weekend event planner

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

Get in the Mardi Gras spirit with Mixers and Elixirs at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

Saturday is National Margarita Day. We know this because we got emails from The General Public and Marriott Marquis Houston, letting us know they have some fancy, affordable margaritas ready to serve on this day.

Also on this day, a new painting by acclaimed local artist Donkeeboy will be unveiled at the back patio of The Original Ninfa's Uptown. Chef Alex Padilla will have a pig roast ready for brunch service.

And, as always, there's plenty of fun to be had this weekend.

Thursday, February 20

RaMell Ross at Dudley Recital Hall
Hale County This Morning, This Evening, about the black people of Hale County, Alabama, was one of the best documentaries of 2018. The director of that film, RaMell Ross, will be in town to not just talk about that film, but his career as a writer and a photographer. His photographs have been exhibited internationally and his writing has appeared in such outlets as The New York Times and Walker Arts Center. There will be a reception first, followed by a screening of his great movie. And, then, an artist talk afterwards. 5:30 pm.

Mixers & Elixirs: Mardi Gras at the Houston Museum of Natural Science
The HMNS will be getting in the Fat Tuesday spirit with this primetime event. Sure, the usual Mixers & Elixirs schedule won't start until this summer (first up: Heroes & Villains!). But we're in Mardi Gras time and, just in case you can't make the trek all the way to Galveston, this party will provide all the masked, bead-throwing, hella-inebriated decadence. There will be dancing, cash bars, the city's best food trucks, and live music from Texas party/event band Satellite. 7-10 pm.

Friday, February 21

Tune Out Cancer Music Fest at The Wildcatter Saloon
This weekend, enjoy some music and donate to a good cause. Houston Music Charities presents this second-annual event, which benefits the Texas Children’s Hospital Cancer Center. This three-day, all-ages event will feature non-stop live music, vendors, food trucks, a kids' zone, auctions, artists, comedians, a magician, an air guitar competition, and more. We're talking Asleep in the Wake, Para Bellum, Zombieface, King Baby Familia, Space Rhyno. 5 pm (11 am Saturday and Sunday).

Los Angeles Guitar Quartet at Wortham Theater Center
Now in their 40th year, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, which consists of John Dearman, William Kanengiser, Scott Tennant, and Matthew Greif (who replaced original member Andrew York at the end of 2006) is still one of the most multifaceted groups in any genre. Da Camera is bringing them to town to play Pat Metheny’s Road to the Sun, composed for the LAGQ, which is filled with Metheny’s trademark grooves, haunting melodies, and rich extended harmonies. 8 pm.

Saturday, February 22

Fuel the Garage at 807 Fairview
Fuel the Geek is a Facebook public group that's all about geekery. (We hope these geeks don't consist of those dudebro trolls who were wishing for Birds of Prey's demise at the box office a couple weeks ago.) They will be setting up a neighborhood garage sale, full of tables selling everything from action figures to comic books to those damn Funko Pop dolls. It will be a geekalicious time had by all — but if anyone says anything bad about Martin Scorsese or Rian Johnson, feel free to throw them out. 11 am-6 pm.

Pulp Fiction: A Two-Fisted Mystery Marathon at Alamo Drafthouse LaCenterra
Let's get this out the way; Quentin Tarantino's breakthrough, John Travolta's career-reviving crime saga will not be showing during this. However, this five-film mystery marathon will be celebrating the gee-whiz spectacle of pulp fiction: westerns, space adventures, noir, fantasy, etc. Chances are the failed '90s blockbusters The Shadow and The Phantom will be screened. Hopefully, The Whole Wide World, the 1996 biopic on pulp hero Robert E. Howard (with Vincent D'Onofrio as Howard and Renee Zellweger as the girl he loves) will be on the bill. 1 pm.

Sunday, February 23

Decadent Desserts & Dancing at Neon Boots Dance Hall & Saloon
This will be an an afternoon of bountiful desserts, entertainment, raffles and lots of boot scooting, all to raise money for The Montrose Center. The fundraising is all well and good, but we just gots to know: how decadent will the desserts be? Devour Catering will be handling the goodies, but how decadent are we talking here? Will there be cakes slathered in frosting, brownies with hot fudge oozing out of it, cheesecakes made with the most cholesterol-clogging cream cheese out there? Show up to find out. 2 pm.

What We Do in the Shadows at MFAH
Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi may have a won an Best Adapted Screenplay for his WWII satire Jojo Rabbit. But we all know his best movie is this 2014 vampire mockumentary, where he and co-co-director/Flight of the Conchords bandmate Jermaine Clement play some of the bloodsucking roommates living in a modern-day, New Zealand flat. The irreverent music ensemble Two-Star Symphony knows this, which is why they will be presenting this film. Maybe they'll play some macabre music beforehand. 5 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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