1 Kendrick Lamar's new album, "To Pimp a Butterfly," is everything we could have hoped for in a follow-up to his universally lauded debut — and in surprising ways. It's still centered around inner-city survival, but everything is much grander. The music styles swing wildly from G-funk to old-school jazz, with manic vocal performances by Lamar. The scope and experimentation should remind you of when Outkast blew the doors off their sound in the "Aquemini"/"Stankonia" era. With Lamar's new album, hip-hop lovers are in for a treat.
2 Theater Latte Da offers a compelling production of "Into the Woods" at the Ritz Theater that entertains through scenic economy and sheer inventiveness, while never forgetting simple storytelling. The Stephen Sondheim musical weaves complicated magic from classic fairy tales around the domestic drama of a baker and his wife who are desperately hoping to have a child. Director Peter Rothstein has assembled a solid cast, led by Greta Oglesby's commanding turn as the Witch (pictured). www.theaterlatteda.com
4 In the nonfiction "The Wilderness of Ruin," Roseanne Montillo lets the reader look squarely in the eye of evil: a 12-year-old serial killer who terrorized Boston in the 1870s. Jesse Pomeroy was a large boy who lived in poverty with his mother and older brother. He led sweet young children to abandoned buildings to beat, terrorize and kill them. Montillo doesn't speculate about his motives, but she does entwine his story with that of then-Boston author Herman Melville, who suffered from mental illness. The result is a compulsively fascinating and chilling read on the nature of evil.
3 The most exciting thing about the young adult sci-fi thriller "Insurgent" is the ever-watchable Shailene Woodley (above right). At 23, she passes perfectly for a 17- or 18-year-old, not just with her porcelain features, but through a sense of emotional sincerity that most futuristic kid-oriented genre films lack. Whether she is hiding peacefully alongside Amish-style vegetarians, feeling heartbreaking personal loss, or falling to earth from rocket-scarred skyscrapers, she stays sharply focused. Woodley understands how to be heroic and tough at the same time.
5 At the ripe old age of 25, British folk wunderkind Laura Marling is already onto her fifth album, and thus naturally looking to branch out. "Short Movie," which arrives Tuesday, integrates electric guitars and (gasp!) even occasional drums into her heretofore raw, Joni Mitchell-pure folk sound. It's hardly "Highway 61 Revisited" — her candlelit living-room intimacy is still intact — but it is an exciting shift to hear, adding a darker sheen to the songs.
