holidays on the rooftop

Houston's rooftop cinema reveals festive and jolly holiday lineup and themed nights

Rooftop Cinema Club Houston night skyline

Holiday time at Rooftop Cinema Club includes pet-friendly screenings and sing-along hits.

Photo by Rooftop Cinema Club Houston

Few things punctuate the start of the holiday season like a good holiday movie. (Who doesn’t love Will Farrell’s gleeful “Santa!” scream in Elf or the BB gun mayhem in A Christmas Story?) Now, Houston’s Rooftop Cinema Club has unveiled a festive holiday lineup full of flicks that are sure to get even Grinches in the seasonal mood.

In November, fans can look for seasonal classics, popular sing-alongs, and family-friendly screenings such as The Greatest Showman, Grease, Selena, Love & Basketball, Harry Potter, and more.

December brings all holiday feels with Home Alone, The Santa Clause, Elf, Edward Scissorhands, Die Hard, A Christmas Story, and more. The venue will be open seven nights a week during this time and for double screenings Wednesdays through Saturdays.

Tickets for the holiday season go on sale at noon, Wednesday, November 6, and are available online for all showtimes at Rooftop’s BLVD Place location in Post Oak.

Catch a film and give back
When fans purchase tickets to any December screening, they can add a donation to support Coalition for the Homeless’ efforts to prevent and end homelessness in the Houston area. Also, from December 3 through December 15, attendees are encouraged to drop off supplies for newly housed Houstonians and their families as part of a “12 Days of Giving” program.

Christmas classics
Fans who miss out on TV broadcasts of classics such as How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Year Without a Santa Claus, and A Charlie Brown Christmas are in luck, as the club will host special viewings. Guests are encouraged to dress up in matching pajamas.

“Wooftop” returns
It’s bring your dog to the movies with the pet-friendly screening of the 2000 Jim Carrey hit, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Viewers are encouraged to dress their pooches in their best winter sweater and dog treats will be available (should your furbaby not have a taste for popcorn).

Family screenings
Screenings on Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday are open to all ages 3 and up. Lounge seat tickets will be $12 for anyone 18 and under, versus our standard $17 lounge seat starting price. Children under 18 must be accompanied by an adult.

Prices start at $17 per person for a one-person lounge seat. A single-person seat with the addition of bottomless popcorn is $20. Tickets for couples, or a roomier love seat, plus bottomless popcorn, are $24 per person. Student discount ticket start at $15.30, with valid ID required the night of the event.

As always, the cinema will serve up movie grub from Good Dog Houston, which offers three dogs: the Picnic Dog, the Uptown Dog, and The Dude. Additional fare includes fruit and cheese plates, Frito pie, and chili cheese nachos. Adult beverages include a full bar with craft cocktails, local beer options, and an assortment of wines.

Here is the full list of November and December screenings.

November 19 – Dumb and Dumber
November 20 – The Greatest Showman* (Sing-along) and Beauty and The Beast
November 21 – Cool Runnings* and Sex and The City
November 22 – The Lion King (2019) and Selena
November 23 – Mean Girls and Grease (Sing-along)
November 24 – The Wiz*
November 25 – Love & Basketball
November 26 – Harry Potter & The Order of The Phoenix
November 27 – Planes, Trains & Automobiles
November 28 – Closed
November 29 – Closed
November 30 – Elf and The Holiday
December 1 – Home Alone*
December 2 – Love Actually
December 3 – Little Women (1994)
December 4 – The Santa Clause* and The Best Man Holiday
December 5 – A Muppet Christmas Carol* and The Preacher's Wife
December 6 – Elf and Edward Scissorhands
December 7 – It's a Wonderful Life and Home Alone 2: Lost In New York
December 8 – Christmas Classics*: How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Year Without Santa Claus, and A Charlie Brown Christmas)
December 9 – The Holiday
December 10 – Die Hard
December 11 – Home Alone* and To Grandmother's House We Go
December 12 – A Christmas Story* and While You Were Sleeping
December 13 – Friday After Next and Gremlins
December 14 – Elf and Love Actually
December 15 – How the Grinch Stole Christmas*
December 16 – National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
December 17 – A Madea Christmas
December 18 – The Polar Express* and The Holiday
December 19 – Elf * and Love Actually
December 20 – Christmas Classics: How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Year Without a Santa Claus, and A Charlie Brown Christmas; Die Hard
December 21 – Home Alone and It's a Wonderful Life
December 22 – Elf*

*Denotes family screenings.

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Rooftop Cinema Club is located at BLVD Place above Whole Foods, 1700 Post Oak Blvd. For tickets and information, visit the official site.

families movies

Movie Review

Cookie Queens goes behind the scenes of Girl Scout Cookie season

Photo courtesy of Roadside Attractions

Girl Scouts in Cookie Queens.

Few people are strong enough to resist the lure of Girl Scout cookie season every year, with the cookies’ limited availability and unique flavors a strong incentive to indulge. But only the girls and their families who have sold the cookies know the joys and stresses of trying to get people to buy them, a process that is detailed in the new documentary, Cookie Queens.

The film by documentarian Alysa Nahmias uses the stories of four different girls to represent the nationwide ritual for the Girl Scouts. They include 12-year-old Olive in Charlotte, North Carolina, a longtime top seller; 8-year-old Shannon Elizabeth in El Paso, Texas, who wants to earn the reward of going to camp; 5-year-old Ara in San Diego, California, whose goal is modest compared to most other girls; and 9-year-old Nikki in Chino, California, who has to compete with her older sisters in the cookie-selling bonanza.

The girls represent a cross-section of both ages and backgrounds, with some girls coming from wealthy families and some girls dealing with more limited means. And how much money your family has makes a big difference, as not only does someone richer have more freedom with their time and supplies, but all scouts are required to reimburse the organization for every box they take in, regardless of whether they’re able to sell it or not.

That caveat makes the journeys of the four featured girls feel wildly different. It’s clear from the start that Olive and Nikki’s families don’t give a second thought to the personal economics of selling cookies, with each girl taking in thousands of boxes at the beginning of the six-week selling season. With both Olive and Nikki rightfully confident that they’ll have no problem offloading their supply, their stories turn to how selling is personally affecting them, with each trying to reconcile the fun of doing it with the pressure they feel from their family members.

Shannon Elizabeth’s story is more harrowing, as her parents feel a strong desire to help her accomplish her lofty goal, but worry that the cost might literally be too high for the family as a whole. More than once, the parents are shown fretting that they won’t have the money to pay back what they owe should they fall significantly short in their sales. Their selling approach, which includes walking through an empty swap meet and standing outside a chain restaurant at night, only adds to their stress.

The most fun story to watch is that of Ara, whose innocence is matched by her confidence. Her parents teach her how much money they’ll owe with her small goal of 55 boxes, but right away she takes on more responsibility than expected. She’s shown making sales pitches and tallying the total number of boxes she’s sold with little-to-no help from either her mom or dad. With her high voice, glasses, and a monitor on her arm to manage her diabetes, she becomes the cute and sympathetic part of the film.

There are times that the film starts to feel more than a little manipulative, however. While many of the moments documented come off as organic, some of them seem like Nahmias is actively guiding the participants in order to get a better story. This is especially evident with Shannon Elizabeth and her family, whose early struggles turn into a miraculous feel-good story by the end, a turnaround that seems implausible at best. Everything with them might have been aboveboard, but Nahmias and her team edit the family’s journey in a way that pushes a bit too hard for emotion.

Cookie Queens, which was produced by a company owned by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, helps to give insight into the business of selling Girl Scout cookies for those who’ve only been on the purchasing end of the transaction. The dedication of each girl toward selling their allotted supply proves fun and interesting, even if the filmmaker tries to gild the lily on occasion.

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Cookie Queens is now playing in theaters,

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