristin Hannah. (St. Martin’s) In 1965, a nursing student follows her brother to serve during the Vietnam War and returns to a divided America.

LAST WEEK: 1

WEEKS ON LIST: 23

3. THE SUMMER PACT, by Emily Giffin. (Ballantine) Ten years after a tragedy close to graduation, Hannah and her college friends grapple with turning points in their lives.

LAST WEEK: —

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

4. SWAN SONG, by Elin Hilderbrand. (Little, Brown) Nantucket residents are alarmed when a home, recently sold at an exorbitant price, goes up in flames and someone goes missing.

LAST WEEK: 2

WEEKS ON LIST: 5

5. FOURTH WING, by Rebecca Yarros. (Red Tower) Violet Sorrengail is urged by the commanding general, who also is her mother, to become a candidate for the elite dragon riders.

LAST WEEK: 6

WEEKS ON LIST: 62

6. IRON FLAME, by Rebecca Yarros. (Red Tower) The second book in the Empyrean  series. Violet Sorrengail’s next round of training might require her to betray the man she loves.

LAST WEEK: 10

WEEKS ON LIST: 36

7. THE SPELLSHOP, by Sarah Beth Durst. (Bramble) When the Great Library of Alyssium is set aflame, Kiela and Caz take the spellbooks and bring magic to Kiela’s childhood home.

LAST WEEK: —

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

8. FUNNY STORY, by Emily Henry. (Berkley) After their exes run off together, Daphne and Miles form a friendship and concoct a plan involving misleading photos.

LAST WEEK: 7

WEEKS ON LIST: 12

9. ERUPTION, by Michael Crichton and James Patterson. (Little, Brown) The Big Island of Hawaii comes under threat by a volcano at the same time a secret held by the military comes to light.

LAST WEEK: 4

WEEKS ON LIST: 6

10. THE GOD OF THE WOODS, by Liz Moore. (Riverhead) When a 13-year-old girl disappears from an Adirondack summer camp in 1975, secrets kept by the Van Laar family emerge.

LAST WEEK: 3

WEEKS ON LIST: 2

11. CAMINO GHOSTS, by John Grisham. (Doubleday) The third book in the Camino series. The last living inhabitant of a deserted island gets in the way of a resort developer.

LAST WEEK: 5

WEEKS ON LIST: 7

12. YOU LIKE IT DARKER, by Stephen King. (Scribner) A dozen short stories that explore darkness in literal and metaphorical forms.

LAST WEEK: 8

WEEKS ON LIST: 8

13. THE MIDNIGHT FEAST, by Lucy Foley. (Morrow) An opening night party turns deadly at a luxury resort located near an ancient forest.

LAST WEEK: 11

WEEKS ON LIST: 4

14. THE BRIAR CLUB, by Kate Quinn. (Morrow) During the McCarthy era, Grace March’s bonds with her oddball neighbors at a female boardinghouse are tested.

LAST WEEK: —

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

15. ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK, by Chris Whitaker. (Crown) Questions arise when a boy saves the daughter of a wealthy family amid a string of disappearances in a Missouri town in 1975.

LAST WEEK: 9

WEEKS ON LIST: 3

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NONFICTION

1. THE ANXIOUS GENERATION, by Jonathan Haidt. (Penguin Press) A co-author of “The Coddling of the American Mind” looks at the mental health effects of a phone-based life on children.

LAST WEEK: 1

WEEKS ON LIST: 16

2. THE DEMON OF UNREST, by Erik Larson. (Crown) The author of “The Splendid and the Vile” portrays the months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the beginning of the Civil War.

LAST WEEK: 2

WEEKS ON LIST: 11

3. THE WAR ON WARRIORS, by Pete Hegseth. (Broadside) The “Fox & Friends Weekend” host shares his experiences in the Army and his views on the state of the American military.

LAST WEEK: 6

WEEKS ON LIST: 6

4. TRUE GRETCH, by Gretchen Whitmer with Lisa Dickey. (Simon & Schuster) The governor of Michigan recounts defining moments from her life and time in office.

LAST WEEK: —

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

5. ON CALL, by Anthony S. Fauci. (Viking) The physician-scientist and immunologist chronicles his six decades of public service, including his work during the AIDS crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.

LAST WEEK: 3

WEEKS ON LIST: 4

6. NUCLEAR WAR, by Annie Jacobsen. (Dutton) The author of “Operation Paperclip” portrays possible outcomes in the minutes after a nuclear missile launch.

LAST WEEK: 14

WEEKS ON LIST: 7

7. THE SINGULARITY IS NEARER, by Ray Kurzweil. (Viking) A look at the potentially positive and negative aspects of biotechnology, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence.

LAST WEEK: 4

WEEKS ON LIST: 3

8. OUTLIVE, by Peter Attia with Bill Gifford. (Harmony) A look at recent scientific research on aging and longevity.

LAST WEEK: 9

WEEKS ON LIST: 68

9. ASK NOT, by Maureen Callahan. (Little, Brown) The author of “American Predator” puts forward a history of the Kennedy family that describes the abuse of women in its orbit.

LAST WEEK: 5

WEEKS ON LIST: 2

10. THE WAGER, by David Grann. (Doubleday) The survivors of a shipwrecked British vessel on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain have different accounts of events.

LAST WEEK: 10

WEEKS ON LIST: 63

11. AN UNFINISHED LOVE STORY, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. (Simon & Schuster) A trove of items collected by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian’s late husband inspired an appraisal of central figures and pivotal moments of the 1960s.

LAST WEEK: 11

WEEKS ON LIST: 12

12. WHAT THIS COMEDIAN SAID WILL SHOCK YOU, by Bill Maher. (Simon & Schuster) The host of “Real Time With Bill Maher” gives his take on a variety of subjects in American culture and politics.

LAST WEEK: 8

WEEKS ON LIST: 8

13. WE ARE EXPERIENCING A SLIGHT DELAY, by Gary Janetti. (Harper) The author of “Start Without Me” recalls trips he has taken to various parts of the world.

LAST WEEK: —

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

14. THE FRIDAY AFTERNOON CLUB, by Griffin Dunne. (Penguin Press) The actor and director mixes stories from his family with tales of celebrities.

LAST WEEK: 12

WEEKS ON LIST: 5

15. I’M GLAD MY MOM DIED, by Jennette McCurdy. (Simon & Schuster) The actor and filmmaker describes her eating disorders and difficult relationship with her mother.

LAST WEEK: 13

WEEKS ON LIST: 87

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The New York Times bestsellers are compiled and archived by the bestseller lists desk of the New York Times news department and are separate from the culture, advertising and business sides of The New York Times Co. More information on rankings and methodology: nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/methodology.

Every week, thousands of diverse selling locations report their actual sales on hundreds of thousands of individual titles. The panel of reporting retailers is comprehensive and reflects sales in stores of all sizes and demographics across the United States.

Picture Book rankings include hardcover sales only. Series rankings include all print and e-book sales.  An asterisk (*) indicates that a book’s sales were barely distinguishable from those of the book above. A (b) indicates that some bookstores reported receiving bulk orders. 

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PICTURE

1. DRAGONS LOVE TACOS, by Adam Rubin. Illustrated by Daniel Salmieri. (Dial) What to serve your dragon guests. (Ages 3 to 5)

WEEKS ON LIST: 450

2. BLUEY: SLEEPYTIME, by Joe Brumm. (Penguin) Bingo wants to do a big girl sleep and wake up in her own bed. (Ages 4 to 8)

WEEKS ON LIST: 25

3. THE WONDERFUL THINGS YOU WILL BE, by Emily Winfield Martin. (Random House) A celebration of possibilities. (Ages 3 to 7)

WEEKS ON LIST: 401

4. THE DAY THE CRAYONS QUIT, by Drew Daywalt. Illustrated by Oliver Jeffers. (Philomel) Problems arise when Duncan’s crayons revolt. (Ages 3 to 7)

WEEKS ON LIST: 390

5. TAYLOR SWIFT, by Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara. Illustrated by Borghild Fallberg. (Frances Lincoln) A biography of the pop star. (Ages 3 to 7)

WEEKS ON LIST: 3

6. HOW TO CATCH A UNICORN, by Adam Wallace. Illustrated by Andy Elkerton. (Sourcebooks Wonderland) Children try to capture the mythical creature. (Ages 4 to 8)

WEEKS ON LIST: 50

7. PETE THE CAT SCREAMS FOR ICE CREAM!, by James Dean and Kimberly Dean. (HarperCollins) Pete eagerly awaits the ice cream truck. (Ages 4 to 8)

WEEKS ON LIST: 4

8. MILLIE FLEUR’S POISON GARDEN, by Christy Mandin. (Orchard) Garden Glen is transformed when Millie’s garden comes to town. (Ages 4 to 8)

WEEKS ON LIST: 2

9. THE BIG CHEESE, by Jory John. Illustrated by Pete Oswald. (HarperCollins) The Big Cheese learns a lesson in humility. (Ages 4 to 8)

WEEKS ON LIST: 17

10. TIME FOR SCHOOL, LITTLE BLUE TRUCK, by Alice Schertle. Illustrated by Jill McElmurry. (Clarion) Blue gives a friend a ride to school. (Ages 4 to 7)

WEEKS ON LIST: 37

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MIDDLE GRADE HARDCOVER

1. WONDER, by R.J. Palacio. (Knopf) A boy with a facial deformity starts school. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 451

2. REFUGEE, by Alan Gratz. (Scholastic) Three children in three conflicts look for safe haven. (Ages 9 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 265

3. HEROES, by Alan Gratz. (Scholastic) Friends Frank and Stanley give a vivid account of the Pearl Harbor attack. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 23

4. THE SUN AND THE STAR, by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro. (Disney Hyperion) Demigods Will and Nico embark on a dangerous journey to the Underworld to rescue an old friend. (Ages 10 to 14)

WEEKS ON LIST: 63

5. ODDER, by Katherine Applegate. Illustrated by Charles Santoso. (Feiwel & Friends) After a shark attack, Odder recuperates at the aquarium with the scientists who raised her. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 82

6. THEY CALL ME NO SAM!, by Drew Daywalt. Illustrated by Mike Lowery. (Clarion) A pug named Sam protects his family. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 6

7. WINGS OF FIRE: A GUIDE TO THE DRAGON WORLD, by Tui T. Sutherland. Illustrated by Joy Ang. (Scholastic) A deeper dive into the legends of the 10 dragon tribes. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 39

8. THE COMPLETE COOKBOOK FOR YOUNG CHEFS, by America’s Test Kitchen Kids. (Sourcebooks Jabberwocky) More than 100 kid-tested recipes from America’s Test Kitchen. (Ages 8 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 207

9. THE MISFITS: A ROYAL CONUNDRUM, by Lisa Yee. Illustrated by Dan Santat. (Random House) Olive is sent to Reforming Arts School and teams up with a group of crime-fighting outcasts. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 14

10. FAKER, by Gordon Korman. (Scholastic) Trey grows tired of running scams with his father and longs for a different way of life. (Ages 8 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 2

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YOUNG ADULT HARDCOVER

1. THE DARKNESS WITHIN US, by Tricia Levenseller. (Feiwel & Friends) When Chrysantha’s husband, the Duke of Pholios, dies, she believes she’s the sole heir to his fortune. Until Eryx Demos arrives and claims to be the duke’s estranged grandson. (Ages 13 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 1

2. DIVINE RIVALS, by Rebecca Ross. (Wednesday) Two young rival journalists find love through a magical connection. (Ages 13 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 56

3. THE SHADOWS BETWEEN US, by Tricia Levenseller. (Feiwel & Friends) Alessandra plots to kill the Shadow King and take his kingdom for herself. (Ages 13 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 5

4. THE REAPPEARANCE OF RACHEL PRICE, by Holly Jackson. (Delacorte) Annabel Price’s mother is presumed dead, until she reappears during the filming of a documentary about her disappearance. (Ages 14 to 17)

WEEKS ON LIST: 15

5. RUTHLESS VOWS, by Rebecca Ross. (Wednesday) In the sequel to “Divine Rivals,” Roman and Iris will risk their hearts and futures to change the tides of the war. (Ages 13 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 29

6. NIGHTBANE, by Alex Aster. (Amulet) In this sequel to “Lightlark,” Isla must choose between her two powerful lovers. (Ages 13 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 36

7. MURTAGH, by Christopher Paolini. (Knopf) Murtagh and his dragon, Thorn, must find and outwit a mysterious witch. (Ages 12 to 15)

WEEKS ON LIST: 36

8. TWO SIDES TO EVERY MURDER, by Danielle Valentine. (Putnam) When Camp Lost Lake reopens 16 years after brutal murders have taken place there, two girls arrive to look for answers to their mysterious pasts. (Ages 12 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 3

9. SWEET NIGHTMARE, by Tracy Wolff. (Entangled Teen) Clementine would love to leave Calder Academy, the boarding school for rogue paranormals, but her mother, the headmaster, will not have it. (Ages 14 to 17)

WEEKS ON LIST: 10

10. BETTING ON YOU, by Lynn Painter. (Simon & Schuster) Charlie and Bailey place bets on the love lives of others, while fighting their feelings for each other. (Ages 14 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 17

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SERIES

1. THE POWERLESS TRILOGY, by Lauren Roberts. (Simon and Schuster) A story of forbidden love between Paedyn, an Ordinary, and Kai, an Elite, in the kingdom of Ilya. (Ages 14 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 2

2. A GOOD GIRL’S GUIDE TO MURDER, by Holly Jackson. (Delacorte) Pippa Fitz-Amobi solves murderous crimes. (Ages 14 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 146

3. DIARY OF A WIMPY KID, written and illustrated by Jeff Kinney. (Amulet) The travails and challenges of adolescence. (Ages 9 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 800

4. HARRY POTTER, by J.K. Rowling. (Scholastic) A wizard hones his conjuring skills in the service of fighting evil. (Ages 10 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 799

5. BOYS OF TOMMEN, by Chloe Walsh. (Bloom) In Ireland, friends at the private school Tommen College prepare for adulthood. (Ages 16 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 10

6. THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY TRILOGY, by Jenny Han. (Simon & Schuster) A beach house, summer love and enduring friendships. (Ages 12 and up)

WEEKS ON LIST: 117

7. THE WILD ROBOT, by Peter Brown. (Little, Brown) Roz the robot adapts to her surroundings on a remote, wild island. (Ages 7 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 25

8. ONCE UPON A BROKEN HEART, by Stephanie Garber. (Flatiron) The story of Evangeline Fox, Jacks, the Prince of Hearts and the pursuit of true love. (Ages 13 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 16

9. PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS, by Rick Riordan. (Disney-Hyperion) A boy battles mythological monsters. (Ages 9 to 12)

WEEKS ON LIST: 733

10. THE INHERITANCE GAMES, by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. (Little, Brown) Avery Grambs tries to figure out why a stranger left her an inheritance. (Ages 12 to 18)

WEEKS ON LIST: 84

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The New York Times bestsellers are compiled and archived by the bestseller lists desk of the New York Times news department and are separate from the culture, advertising and business sides of The New York Times Co. More information on rankings and methodology: nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/methodology.

PHOENIX (AP) — As much of the world swelters, it’s not just people who need help with the dog days of summer. Pet owners have to consider how to both shield and cool down furry family members as intense — at times deadly — heat waves become more common.

“It’s really important to remember that if it’s hot outside for you, it’s even hotter for your pets,” says Dr. Sandra Faeh, American Veterinary Medical Association president. A dog’s breed, weight and chronic health issues also matter. “There’s not one specific temperature that we can say, `this is the right temperature to go outside,’ because they’re all different.”

In the U.S, over 180 million people, or 63% of households, have at least one pet, according to an American Pet Products Association report. Pet-related spending is projected to be over $150 billion this year, yet a lot of pooch parents aren’t accustomed to changing routines or buying items for hot weather. This summer’s heat is making that more normal.

Simple safety steps

Of course, the surest strategy against high temperatures is to take pets out in the morning and evening, Faeh advises. If you must take them out during the day, be quick and stick to shade, grass and dirt. Pavement can be a scorcher on paws.

“We often think that their paws are thicker, they’re not as susceptible to the heat, but they are. They can blister, they can hurt,” Faeh said.

One paw-sitive measure: Faeh says dog booties made with a thick fabric can help with hot surfaces. Dogs just need time to get the hang of walking in them.

Pets can also suffer sunburns, which can manifest as lighter pigment on the nose, or around the face on short-hair breeds. Veterinarians can prescribe special sunscreen.

Providing relief even after brief sun exposure is as important as sun protection. Cooling mats and small fans can help. And besides giving dogs water, you can wet their bodies with cool water. But not too cold, Faeh warns.

“If they get cold too quickly, their vessels constrict and then they have a harder time cooling off,” she said.

In a power blackout, Faeh suggests putting pets in a cooler part of the home like a basement or a windowless room. Keep fresh water on hand and any blinds or curtains closed.

Signs to look for if a dog is experiencing heat-related stress or heatstroke include restlessness, excessive panting, drooling and even vomiting. Cats show distress through open-mouth breathing. In any of these scenarios, contact a veterinarian immediately, Faeh advises.

The importance of accessorizing

There’s a wide array of pet accessories and devices available to help beat the heat, says Pete Scott, American Pet Products Association president. But some markets have been caught off-guard by the higher temperatures.

“You don’t think of Connecticut as being 100 degrees,” said Scott, who is based in Stamford. “You’ve got to be vigilant and be prepared. Like if it’s a week out when they say a heat wave is coming, everybody stocks up on bottled water. But they don’t also stock up for their pets.”

Besides booties, protective gear can mean a sun visor and doggy sunglasses or goggles, if your pet will wear them.

David Escalante started Kaykos Dog Shades out of his San Francisco Bay Area home in 2016 after putting a makeshift pair of sunglasses on his family’s pit bull. Now, Escalante, his father and brother hand-make every pair in his San Jose garage. They have sold nearly 15,000 in the last three years.

Each pair has a drawstring, nose bridge rest and lenses that he says protect against ultraviolet light rays.

“We try to push … to let people know, ‘Hey, you know, think about your dog’s eyes now that you’re out and it’s super bright,” said Escalante, who sells more during heat waves.

Other helpful tools include cooling collars and elevated dog beds that help with airflow, Scott says. You can also feed Fido chilled goodies like canine-friendly gelato, pup-sicles and ice cream mixes.

“When it’s hot, we all like a little frozen treat. So do dogs, so do cats,” Scott said.

Indoor playtime

Another solution is an indoor dog park. Spencer Mak and his wife, Lauren, have operated two Mak Pack Dog Training & Boarding facilities in suburban Phoenix since 2020. The 10,000-square-foot Chandler location includes an indoor dog park with agility exercises, climbing obstacles and a bounce house. They offer a $10 drop-in rate and a $49 monthly membership.

At its busiest, the indoor area has accommodated as many as 100 dogs. In June, when temperatures spiked, Mak saw 520 admissions compared to 300 in May — a nearly 75% jump.

He’s currently working on building an indoor doggy pool with ramps and floats.

And ugh, the car…

Summertime also sees cases of people leaving or forgetting pets in hot cars. The temperature inside a vehicle can surpass the outside very quickly.

“It is so much better to just leave them at home and know that they’re gonna be wagging their tail and giving you kisses when you walk in the door,” Faeh says.

Some vehicles come with dashboard alerts if a child or pet is still in the back. There are also backseat car alarms on the market. But ultimately, “it always comes down to the human that owns the pet,” Scott says.

For nearly a century, movies were one of the most powerful mediums around, and while they’ve lost cultural capital in the last decade, it’s dispiriting to contemplate how many people who make films — be they executives or creatives — are helping to hasten that irrelevance. Maybe you think I’m referring to artificial intelligence. That’s a real concern. But I’m also thinking about a blandification that has become all too pervasive.

While doing press last week to promote “Twisters,” the big-budget follow-up to “Twister,” the 1996 disaster movie about scientists and adrenaline-seeking tornado chasers, director Lee Isaac Chung explained to CNN why not a single character in the movie says the words “climate change”:

“I just don’t feel like films are meant to be message-oriented.”

I blinked a few times. Films aren’t meant to be message-oriented? News to me.

Nobody falls in love with storytelling that is only “this happened, then that happened” with no larger arc somewhere about the human experience. That’s true even of comedies, where the message might be as basic as: Silliness is fun!

In the case of “Twisters,” the erasure of climate change — in a movie about the weather — becomes a message all its own.

So let’s make some guesses as to what’s going on. It’s possible that jumpy studio executives, rather than Chung and screenwriter Mark L. Smith, made the call. Either way, it’s likely the marketing team knew Chung would be asked about it, so maybe this nonsensical, laughably disingenuous response was brainstormed in a frenzy of media training ahead of the film’s rollout. Because there is a difference between preaching a message and simply acknowledging a reality. Chung, who previously made the 2020 Oscar-nominated drama “Minari” — which has a lot to say about the hollowness of the American dream — is too smart to convincingly pretend otherwise.

But also, if studios and filmmakers are working off the assumption that large swaths of the moviegoing audience would avoid “Twisters” if climate change were mentioned, that isn’t borne out by polling.

In fact, a recent study found that Americans “almost universally underestimate the extent of climate concern among their compatriots. They also underestimate the extent of public support — at the state and national level alike — for policy measures to address the climate emergency.”

How much does Hollywood have to answer for influencing what the study’s authors describe as a “false social reality,” especially when Chung is out here defending the erasure of climate change in his movie on artistic grounds, of all things?

“The more the business coalesces, the more these brands are afraid of offending their audience or offending anybody,” Robert King, co-creator of shows including “Evil” and “The Good Wife,” recently told The Hollywood Reporter. This is what I mean when I talk about the blandification of Hollywood.

Every so often, I’ll revisit big studio movies from the last couple of decades to try to understand the ways in which they are better constructed than most of what gets made today. And here’s a funny thing you realize watching something as fizzy as “Miss Congeniality.” The 2000 comedy stars Sandra Bullock as a FBI agent with no interest in her physical appearance who transforms into a glamazon to work undercover at a beauty pageant. The movie (streaming free on Tubi) isn’t nearly as overt in its messaging as something like “Barbie,” but it has all kinds of points to make about not judging a book by its cover and being a woman in a predominantly male workplace. None of it feels onerous. None of it steps on the comedy — if anything, it accentuates it.

We watch movies to be entertained. But we also watch because stories — meaningfully told and willing to take a risk — shape and deepen how we think and talk about the world around us and what it means to be human.

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic

Colman Domingo? Not one of those actors. An Oscar nominee last year for his full-bodied turn as civil rights leader Bayard Rustin in “Rustin,” and star of the very fine new film “Sing Sing,” Domingo could get by, probably, on his basso profondo speaking voice alone. But he doesn’t. He’s doing too much beyond it to make you believe who he’s playing, in moments of anguish, joy, volatility or stillness.

Take 2020, that lousy first COVID year. After many years of doing August Wilson’s plays all over the country, Domingo took on the role of Cutler, the easy-does-it session musician working alongside Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis in the Netflix adaptation of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” That same year, in the jaw-dropper of a road trip odyssey “Zola,” Domingo anchored the craziness as the shape-shifting sex trafficker with more shades to his persona than most actors could manage convincingly in an entire career.

In “Sing Sing” the Philadelphia native plays John “Divine G” Whitfield, the real-life, self-described jailhouse lawyer who provided an early spark for New York State’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts prison program. While wrongly incarcerated, Whitfield performed Shakespeare and wrote his own plays in between advocating for other men up for parole and some — like himself  — facing decades more of the life they’re living.

“Sing Sing” follows Whitfield and several other RTA drama participants, many of whom are played in director/co-writer Greg Kwedar’s film by their real-life equivalents. In a role nearly as large as Domingo’s, Clarence Maclin portrays a version of himself, and holds his own, affectingly. Much of the story concerns the rehearsal and performance of an original time-traveling fantasy featuring Hamlet, Freddy Krueger, cowboys and pirates. Meanwhile Whitfield mounts his case for his own exoneration, based on evidence that has come to light. But that light is dimming.

Among other skills, the actor playing Whitfield has mastered something elusive and genuinely rare: bringing an audience into the quiet whirrrrrrr of a character’s thought processes. If you trust the stillness, he told me, and you’re a little lucky, you can quit acting and simply be. And if everybody could do that, then the entire contemporary roster of screen actors would be up there with Colman Domingo.

Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: First, before I forget: It was great to catch up with your one-man show “A Boy and His Soul” by way of Vimeo.

A: Oh, cool! Thanks! Wow, man. That was 2009. I was a bit more limber then. I was moving non-stop in that show.

Q: A kinetic experience, even when you’re not dancing, just to watch it. In “Sing Sing,” Divine G certainly has his explosive moments, but there’s a lot of the character doing very little, showing very little, hiding his cards more.

A: Right. Greg (director Greg Kwedar) talked about that. I brought to him this Japanese concept of ma, where everything and nothing is happening at the same time. In my work in cinema, I’m always trying to reach that place where the character work, the building of a character, leads to these moments of everything happening and nothing happening at the same time. In “Sing Sing” you need these moments of breath for the audience. But it’s also a moment of insight into what a character is thinking and feeling.

When I watched the finished film, I realized that at a couple of points I’d gotten on the inside of the character, into his interior life, when he’s trying to process what something means. One time (when Whitfield receives a massive mound of paperwork containing his ruling regarding clemency), when that brick of an envelope lands right in front of him, Greg told me he was going to have the camera up here (gestures to his face). Now, a life-changing moment like that can be played many different ways. Some actors might burst into tears. Some might go into a rage. This character is thinking about what the outcome will mean, for his coming years, for his self-worth. But as an actor I’m not thinking of any of that. I’m just playing the moment. And I needed the room and the time to do it.

Q: Somebody once said the greatest use of a camera is to show us the face of someone changing their mind or coming to a realization about something momentous.

A: Absolutely. It’s one of the most gorgeous things about the movies. This sounds like a name-drop, but I remember auditioning for Steven Spielberg for a film that eventually went away. In the audition he got behind the camera himself, and he told me he loved watching the shifts and transitions in my face. He told me that was a gift that I have. And he gave me a gift just by saying that.

For a long time, when I was primarily a stage actor, I was very performative. Now I’m a little more seasoned, and I feel that, I don’t know, falling back a little, sort of dropping into a role — that’s more like it.

Q: When actors are starting out, what’s behind the kind of performative impulse that might lead to, you know, too much? Is it the fear of being dull?

A: You just want to perform! You want to show, instead of be! This woman I met with last year, she told me: “For a long time you’re in your storytelling season. Then when you get to be about 60 or so, you move into your truth-telling season.” Maybe I moved into my truth-telling season a little early. I’m just trying to tell the truth, and instead of showing, just being. And trusting that an audience will go along with it, down a subtler, more nuanced road.

Q: Can you tell me about the pay equity and ownership stake idea behind the “Sing Sing” production?

A: It sounds so foreign to you, doesn’t it? (laughs)

Q: I mean, it’s un-American, obviously.

A: Right! “What is this thing?” Basically, they came to me with this project and asked to come on as a producer. And they asked for my opinion about how to get it financed. They said, “Well, one (budgetary) model is this: Now that you’re attached we can go out to find a studio to take on the film, in the studio system. Everyone’s paid a certain way, according to how they negotiate their contracts.”

Or, they said, there’s another way, more of a community-based model. We get independent financing, keep the overhead low, and make sure everyone participates. This means everyone above and below the line (production crew as well as major players and writers and such) gets paid the same rate, and you determine the pay on the number of days worked. But every single person participates in the financial outcome. That brings a different work ethic and everyone feels like it’s their film.

So that’s what we did. We kept our budget low, we sold it to A24 at a lovely price (during the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival). Everyone’s participating in the equity pool. And they feel good about it, especially because these men (who play themselves in “Sing Sing”) are giving over a lot of their life story.

Q: Let’s go back to Philadelphia, where you grew up. Can you recall the first film you saw as a kid that you just couldn’t shake?

A: “Carrie.” I was 8 or 9, maybe younger. Usually on Saturdays it was either my older brother or older sister’s turn to babysit me when my mom was working. The Locust movie theater (at 52nd Street and Locust, now closed) was right around the corner. My brother used to take me to every Bruce Lee movie possible, and I was a kid who didn’t like a lot of violence so I was always covering my eyes. My sister took me to horror movies, so she took me to “Carrie.” When that hand comes out of the grave? Please. I’d pass the theater walking to school, and I’d see that poster of Sissy Spacek looking beautiful at the prom in one picture and looking like the blood-covered daughter of Satan in the other. I’d walk by it doing this (hides his eyes). To this day I have never watched “Carrie” again.

Maybe I’m still unpacking some trauma from that one.

Q: With “Sing Sing” and “Ghostlight,” we have two movies this year celebrating the healing properties of art. That’s a tricky theme, I think. In the wrong hands the uplift can get a little …

A: I know what you mean. That fake-y inspirational stuff can feel manufactured. Wide-eyed, but not authentic. I haven’t seen “Ghostlight” but from the trailer it looks very grounded and honest about that idea. You just don’t want to feel like someone’s trying to get one over on you, or force you into a feeling.

Q:  So what’s next?

A: I’ll tell you, at 54 years old, that question isn’t as pressing as it used to be (laughs). I’m trying to make space to live, to fill up my soul a little, especially when you give up so much in work like this. When you’re younger you’re always onto the next thing, because you want more and more. But I’ve built up a body of work now. I actually want some breaks. And I want to play in spaces I haven’t played in for a while. I’m doing a limited series for Netflix (“The Four Seasons”) with Tina Fey and Steve Carell. I have “Michael” (the Michael Jackson biopic) coming out next April. I’m playing Joe Jackson. That’s already done. And now I want a little time to catch my breath.

“Sing Sing” opens in Chicago-area theaters Aug. 1.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

We have thoughts on that as well as about some indie films you need to check out, including “The Beast Within,” “Fresh Kills” and the documentary “Eno.”

Here’s our roundup.

“Deadpool & Wolverine”: What a bummer it’s been with the Marvel Cinematic Universe spinning out of control (“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “The Marvels” were DOA), with even diehard fans suffering from superhero burnout. The elixir to all the multiverse burnout arrives in the costumed form of this rude, raunchy and hard-R-rated Marvel resurrection of sorts. Director and co-screenwriter Shawn Levy’s MCU bad-boy matchup pits profane wisecracker Deadpool with brooding worrywart Wolverine, and resuscitates the gasping and splintered MCU. The reason it works that it has the right people attached – from stars Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman and on to Levy — who tones down the nauseating overuse of CGI that’s marred recent efforts and leans heavily into an irreverent midlife/existential crisis storyline concocted by a team of five (including Reynolds), which liberally ribs almost everything attached to it (20th Century Studios, Disney, “Gossip Girl,” Blake Lively, “Furiosa,” “The Proposal,” Jackman’s divorce and so on). The cameos — none of which should be revealed — pump things up even more so, to the approximate size of that eighth wonder of the world, Jackman’s biceps. (Impressive, Hugh. Impressive). Meanwhile, Emma Corrin gives one wicked turn as supervillain Cassandra Nova, the mind-manipulating twin sis of “X-Men’s” Charles Xavier. After Deadpool teams up with Wolverine (Why? I won’t tell you), the bickering duo are jettisoned off to the Void — a “Mad Max”-like post-apocalyptic junkyard where dead timelines waste away. Nova is the ruler there, and she loves control in every form, setting the stage for mayhem.

“Deadpool & Wolverine” throws a lot at us — including the awesome, over-the-top violent choreographed fights set to pop songs, and even the extra-juicy bit tagged on at the end  credits — and nearly all of it works. But what makes “Deadpool & Wolverine” the best Deadpool movie yet and the second best “Wolverine” film (James Mangold’s “Logan” still stands tallest) is how the union of two of the edgiest superheroes tempers the tendencies of each other, serving as a needed buffer between Deadpool’s barrage of double entendres and fourth-wall breaking asides and Wolverine’s relentless, gloomy tendency to beat himself up over and over again about past mistakes. United, they’re better and create something more sustainable and less monotonous, a game changer — if you will — that contributes in making “Deadpool & Wolverine”  one of the best, most satisfying and certainly adult roller-coaster rides of this summer. Details: 3½ stars out of 4; in theaters July 26 (with a scattering of screenings July 25).

“Fresh Kills”: Actor Jennifer Esposito hits the target with her electrifying directorial debut that reinvents and reinvigorates worn-out mobster tropes. Esposito co-stars as an ‘80s-’90s Staten Island mob wife/mom shouldering domestic duties and raising two close sisters (Emily Bader from Prime Video’s “My Lady Jane” and Odessa A’zion) while hubby profits from crime and murder. Esposito’s grasp of her multi-dimensional characters, their problems and the era in which they live, is dead-on perfect. Better yet, she gives us a rich portrait of what it’s like to be a girl and then a woman brought up in the shady, violent, macho world of Mafia madness. Sadly, after the film’s successful screening during the 2023 version of Cinequest, it never received a release in the Bay Area. Now you can rent this dynamite film. Details: 3½ stars; available on Fandango at Home, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Google Play and more..

“The Beast Within”: Alexander J. Farrell’s Gothic tale conjures a visually intoxicating world that’s both dark and thematically unsettling in unexpected ways. Drawing on “Beauty and the Beast,” even “Little Red Riding Hood,” this bold narrative debut takes a huge swing in its critical, closing minutes and it works — extremely well. Kit Harington of “Game of Thrones” gives a high-wire performance as Noah, a cursed dad from an indeterminate era living with a hyper-alert family deep in the U.K.’s remote woods. Noah is a gregarious, handsome guy, but on occasion needs to get chained up when a bad moon rises. His wife (Ashleigh Cummings) and her father (James Cosmo) do everything to ensure Noah will do no harm to 10-year-old Willow (Caoillinn Springall, handling a tough role with ease). “The Beast Within” is a supernaturally laced thriller, but seems as if came from a painful, dark personal place where the horrors are human and the wounds remain open forever. Details: 3 stars; in theaters July 26.

“Eno”: Often, documentaries about creative types gush about their subject. Not so, Gary Hustwit’s revolutionary mindblower about musician/producer Brian Eno and his hyperkinetic creative process. While David Byrne of the Talking Heads — a group the former Roxy Music member produced — weighs in, Hustwit’s approach avoids the use of talking heads and favors emulating the organic, free-flowing process of creating something changeable — akin to musical performances. This “generative” documentary is continually fluid and changes from one screening to the next. What could have been a confounding mess morphs into a brilliant plunge into the creative process of the tech-savvy Eno and what inspires the the influential artist (he loves nature) and how he allows the work he’s conceived grow up, move out and become its own vibrant entity. “Eno.” is intellectually stimulating, cinematically exciting and truly unique. Details: 4 stars; opens July 26 for a seven-day engagement at the Roxie, with each screening being different than the other.

“The Commandant’s Shadow”: Two families — one whose matriarch survived Auschwitz and the other that includes the elderly son of the commandant (Rodolph Hoss) that oversaw the extermination of more than a million Jews — get their stories told in Daniela Voker’s extraordinary look at the legacy of evil and how unfathomable acts continue to scar ensuing generations. Anyone who saw Jonathan Glazer’s award-winning “The Zone of Interest” will spot how that 2023 film so eerily replicated the Hoss family house featured here, which sat next door to a relentless killing machine. Voker bookends interviews with family members — some who remain in denial of who their father really was — with clips of Hoss’ trial, recollections from his autobiography and photos. Its most powerful moments occur when 87-year-old Hans Jurgen Hoss confronts the scope and scale of the extermination and realizes that his memories of how idyllic his childhood are faulty. Details: 3½ stars; available now on Max.

“Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam”: Fans of The Backstreet Boys and NSYNC will want to watch Netflix’s spill-the-tea three-part series on Lou Pearlman, and how the boy-band wiz built an empire out bad money culled from the longest running U.S. Ponzi scheme. “Dirty Pop” dusts in performance footage but it’s the voices of those who knew or worked with Pearlman (sorry, no Justin Timberlake) that fuel it. Fine tells the story well, except when he dumps in video of Pearlman and doctors it up so it appears the late businessman’s reading (a voice actor is used) excerpts from a book he co-authored. Even though “Dirty Pop” reveals upfront this is manipulated, its weirdness backfires and distracts from the story itself. Details: 2½ stars; drops July 24 on Netflix.

“The Fabulous Four”: There’s nothing wrong about wanting to make a goofy comedy about four 60ish/70ish female chums reuniting for a wedding in Key West. But there’s really not much right about “The Fabulous Four,” a predictable slog built around wah-wah jokes, lame situations and an incredibly horrendous bit of lip syncing from Michael Bolton. The cast — Bette Midler, Susan Sarandon, Megan Mullally and Sheryl Lee Ralph – deserve better, and the beginning promises there will be one doozy of a cat fight since Sarandon’s workaholic, cat-lady Dr. Lousie Zebarski and Midler’s social-media addict Marilyn have been estranged for years over a dating kerfuffle. But the tired-out screenplay from Ann Marie-Allison and Jenna Milley even botches that gimme near the end. An obligatory song-and-dance number at the end comes feels tacked on, as if someone saw “Mama Mia!” and said bingo – let’s replicate that box-office crowd pleaser. Made me want to rewatch “Grace and Frankie” instead. Details: 1½ stars; in theaters July 26.

“The Girl in the Pool”: Freddie Prinze Jr.’s growing-more-desperate performance as a cheating family man who stuffs his murdered mistress’ bloody body into a pool storage bin minutes before his surprise birthday party gets sprung keeps this dark comedic thriller afloat. What manages to sink it happens when the screenplay takes a radical tonal shift that doesn’t produce the emotional punch it thinks it’s earned. For the first two thirds, “The Girl in the Pool” leans into genre inclinations and gives us loads of suspects: a drunken, flirtatious invitee who paws at Tom’s (Prinze Jr.) and his angry wife Kirsten’s (Monica Potter) model-looking son; a suspicious father-in-law (Kevin Pollak) and so on. The red herrings don’t net much of anything, except making us realize that Prinze Jr. and Potter (seen together in the 2001 rom-com “Head Over Heels”) deserve better than this. Details: 2 stars; opens July 26 in theaters and also available to rent.

Contact Randy Myers at soitsrandy@gmail.com.