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

Rachel McAdams goes feral in Sam Raimi's gory new comedy Send Help

Photo by Brook Rushton

Rachel McAdams in Send Help.

Director Sam Raimi has gone through different phases as a filmmaker, including leading the first Spider-Man trilogy and joining the MCU with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But he first gained notice with the gory and funny Evil Dead movies, a sensibility he’s returning to with his latest film, Send Help.

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is a meek and eccentric middle manager at a financial firm that’s just named Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) as its new nepo CEO. Bradley’s dad had promised Linda a promotion to vice president, but she gets passed over in favor of one of Bradley’s frat buddies, sending her into a mild rage. Still, she gets invited along on a planned business trip to Thailand, during which she hopes to prove her worth.

Unfortunately for most of the passengers on the private plane, it crashes into the ocean, leaving only Linda and Bradley alive on a deserted island. Linda, who has privately developed survival skills, adapts quickly to the forbidding environment, while Bradley tries to revert to bossing her around. But Linda quickly understands the power dynamic has shifted, and she uses this knowledge to try to keep Bradley in line, turning their stranding into a battle of wills.

Directed by Raimi and written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, the film is the classic “so bad it’s good” kind of experience. McAdams, inarguably an attractive and charming person, is given stringy hair, an antisocial personality, and quirks like eating tuna fish at her desk to make her as off-putting as possible. Bradley, along with almost everyone else at her office, is stereotyped just as hard in order to set up the twist of fate.

When the action shifts to the island, things get even more over the top. The audience has already been primed for Linda to demonstrate her survival expertise, but the film does way more than just show her making fire. Whether it’s flawlessly building a shelter or hunting a wild boar, everything Linda does is portrayed in a slightly off-kilter manner. Then they turn everything up to 11, indulging in gore that is so unnecessary that you can’t help but laugh.

The filmmakers prove they’re in on the joke the rest of the way, including a variety of preposterous but hilarious scenarios that would cause massive eyerolls if they were actually trying to take the film seriously. While they do a great job of showing Linda’s ability to handle herself in the wild, they also show that she is somehow the only person in the world who could get a glow up after a plane crash and weeks living in nature.

McAdams, an Oscar-nominated actor for Spotlight, is way too high class for a movie like this, which makes her presence here all the more interesting. She is all-in on whatever Raimi wants her to do, and she’s at her most fun when she goes the animalistic route. O’Brien, who was great in the recent Twinless, doesn’t get as much of an opportunity to show his range, but he still proves to be an interesting foil for her.

Were it released in any other month, Send Help might be looked at as bottom of the barrel material. But with the movie year just getting started, it’s easier to forgive its outrageous plot twists and just have fun, especially since Raimi and his team put the rest of the film together so well.

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Send Help opens in theaters on January 30.

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