It's the Holiday Season

Explore 8 unique holiday villages at Houston's City Lights

Downtown Houston has just undergone a transformation, and the enchantment is so real. The extravaganza that is City Lights Downtown Holiday Magic gets lit via eight themed villages — each with its own unique delights — from November 18, 2022, through January 2, 2023.

Open to the public and mostly free, the villages usher in everything from ice for skating to lights for gazing, and festive activities to make your whole family's season bright.

Whether you’re enjoying a night out with friends or an evening of fam-friendly fun, here are eight must-have, magical experiences in the City Lights villages.

See the trees
The trees are ready for their close-up at Deck The Trees Grand Holiday Window display. With 30 brilliantly decked and dazzling designs, the Grand Holiday Window display at the George R. Brown Convention Center is a sight to behold.

Even better, it benefits the Alley Theatre’s educational community and artistic initiatives. You can also catch an outdoor concert with performances on Thursdays through Sundays with carolers, strings, swing ensembles, jazz music, and more.

Check out some eye candy
Get set for a sugar rush in the Hilton Americas lobby, where the hotel’s Land of Sweets has made its wow-worthy return. This year’s iconic holiday chocolate display features a hand-sculpted, Minion-themed masterpiece that boasts more than 2,000 pounds of the cocoa stuff.

Make it a staycation with the hotel’s ’Tis the Season package, which includes luxe accommodations, a holiday treat, and two tickets to the Discovery Green ice rink.

Engage in your own ice capades
Speaking of Discovery Green, you can glide right into the holidays at the park’s bustling Holiday Ice Village. The open-air ice-skating rink has also scheduled in some fun music-themed nights with DJs and party vibes under the city lights. There’s even an opportunity to watch the pros take the ice — and Santa may make a few special appearances, too.

If you’re keeping your feet off the ice, catch a holiday movie under the stars every Thursday or check the box on your holiday shopping at Flea by Night every Saturday. The open-air market features local artisans and small business owners and a range of vintage, handmade, recycled, and repurposed goods.

Float under the lights
Texas Winter Lights is back and it’s a must for your holiday to-do list. The one-of-a-kind poolside tradition is hosted at Marriott Marquis’ Altitude Rooftop & Pool (the lazy river is heated all winter!), where you can stroll through — or float under — the lights at night.

There will be no shortage of Instagrammable photo opps with illuminated activations, including a light-up stallion, graffiti wall, adult playground, and light grove. Plus, you can choose from more than 30 festive beverages. There’s also a nightly snowfall to add to the enchantment.

Have a date with Santa
Santa Claus is coming to town — Main Street Square, to be exact — to share the wonder of the season. Get a pic with Kris Kringle every Friday and Saturday starting at 6 pm in Santa’s Village.

Then explore all the shopping goodness the square has to offer with a series of holiday markets that are held on Fridays and Saturdays, too, all set against a vibrantly lit backdrop of 40-foot water bursts and a 250-foot-long, eight-inch-deep reflecting pool.

Find somebody to smooch
You know what they say: Everything is bigger in Texas, and that includes mistletoe. This 150-inch ball of greenery is suspended from a giant 15-foot candy cane in historic Market Square Park — a.k.a. Mistletoe Square. You’ll want your kissable plus-one around, too, for snuggling up under the twinkling lights and enjoying a holiday movie — or making a gingerbread house with Phoenicia Specialty Foods.

See visions of sugar plums
The iconic Fish Plaza at the entrance of the Wortham Theater is dancing into the season with its temporary title of Sugar Plum Plaza — and it lives up to its name. Every square foot has been reimagined in an ode to the holidays with larger-than-life custom-built ornaments and cheerful tunes.

Wander through a wonderland
If you love twinkling lights, the Winter Wanderland has 100,000 of them. The LED-lit scene is the ultimate in merry and bright vibes along the recently reconstructed and beautified Bagby Street from Lamar to Preston. Signature elements include giant angel wings, constellation arches, and an 80-foot light tunnel across from The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts.

Be sure to sign up for the free City Lights Pass here. Check in to each village and you might win one of four holiday experiences — the more places you visit, the better your chances of winning.

Make your own magic and chart your holiday course at City Lights here.

Photo courtesy of VisitHouston.com

The trees are ready for their close-up at Deck the Trees.

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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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