NEW YEAR'S EVE PARTIES

The 14 best ways to party on New Year's Eve in Houston

Ring in 2021 with these hot Houston happenings.

Photo courtesy of Four Seasons Hotel

Many Houstonians are looking forward to celebrating New Year's Eve in style. We also know there are those cautious souls who would much prefer to stay at home — because, you know, we're still in the middle of a pandemic.

This year, we decided to round up a baker's dozen of NYE events — some of them will be virtual, some of them will be out in the open.

Aerosol Warfare
Catch an online event where artists and creative types can get together and, you know, get creative. They can talk, show, perform, demo, cook, announce, tell a story, suggest a soundtrack, and do whatever before the clock strikes 12. 8:30 pm.

Azura Bar & Lounge
The lounge offers up a large room with amazing music, club lighting and upscale sections for its party. They will also have celebrity DJs, refreshing cocktails, frozen drinks, delicious food, and a midnight champagne toast. 8 pm.

Bar 2200
This spot will host a get-together that will be free with an RSVP. With this one, you got two levels of fun — each level with its own DJ — and the obligatory champagne toast at midnight. You can't get more NYE than that. 8 pm.

The Energy Corridor of Houston Orchestra
ECHO for short has recorded a program of music from the '60s, '70s, and '80s as a goodwill offering to the community in this pandemic time. There will also be a countdown to midnight that will be right on time if viewers begin watching at 10:30 pm.

Four Seasons
The iconic downtown will toast the New Year, with several offerings, including an elegant, four-course prix fixe dinner. Or, reserve a table at Bayou & Bottle for $75 to party all night with choice bourbon. Or, book a room and enjoy 10 percent off your Room Rate, a bottle of champagne, and a New Year’s celebration kit.

The Grand Tuscany Hotel
Get down with a Bollywood-themed shindig. Promoted by Sunil T and the Crazy Masala Crew of local Bollywood station 98.7 FM, this party will have DJ NISH spinning grooves while guests get in on the food stations and the midnight champagne toast. 8 pm.

The Grove (This event has been canceled as of December 29)
Discovery Green's most happening hot spot will host a glitzy and ritzy bash. It will include all-inclusive bars throughout the property, passed hors d’oeuvres and premium food stations, as well as DJs, live music, party favors and anything you can think of to celebrate in style. Dress to impress at this swanky soiree. 9 pm.

Live Oak Lounge & Grill
Celebrate from sun-up to sundown with "The Midnight Wish NYE," its daytime/nighttime party. Come enjoy food and drink specials all day while listening to DJs doing their thing. No cover with RSVP until 8 pm. 4 pm.

Lumen Lounge
The Upper Kirby club will be the start-off point for "All the Glitters 6," the sixth annual, end-of-the-year block party. We're talking a buffet, full wine bar, complimentary party favors, hookahs, a tented pavilion, 6 DJs, stilt walkers, etc. 8 pm.

Market Street
The Woodlands venue feature a concert with music from The Rick Marcel Band. All entertainment will be featured outdoors in Central Park. Guests are invited to enjoy the music from one of the marked, social-distance circles. 2 pm.

Numbers
The Montrose mainstay will go virtual with its spectacular, available on that gamer-friendly, live-streaming platform Twitch. Don't worry — there will still be music, prizes, and a balloon drop as the long-running club says good riddance to this gawdawful year. 9 pm.

Simple Space HTX
Look for a very lavish soiree where the tickets vary from $35 to $1,100. Mariam Echo will provide live music, while a rotating lineup of DJs will come in with hip-hop, R & B, reggae, soca, etc. 8 pm.

The Westin at the Woodlands
This hotel is offering not only a party above the Woodlands Waterway, but a whole getaway. Say goodbye to this year with live music, champagne at midnight, a room at the Westin and a New Year’s Day brunch for two people. 9 pm.

The Woodlands Resort
Yet another Woodlands inn will host a celebration for families. The spot will have a fun, full day of crafts, karaoke, games and other festivities at the heated Forest Oasis waterpark. There will also be a sparkling cider toast and a beach-ball drop from the waterslide tower at 5:30 pm. 10 am.

holidays

Movie Review

Glen Powell stumbles in remake of sci-fi classic The Running Man

Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Glen Powell in The Running Man.

For all its cheesy ‘80s greatness, the original version of The Running Man starring Arnold Schwarzenegger was a very loose adaptation of the novel by Stephen King. For the new remake, writer/director Edgar Wright has tried to hue much closer to the story laid out in the book, a decision that has both its positive and negative aspects.

Glen Powell takes over for Schwarzenegger as Ben Richards, a family man/hothead who can’t seem to hold a job in the dystopian America in which he lives. Desperate to take care of his family, he applies to be on one of the many game shows fed to the masses that promise riches in exchange for humiliation or worse. Thanks to his temper, Ben is chosen for the most popular one of all, The Running Man, in which contestants must survive 30 days while hunters, as well as the general population, track them down.

Given a 12-hour head start, Ben earns money for every day he survives, as well as every hunter he eliminates. Since he only has a relatively small amount of money to use as he pleases, Ben must rely on friendly citizens who are willing to put their own lives on the line to help him. That’s a task made even more difficult as the gamemakers, led by Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), use advanced AI to manipulate footage of Ben to make him seem like a guy for which no one should root.

Co-written by Michael Bacall, the film is shockingly uninteresting, working neither as an exciting action film, a fun quippy comedy, or social commentary. The biggest problem is that Wright seems to have no interest in developing any of his characters, starting with Ben. Our introduction to the protagonist is him trying to get his job back, a situation for which there is little context even after we’re beaten over the head with exposition.

The situation in which Ben finds himself should be easy to make sympathetic, but Wright and Bacall speed through scenes that might have emphasized that aspect in favor of ones that make the story less personal. The filmmakers really want to showcase the supposed antagonistic relationship between Ben and Dan (and the system which Dan represents), but all that effort results in little drama.

Ben has a number of close calls, and while those scenes are full of action and violence, almost every one of them feels emotionally inert, as if there was nothing at stake. It doesn’t help that Wright doesn’t set the scene well, making it unclear how far Ben has traveled or who/what he’s up against. There are times when Ben feels surrounded and others when he can walk freely, weird for a society that’s supposed to be under almost complete surveillance.

Powell has been touted as a movie star in the making for several years following his turn in Top Gun: Maverick, but he does little here to make that label stick. With no consistent co-star thanks to the structure of the story, he’s required to carry the film, and he just doesn’t have the juice that a true movie star is supposed to have. Nobody else is served well by the scattershot film, including normally reliable people like Brolin, Colman Domingo, Michael Cera, and Lee Pace.

The Running Man is a big misfire by Wright and a blow to Powell’s star power. On the surface, it has all the hallmarks of an action thriller with a side of social commentary, but nothing it does or says lands in any meaningful way. Schwarzenegger’s one-liners in the original film may have been goofy and over-the-top, but at least they made the movie memorable, which is way more than can be said of the remake.

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The Running Man opens in theaters on November 14.

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Movie Review

Glen Powell stumbles in remake of sci-fi classic The Running Man