post malone concert review

Post Malone's road show lifts up RodeoHouston with heart and soul

On Tuesday night Post Malone brought his ongoing F-1 Trillion road show to the largest rodeo in Texas, mere months after headlining the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion for two nights in October.

Posty is so incredibly popular right now could have opened and closed RodeoHouston in 2025 and he could have sold out both shows. The streets around NRG Stadium turned feral just before sundown as the parking lots reached capacity. This was easily the hottest ticket of the season.

The whole world seems to have gone country — yet again — and the 29-year-old Post Malone followed suit this past year, debuting a new Hank Jr. Jr. persona to curious audiences with his latest album F-1 Trillion. When the Texas-bred rapper started showing out in Wrangler jeans, turkey feathers, turquoise jewelry, pearl snap shirts, and five-figure cowboy boots, some outlaw gatekeepers and traditional hardliners dismissed him as a scene poser. It’s a familiar story, one that Beyonce experienced herself with the Cowboy Carter project, her own inventive take on the fluid country genre.

[By the way, the last time Malone was at NRG Stadium he was performing with Beyonce during the halftime show of the Houston Texans ritualistic Christmas Day sacrifice to the Baltimore Ravens. While he was in town, he made sure a lucky bartender had a wonderful Christmas. But I digress.]

Malone’s collection of expertly crafted pop-country featuring voices as diverse as Billy Strings, Sierra Ferrell, and Blake Shelton had no business being so satisfying. While other acts are aping the spirit of ‘90s hat acts, Malone seems to be blazing a trail of his own, digging into the earnest hooks of early ‘00s pop-country he grew up on and fusing it with his own innate talent for juicy hooks and tobacco-stained wordplay.

“Wrong Ones” kicked off the proceedings on Tuesday night with Malone taking a long walk from the corner of the stadium to the starred stage. A country-fried version of the buoyant “Circles” followed, with a barefoot Posty stalking the stage dressed like a RodeoHouston volunteer that just got home from a long shift doing parking lot traffic control.

“I’m doing my best not to cuss tonight, ladies and gentlemen,” joked Malone, obviously looking to make a return down the line. Soon enough, he broke his own rule and let a few tender and complimentary expletives escape through his microphone. Judging by the size of the crowd, RodeoHouston might have looked the other way.

Malone spent “Pour Me A Drink” walking the stage crooning with his trademark red Solo cup in hand. 2018’s breakthrough single “Psycho” came reimagined as a soaring anthem, and “White Iverson” began with a few tasteful honky tonk piano licks. It’s impressive how well some of Malone’s earliest singles lend themselves to a pop-country sheen. Even his updated take on “Better Now” sounded like it came straight from Nashville’s Music Row. “Never Love You Again” — sans Sierra Ferrell — was lifted by some fiddle from his virtuosic band member Lillie Mae. Her fiddle remained a constant, steady counter to Malone all night.

It wouldn’t be a RodeoHouston show without another George Strait cover, and Malone delivered his own faithful take on “Ocean Front Property,” to the approving screams of thousands. With the amount of Strait covers this year, it wouldn’t be a surprise if this is some sort of sneaky, conspicuous way of teasing the return of King George to NRG Stadium in 2026.

“Congratulations” was the biggest jolt of the night, full of manic pyro and crying guitar. It was a victory lap, a proof of concept. Sporting his brand-new RodeoHouston belt buckle, Malone utilized every inch of the stage to deliver the most bombastic, uplifting show of 2025.

Setlist

Wrong Ones
Circles
What Don’t Belong To Me
Pour Me A Drink
Psycho
White Iverson
Never Love You Again
Ocean Front Property (George Strait cover)
Better Now
I Had Some Help
Rockstar
Congratulations
Sunflower

Courtesy of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo

Post Malone put a country spin on some of his fan favorite songs.

concert review post malone rodeo houston

Movie Review

Avatar: Fire and Ash returns to Pandora with big action and bold visuals

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Oona Chaplin in Avatar: Fire and Ash.

For a series whose first two films made over $5 billion combined worldwide, Avatar has a curious lack of widespread cultural impact. The films seem to exist in a sort of vacuum, popping up for their run in theaters and then almost as quickly disappearing from the larger movie landscape. The third of five planned movies, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is finally being released three years after its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water.

The new film finds the main duo, human-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his native Na’vi wife, Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), still living with the water-loving Metkayina clan led by Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). While Jake and Neytiri still play a big part, the focus shifts significantly to their two surviving children, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as two they’ve essentially adopted, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Spider (Jack Champion).

Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who lives on in a fabricated Na’vi body, is still looking for revenge on Jake, and he finds help in the form of the Mangkwan Clan (aka the Ash People), led by Varang (Oona Chaplin). Quaritch’s access to human weapons and the Mangkwan’s desire for more power on the moon known as Pandora make them a nice match, and they team up to try to dominate the other tribes.

Aside from the story, the main point of making the films for writer/director James Cameron is showing off his considerable technical filmmaking prowess, and that is on full display right from the start. The characters zoom around both the air and sea on various creatures with which they’ve bonded, providing Cameron and his team with plenty of opportunities to put the audience right there with them. Cameron’s preferred viewing method of 3D makes the experience even more immersive, even if the high frame rate he uses makes some scenes look too realistic for their own good.

The story, as it has been in the first two films, is a mixed bag. Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver start off well, having Jake, Neytiri, and their kids continue mourning the death of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in the previous film. The struggle for power provides an interesting setup, but Cameron and his team seem to drag out the conflict for much too long. This is the longest Avatar film yet, and you really start to feel it in the back half as the filmmakers add on a bunch of unnecessary elements.

Worse than the elongated story, though, is the hackneyed dialogue that Cameron, Jaffa, and Silver have come up with. Almost every main character is forced to spout lines that diminish the importance of the events around them. The writers seemingly couldn’t resist trying to throw in jokes despite them clashing with the tone of the scenes in which they’re said. Combined with the somewhat goofy nature of the Na’vi themselves (not to mention talking whales), the eye-rolling words detract from any excitement or emotion the story builds up.

A pre-movie behind-the-scenes short film shows how the actors act out every scene in performance capture suits, lending an authenticity to their performances. Still, some performers are better than others, with Saldaña, Worthington, and Lang standing out. It’s more than a little weird having Weaver play a 14-year-old girl, but it works relatively well. Those who actually get to show their real faces are collectively fine, but none of them elevate the film overall.

There are undoubtedly some Avatar superfans for which Fire and Ash will move the larger story forward in significant ways. For anyone else, though, the film is a demonstration of both the good and bad sides of Cameron. As he’s proven for 40 years, his visuals are (almost) beyond reproach, but the lack of a story that sticks with you long after you’ve left the theater keeps the film from being truly memorable.

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Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters on December 19.

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