The Morikami celebrates Obon Weekend, a pioneering musician performs in Boca Raton, and horror films premiere in Fort Lauderdale. Plus, a string quartet from Rome and more in your week ahead.
WEDNESDAY TO SUNDAY
What: Popcorn Frights Film Festival
Where: Savor Cinema, 503 S.E. Sixth St., Fort Lauderdale
When: Show times vary
Cost: $16.81 per movie
Contact: popcornfrights.com
Every summer since 2015, the Florida-born Popcorn Frights Film Festival has been presenting exclusive horror, horror-adjacent, and cult cinema screenings to Fort Lauderdale audiences who still appreciate the communal experience of sharing a scare with a theater full of strangers. This year’s two-week festival began on Aug. 6 and continues through Sunday, featuring both new and vintage cinema, often with a special guest star. Wednesday features an advance screening of the much-anticipated adventure through a disrupted suburbia, The End of Oak Street (7 p.m.), with Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway, two days before it opens wide. Friday is a retro twofer, with a 4K screening of The Shawshank Redemption (with in-person guest William Sadler, who played Heywood) at 7 p.m. and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (also with Sadler) at 10 p.m. Other highlights include premieres such as the postapocalyptic Hallowarrior(3:30 p.m. Saturday); Marrow (5:30 p.m. Saturday), about a murder vodcaster whose latest scoop leads to more than she bargained for; and Drag (7 p.m. Sunday), a critically acclaimed comedy thriller screening well in advance of its January 2027 release.
THURSDAY AND FRIDAY
What: Jonathan Butler
Where: The Funky Biscuit, 303 S.E. Mizner Blvd., Boca Raton
When: 6 and 9 p.m.
Cost: $60
Contact: 561/395-2929, funkybiscuit.com
We won’t bury the lede here: In 1975, with his cover of The Drifters’ “Please Stay,” guitarist and songwriter Jonathan Butler, a native of Cape Town, became the first Black artist in apartheid-era South Africa to be played on white radio stations—one of the early cracks in the country’s racial segregation. It was a testament to a talent for musicianship and cross-cultural connection that began in childhood, when Butler joined a traveling stage show at age 7. He later became a South African teen idol, and as an adult, he has continued to record at a dramatic pace, releasing 28 albums from 1975 to 2023 and welcoming myriad guest stars into his recording process; Stevie Wonder, for instance, performs harmonica on “Superwoman,” the lead single from 2023’s Ubuntu. Butler’s music artfully weaves between jazz fusion, R&B, and worship music, and his appearance for four Boca Raton shows, at a venue as intimate as The Funky Biscuit, is a big deal indeed.
FRIDAY
What: Summer Strings Festival
Where: Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Boca Raton, 2601 St. Andrews Blvd., Boca Raton
When: 7 p.m.
Cost: $35 adults, $22 seniors, $15 students, $10 childs
Contact: givebutter.com/SUUMMER2026
Music for Americas traveled far to attract the guest quartet for its Summer Strings 2026 Festival, drawing the acclaimed QuartettOrfeo all the way from Rome, Italy, under the baton of pianist, composer, and conductor Lorenzo Turchi Floris. The all-female string quartet—Charlotte Orcel, violin; Barbara Kammer, viola; Adele Napoli, violin; Ilaria Altan Calabrò, cello—will perform a program that reflects their versatility in maneuvering between classical, contemporary, and cinematic pieces. On the docket are Dvořák’s “Serenade for Strings,” Tchaikovsky’s “Nocturne” for viola and strings, Saint-Saëns’ “The Swan,” Warlock’s “Capriol Suite,” and a selection from the sweeping film corpus of Ennio Morricone. As a special treat, Turchi Flores will join the quartet at the piano for a performance of his own work, “Tempo di Concerto.” Friday’s concert is one of several appearances from QuartettOrfeo during its Florida tour; you can also see them Wednesday at John Knox Village in Pompano Beach.
SATURDAY
What: Opening night of Other Desert Cities
When: 8 p.m.
Where: Empire Stage, 1140 N. Flagler Drive, Fort Lauderdale
Cost: $40
Contact: 954/678-1496, empirestage.com
South Florida has a new theater company as of late last year, and it’s called Bridge Across the Pond—its name announcing its mission of producing both British and American plays. This weekend’s premiere fits staunchly in the latter category. Other Desert Cities, which premiered in 2011, is set in 2004, in Palm Springs, California, in the well-appointed home of a high-powered couple in conservative politics. Their comfortable life is about to be shaken by the arrival of their adult children, including troubled liberal daughter Brooke, who penned a best-selling novel six years ago, then suffered a debilitating mental breakdown, and is now poised to publish a memoir that will unearth some serious dirty laundry from her family history. The playwright of Other Desert Cities, Jon Robin Baitz, did some writing on The West Wing and, as his intelligent and emotionally wrenching script shows, he knows his way around dramas both personal and political. The production runs through Aug. 30.
SATURDAY AND SUNDAY
What: Obon Weekend
Where: Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, 4000 Morikami Park Road, Delray Beach
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Cost: $16 adults, $10 children
Contact: 561/495-0233, morikami.org
What better way to remember departed loved ones than to send them messages in paper lanterns and float them across a tranquil lake, illuminating their spirits with a collective glow? This is the touching sentiment behind the Bon Festival, a Japanese ceremony that has been hosted every summer for more than 500 years. The Morikami’s Obon version extends this memorial to a whole weekend of festivities. For $5 on top of regular museum admission, visitors can attend a thunderous taiko drum concert, running three times each day—a must-see whenever it’s offered. There will also be a Bon altar providing insights into Obon and the gardens’ namesake, George Morikami, and a dance workshop and interactive performance at no extra charge. A handful of food and artisan vendors will be on site as well. (The festival concludes Sunday night with a $200-per-person “Launch the Lantern” fundraiser, culminating in a lantern-floating ceremony after nightfall, but it’s sold out at this time.)
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