Josh Greenbaum’s funny and touching documentary follows the comedian and his old friend across the US in a likable portrait that never quite rings true

When the comedian Will Ferrell learned that one of his oldest friends had transitioned to female and was now living as Harper Steele, he suggested a road trip together as a way of supporting and learning from her. The resulting film is a poignant and frequently very funny portrait of their evolving relationship. But that’s as far as it goes. To suggest that the documentary offers much in the way of real insight into the experience of a late-life newly transitioned individual as she navigates the US is disingenuous. The cushioning effect of Ferrell’s celebrity and, judging by the closing credit list, an extensive and well-funded production team, mean that while this is a likable-enough film, it is an insulated and artificial construction.

In UK and Irish cinemas and on Netflix

Coliseum, London
A Magdalene laundry in 1960s Ireland is the setting for ENO’s semi-staged production, which conveys quiet anger and deep sadness

Annilese Miskimmon’s English National Opera production of Suor Angelica relocates Puccini’s one-act tragedy of faith and familial cruelty from a 17th-century Florentine convent to one of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries in the 1960s. It is billed as a “semi-staged concert” and given only two performances, both on the same night. But like ENO’s other so called semi-stagings ( Gloriana , Bluebeard’s Castle ), it possesses a completeness, intelligence and integrity we sometimes don’t find elsewhere. It comes without the other operas of the Trittico of which it originally formed part, but is such a devastating statement it needs no accompaniment.

This transposition to a setting that saw the institutional abuse of tens of thousands of women heightens our awareness that Angelica, forced by her family into a convent after giving birth to an illegitimate son from whom she has been separated, is a victim of systems and attitudes that have persisted through history into living memory. Neither Puccini nor Miskimmon denies the altruistic validity of genuine belief, but opera and staging alike condemn its hypocritical misapplication at the service of moral absolutism, and Miskimmon works carefully outwards from the mixture of spiritual certainty and emotional turmoil that we find in the score. This is no polemic, but a staging of quiet anger and deep, pervasive sadness.

Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza are a winning duo playing their present and future selves in Megan Park’s silly but surprisingly satisfying film

Eighteen-year-old Elliott (a fizzing, star-making turn from Maisy Stella) is poised on the brink of the next stage of her life. She’s about to leave her home and her family of “third-generation cranberry farmers” in Muskoka, Ontario, and head to the city for college. To celebrate the fact, she camps overnight on an island and takes a bunch of mushrooms with her besties. And that’s when things get weird. The shrooms open some kind of cosmic portal and Elliott is visited by her 39-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza). And Elliott’s “old ass” has some advice for her younger self. It’s a fun, silly premise, but while there’s no shortage of stoner humour, the film is deeper and considerably more satisfying than the drug-baked adolescent wisecracking might initially suggest. Stella and Plaza are a match for crackling charisma, even if the physical resemblance doesn’t entirely convince. Together, they make light work of the film’s heavyweight question: having caught a glimpse of the future, how much of the present would you decide to change?

• In UK and Irish cinemas

The multilayered second novel by the Senegal-born author is a powerful plea for compassion in the face of hatred

Senegal-born and Paris-based Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s kaleidoscopic second novel, fluently translated by Alison Anderson, opens with a surreal scene. A naked man in a thicket of trees who represents “the end of one story, and the opening of the one to come”. His presence vividly evokes the circuitous nature of the refugee experience.

When 72 African men arrive in a small town in rural Sicily, we know they will get a mixed reception. Referred to as the “ragazzi” (the guys), they are looked after by the Santa Marta Association run by Sabrina, an immigration lawyer.

It’s quite a leap for a ‘fragile, sensitive kid’ to find himself starring in a Hollywood action movie. After the huge success of Industry and his new part in Joker, Harry Lawtey reveals why being in denial is the only way he can make sense of it

It’s not that Harry Lawtey is kidding himself. He’s fully aware, as we chat in a west London pub, that a giant billboard with his face plastered across it is now towering over New York City’s Times Square. “A friend sent me a video of it just this morning,” he says, prodding at a plate of steak and chips. “My mug, that big in Manhattan? I can’t make any sense of it, so I don’t think about it. It feels better for me to live as if it’s not actually happening.”

Lawtey has been thinking a lot like this lately, as his career and public profile have rapidly accelerated. The 27-year-old already has two critically acclaimed seasons of the HBO/BBC co-production Industry under his belt: a highly stressful, cash, cocaine and hormone-fuelled drama about a group of graduates during their first forays working at a fictional London investment bank. Lawtey plays a leading role – and its third instalment is about to hit UK screens.

Renaissance: The Blood and the Beauty examines the struggle between Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo

Renaissance Florence bubbled with deceit and corruption. It was the place menaced and blackmailed by Cesare Borgia and ruled on the advice of Niccolò Machiavelli himself. Yet inside this treacherous city, three of the greatest names in art vied to create works of transcendent beauty. Each of them is still recognised by only one of their names: they are Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael.

Not much written evidence survives of the creative rivalry that raged between these men – and what has endured often does not stand up to scrutiny. But this autumn the British public will have the chance to witness the competition between these revered artists with their own eyes for the first time. In fact, they will be able to see it twice: once on the walls of the Royal Academy of Arts, where drawings by this trio of masters will be brought together for comparison as never before (from 9 November), and later on television.

Philippe Boxho’s macabre true stories are approaching 1m copies sold and shedding light on a ‘misunderstood’ job

A girl on a farm is devoured by pigs. A walker’s throat is slit by the broken-off blade of a lawn mower after it hits a stone. A woman fires 13 bullets into the body of her seemingly sleeping father but is cleared of murder because he had died of an aneurysm three hours earlier.

Miniature tragedies like these cram the pages of the books of the Belgian forensic pathologist Philippe Boxho, and explain why his bestsellers are at numbers one, two and three of France’s nonfiction charts: they are macabre but also darkly comic and, above all, true.

Everyman, Liverpool
Martin McDonagh’s black comedy about a violent republican terrorist can feel like a parody of 007 in its action but it is hard to be stirred by the dully repetitive scenes

Martin McDonagh’s 2001 play, set on the island of Ireland in the early 1990s, has been described as a black comedy and savage satire on the violence of terrorism. Watching this new production, it struck me that is can also be seen as a burlesque on James Bond-style action films.

In an early scene, Padraic, our anti-hero, is explaining his rationale as he tortures a Belfast drug pusher, rather as Blofeld does before he consigns Bond to a grisly fate (the dealer’s crime is supplying Catholic children as well as Protestants). Padraic, though, does not have Blofeld’s means at his disposal; he must do his dirty work himself. Preparing to slice a nipple off his victim, Padraic is interrupted by a call from home. His cat, Wee Thomas, is ill. Setting aside his blade, he races back to Inishmore. Disaster ensues.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore is at the Everyman, Liverpool, until 12 October

Birmingham Hippodrome
This production of Frederick Ashton’s version of the bucolic love story allows the beauty and humour to flow naturally from the choreography

As the rain comes down and the nights draw in, Birmingham Royal Ballet is offering the salve of the sunniest ballet in the repertory – a shot of warmth to carry its audiences into autumn. Frederick Ashton’s ballet has been performed by the company since 1962, just two years after its premiere. And the current artistic director Carlos Acosta was a fine latter-day Colas, the young farmer whose adoration of the badly guarded Lise provides the motor for this bucolic love story. All of which may explain the loving attention to detail that has gone into this blissful revival.

It does the ballet the great tribute of understanding that if you take care of the steps – of the dancing hens who shake their feathered arms as they wake at dawn, of the young lovers throwing ribbons across the stage as they trace the filigree of their love, or the clumsy suitor more in love with his red umbrella than any girl – then the tenderness and humour will effortlessly emerge.

La Fille mal gardée tours until 26 October