spring on the rooftop

Houston's Rooftop Cinema Club springs up with fun specialty screenings

Look for dog-friendly screenings, sing-along shows, and more this spring.

Photo by J. Thomas Ford

With spring weather seemingly around the corner, Houstonians are clamoring for their favorite outdoor activities. In Uptown, those activities include hitting the open-air Rooftop Cinema Club (1700 Post Oak Blvd. at BLVD Place), which has just revealed its highly anticipated spring programming.

This new spring season includes award winners in honor of the Oscars, fan-driven programming (People’s Choice), sing-along musicals, women in film (honoring Women’s History Month), a tribute to 4/20 (alright, alright, alright), and dog-friendly “Wooftop” screenings.

Tickets range from $17.50 to $25.25 — depending on the day of the week and choice of a lounge chair or Adirondack chair, with or without popcorn. Movies starting before 4:30 pm are open to all ages, while movies starting at and after 4:30 pm are 18 and up.

As always, the club will serve up its signature concessions, food, wine, beer, and canned cocktails for guests to purchase on-site. (No outside alcohol or food is permitted.)

Here is a rundown of the Rooftop specialty programming, courtesy of the club:

Award Winners
As a tribute to the Oscars, the venue will screen favorite award-winning films. Look for everything from visual effects winner, Jurassic Park; animated feature champ, Shrek; the film that finally crowned Martin Scorsese, The Departed; the movie that revealed Denzel Washington’s scary side, Training Day; the film that made fans feel like king and queen of the world, Titanic, and more.

Sing-Along
Viewers should prepare their pipes to belt out beloved tunes in Grease and The Greatest Showman. The venue’s Bluetooth headphones ensure guests get a chance to sing like no one’s listening.

Wooftop
Bring those fur babies to screenings of Jurassic Park on Sunday, March 6 and The Lion King on Sunday, March 27.

Women in Film
In honor of Women's History Month this March, the club is celebrating pioneering women in film. Expect beloved flicks from Penny Marshall (A League of Their Own), Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball) and Melina Matsoukas (Queen & Slim), witty writers Tina Fey (Mean Girls), and Kristen Wiig (Bridesmaids) and power performer Jennifer Hudson (Respect).

People’s Choice: Spike Lee’s Birthday
To toast one of America’s most celebrated and respected filmmakers, the club is asking fans to vote on the Spike Lee joint to screen. Voting closes March 10; the winning film will be announced March 11.

Music Movies
This event celebrates National Record Store Day, which falls in April. Selections include the harmonizing Pitch Perfect, rap-fueled 8 Mile, Prince’s iconic Purple Rain, and the wild shenanigans in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

4/20
Come “relax” (and behave!) on April 20 with a double hit (had to) of the classic stoner comedies Dazed and Confused and The Big Lebowski. The Dude abides, indeed.

National Record Store Day
In a nod to f Record Store Day, the club is screening the ’90s vinyl-loving Empire Records, the John Cusack rom-com High Fidelity, and Cameron Crowe’s music-centered love story, Almost Famous.

People's Choice: National Superhero Day
Fans are invited to vote for their favorite caped (or non-caped) crusader in honor of National Superhero Day. Voting closes April 18; the winning film will be announced April 19.

For a full and daily lineup, tickets, and more, visit the Rooftop Cinema Club online.

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Movie Review

New horror movie Faces of Death puts a modern twist on cult classic

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy — in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks — is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

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Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

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