weekend event planner

Here are the top 8 things to do in Houston this weekend

Riel is hosting a pop-up at the always popular East End Backyard.

The Inauguration Day festivities are behind us — time to throttle forward.

Speaking of throttles, gearheads and speed junkies might want to take in two events on Saturday: West Houston Muscle's All American Throwdown, where old-school muscle meets new-school power at Houston Raceway Park; and the Monster Energy AMA Supercross at NRG Stadium, marking the first time in the sport’s 47-year history that the season opener has been in Texas.

Also look for a wine room celebration, a tasty pop-up, a rockin' garage sale, and more. Here are your best bets for the weekend.

Thursday, January 21

Mutiny Wine Room presents First Anniversary Celebration
Mutiny Wine Room, the wine country-inspired tasting room that showed up in The Heights early last year, will celebrate its one-year anniversary by offering free wine flights. Sommelier Ben Harris will lead globally inspired tastings that include “A Taste of Northern Italy - Valpolicella” and “Around the World with Pinot.” Reservations are required for the 30-minute tasting experience and can be made via phone or on Resy. 4 pm.

Camp For All presents A Night with the Stars Gala
Camp For All will present A Night with the Stars Gala, its annual Washington County fundraiser, as a virtual event for the first time. The fundraiser is open to the public and can be viewed through the Camp For All YouTube page. Attendees can make a general donation to the event, purchase raffle tickets for a chance to win a $2,000 Visa gift card, or participate in the virtual auction and bid on items such as a crawfish boil for 30, a three-night vacation in Port O’Conner, and more.

Friday, January 22

The Village School presents Innovation Day 2021
The Village School in Houston will be virtually hosting its annual Innovation Day event this weekend. It's here where you'll get to witness student ideas, groundbreaking products and radical creativity. This is also a wonderful way for families and prospective families to see how students are empowered and challenged as they bring their experiences to life. It’s a celebration of ideas and solutions created by students to tackle today’s most pressing problems. 9 am.

Houston Grand Opera presents HGO Digital: Giving Voice
Don't ever say people don't dig a dude hitting audiences with some opera. Giving Voice: Lawrence Brownlee and Friends Sing Opera, Gospel and Standards was a triumphant, sold-out concert that went down at the Wortham Theater Center last year. This weekend, internationally renowned tenor Brownlee returns with an all-Black group of opera stars for a second, digital installment of this wonderful celebration of diverse voices. 7:30 pm.

Saturday, January 23

Blondie & Bling presents TEXFest
Rosenberg boutique store Blondie & Bling has a special event geared up this weekend — you just gotta go to Conroe to check it out. The TEXFest will, of course, have shopping, but it will also have a big, Texas truck contest, a chili cook-off, line dancing, and the 'best beer in Texas." All of this sounds like this will be one crap-kicking, authentically Texan shindig. So, for those who always wanted to star in their own version of Urban Cowboy, this event is here for you. Noon.

Evil Dead with Live Commentary by Bruce Campbell
For horror mavens who have never seen Evil Dead, Sam Raimi's iconic, low-budget, 1981 horror flick, you can watch it this weekend with the star of the movie. Bruce Campbell — Ash himself! — will host a worldwide virtual viewing, with live commentary throughout by Campbell himself. Viewers can watch with Campbell as he shares memories, stories and anecdotes from the film. And, for a few lucky viewers, Campbell will even answer questions from the chat. 8 pm.

Sunday, January 24

Riel Pop-Up with Chef Peter Nguyen
This weekend, East End Backyard (with its 16,000-square-foot patio with heaters and outdoor tent installed earlier this month) will host a pop-up with chef Peter Nguyen, who was recently introduced as the new executive sous chef at Riel. Nguyen, a Boston native who worked under James Beard Award-winning chefs Ken Oringer and Jamie Bissonnette at Little Donkey in Cambridge, will be preparing a New England-inspired menu with clam chowder, mini-lobster rolls, and more. 1 pm.

Punk Rock Garage Sale at Brash Brewing
It's time once again for local punk fans to converge on this market (brought to us by the folks at Insomnia Gallery), where you can buy records, 'zines, videos, vintage clothing, original art, and whatever else is in this mosh pit of a garage sale. After the great job Brash Brewing did holding the sale last month, the beer company will once again host the event. Vendors will be spaced out to allow for proper social distancing and masks are required to enter and when approaching vendors. 1 pm.

event-planner

Movie Review

Michelle Pfeiffer visits Houston in new Christmas movie Oh. What. Fun.

Photo courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios

Michelle Pfeiffer in Oh. What. Fun.

Of all the formulaic movie genres, Christmas/holiday movies are among the most predictable. No matter what the problem is that arises between family members, friends, or potential romantic partners, the stories in holiday movies are designed to give viewers a feel-good ending even if the majority of the movie makes you feel pretty bad.

That’s certainly the case in Oh. What. Fun., in which Michelle Pfeiffer plays Claire, an underappreciated mom living in Houston with her inattentive husband, Nick (Denis Leary). As the film begins, her three children are arriving back home for Christmas: The high-strung Channing (Felicity Jones) is married to the milquetoast Doug (Jason Schwartzman); the aloof Taylor (Chloë Grace Moretz) brings home yet another new girlfriend; and the perpetual child Sammy (Dominic Sessa) has just broken up with his girlfriend.

Each of the family members seems to be oblivious to everything Claire does for them, especially when it comes to what she really wants: For them to nominate her to win a trip to see a talk show in L.A. hosted by Zazzy Tims (Eva Longoria). When she accidentally gets left behind on a planned outing to see a show, Claire reaches her breaking point and — in a kind of Home Alone in reverse — she decides to drive across the country to get to the show herself.

Written and directed by Michael Showalter (The Idea of You), and co-written by Chandler Baker (who wrote the short story on which the film is based), the movie never establishes any kind of enjoyable rhythm. Each of the characters, including competitive neighbor Jeanne (Joan Chen), is assigned a character trait that becomes their entire personality, with none of them allowed to evolve into something deeper.

The filmmakers lean hard into the idea that Claire is a person who always puts her family first and receives very little in return, but the evidence presented in the story is sketchy at best. Every situation shown in the film is so superficial that tension barely exists, and the (over)reactions by Claire give her family members few opportunities to make up for their failings.

The most interesting part of the movie comes when Claire actually makes it to the Zazzy Sims show. Even though what happens there is just as unbelievable as anything else presented in the story, Showalter and Baker concoct a scene that allows Claire and others to fully express the central theme of the film, and for a few minutes the movie actually lives up to its title.

Pfeiffer, given her first leading role since 2020’s French Exit, is a somewhat manic presence, and her thick Texas accent and unnecessary voiceover don’t do her any favors. It seems weird to have such a strong supporting cast with almost nothing of substance to do, but almost all of them are wasted, including Danielle Brooks in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo. The lone exception is Longoria, who is a blast in the few scenes she gets.

Oh. What. Fun. is far from the first movie to try and fail at becoming a new holiday classic, but the pedigree of Showalter and the cast make this dismal viewing experience extra disappointing. Ironically, overworked and underappreciated moms deserve a much better story than the one this movie delivers.

---

Oh. What. Fun. is now streaming on Prime Video.

movies film