Ben Whishaw is pitch-perfect and endlessly watchable as the funny, brilliant and beautiful photographer Peter Hujar, who died of Aids in 1987, aged 53. Ira Sachs's new film (the two also worked together on the tempestuous love-triangle drama Passages), is focused on a 1970s day in the life of the photographer, of some renown (this day, for instance, involves an unpleasant-sounding photoshoot with Allen Ginsberg) but still struggling for financial success. The day is recounted in detail by Hujar at the behest of his friend and creative peer, the wonderful writer Linda Rosenkrantz (if you haven't read her 1968 book Talk, run to the bookshop), who was at the time undertaking a project of recording artists speaking about how they spent a single day. Rosenkrantz, played with quiet but sage humour by Rebecca Hall, and Hujar are both attuned as creatives to how on any given day it can seem like nothing is happening, when in reality – like life – it is filled with detail, observation, attention and emotion: the stuff art is made of. The movie is short, shot on film, filled with violet tones and New York skylines; it's also funny, sweet, smart, self-aware. 

Emily LaBarge, Nerve art critic

Ten years on from its first season at Sadler’s Wells, Matthew Bourne’s Olivier award-winning hit is back – and it is even more polished and entrancing than ever. Based on the 1948 film by Powell and Pressburger, The Red Shoes is a powerful tale of obsession, possession and one woman’s dream to be the greatest dancer in the world. At its heart are dark and difficult questions about the balance between life and art, but at the same time it is a gorgeous, often wonderfully witty love letter to the world of dance and theatre in the 1940s. This is beautifully captured in Lez Brotherston’s superb costumes and ingenious set, with its revolving proscenium arch which whisks us effortlessly from footlights to backstage. The music, orchestrated by Terry Davies from the classic film scores of the great Bernard Herrmann, pulses with feeling and the entire thing is danced with huge conviction by the whole cast.

Lisa O’Kelly, contributing writer

Foxes, hedgehogs, peregrine falcons: Sir David Attenborough turns his eye to the animals that populate the city he has called home for more than 70 years. His team's pin-sharp visuals and remarkable camerawork will make you look at the capital's hidden inhabitants in a whole new light. Prepare to become more emotionally invested in a pigeon than you previously thought possible.

Kathryn Bromwich, writer

Ever since its debut at Cannes last May, where it won the Grand Prix, there's been an increasing noise, buzz even, around this film, which reunites The Worst Person in the World director Joachim Trier and its star Renate Reinsve. Here a successful septuagenarian film director (Stellan Skarsgård) tries to re-establish relations with his daughters and to coax the elder, Nora (Reinsve), an established theatre actor, to sign up for his new project. Intimate storytelling, with what is surely the most spectacular stage-fright scene ever captured on screen. 

Jane Ferguson, co-founder

When the David Bowie Centre opened at V&A East Storehouse last autumn, the curators announced that they'd discovered a note handwritten by Bowie entitled “Memo for radio show – list of favourite records”. Now, in a joyous bit of beyond-the-grave wish-fulfilment as part of celebrations to mark the 10th anniversary of Bowie’s death, BBC 6 Music has turned the memo into a sort of deluxe playlist, interspersing each of the 15 tracks he included – from classical pieces such as Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs to tracks by the Beatles and Ronnie Spector – with archive recordings of Bowie talking, as though he's hosting the show. While it may be a cut-and-paste job, in the main it’s artfully constructed and offers a lovely hour in the company of Bowie, musing on his musical inspirations, plus chat about everything from shoes to ex-girlfriends. 

Imogen Carter, co-founder

Nick Cassenbaum's two-handed comedy is set in Essex in 2019 and follows a Jewish brother and sister who get reluctantly embroiled in an outrageous scheme to kidnap then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. That plot sounds bluntly provocative, but the show is actually a superbly silly, slyly satirical portrait of what it is like to be young and Jewish today that plays out like a Guy Ritchie thriller. A hit at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe, Emma Jude Harris’s wildly entertaining production is now back at Soho theatre until the end of the month.

Fergus Morgan, writer

TALK

Gisele Pelicot: A Hymn to Life

(Royal Festival Hall, London SE1, 20 February) 

An onstage event to launch the memoir of the woman who became an international heroine after waiving her right to anonymity in the case against her husband and 50 men accused of her sexual assault.

THEATRE

Owain and Henry

(Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff 5-28 November)

Due to demand, additional dates have been added for this new historical epic written by Welsh playwright Gary Owen for Welsh National Theatre starring Michael Sheen as Owain Glyndŵr.

THEATRE

High Society

(Barbican, London EC2, 19 May-11 July)

A summer revival of the Cole Porter musical stars Felicity Kendal and Helen George.

ART

Wayne Thiebaud: American Still Life

(Courtauld Gallery, London WC2, until 18 January)

Brighten up January by catching this delectable show of still lifes from the painter once described as “the laureate of lunch counters and diners”.