Weekend Event Planner

These are the 8 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

As March blends into April, the Dallas area experiences a busy weekend, with lots of high-profile events taking place. They include the biggest film festival the area has to offer, the national tour of a Tony Award-winning musical, a gaggle of movie and TV celebrities, women's college basketball at its finest, three big concerts, and a popular comedian.

Below are the best options for your precious free time Thursday through Sunday. Don't like what you see? Lucky for you, we have a much longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, March 30

2017 Dallas International Film Festival
The 11th edition of the Dallas International Film Festival is headlined by a special 50th anniversary screening of Bonnie and Clyde on opening night at Dallas City Performance Hall, followed by 10 more days of movies at various venues around Dallas, primarily Angelika Film Center Dallas and Magnolia Theatre. In all, the festival features 122 films from 31 countries, including 75 features and 47 shorts, through April 9.

Dallas Summer Musicals presents Kinky Boots
With songs by pop icon Cyndi Lauper, Kinky Boots takes audiences from a gentlemen’s shoe factory in Northampton to the glamorous catwalks of Milan. Charlie Price is struggling to live up to his father’s expectations and continue the family business. With the factory’s future hanging in the balance, help arrives in the unlikely but spectacular form of Lola, a fabulous performer in need of some sturdy new stilettos. The Tony Award-winning musical plays at Music Hall at Fair Park through April 9.

Friday, March 31

Fan Expo Dallas
Fan Expo Dallas is the largest comics, sci-fi, horror, anime, and gaming event in Texas. Set to host more than 50,000 fans at Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center through Sunday, it features appearances by a slew of movie, TV, and comic book celebrities, including Stan Lee, Mark Hamill, Milo Ventimiglia, Adam West and Burt Ward from Batman, Norman Reedus and Jeffrey Dean Morgan from The Walking Dead, and more.

2017 NCAA Women's Final Four
It's no surprise that the University of Connecticut Huskies have made it back to the Final Four, as they've won each of the past four championships. They are joined on Friday at American Airlines Center by the Mississippi State Bulldogs, Stanford Cardinal, and South Carolina Gamecocks, followed by the championship game on Sunday. Tickets are technically sold out, but secondary market tickets can still be found.

Panic! at the Disco in concert
Las Vegas rockers Panic! at the Disco made a big first impression with their debut album, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, and the hit single, "I Write Sins Not Tragedies." They haven't had any crossover songs since, but that hasn't hurt their popularity, as each of their four subsequent albums have reached the top 10 on the Billboard charts, including 2016's No. 1 Death of a Bachelor. They'll play at Allen Event Center with MisterWives and Saint Motel.

Lisa Lampanelli: Queen of Mean
If you choose to see Lisa Lampanelli in concert, you revoke your right to be offended. That's because Lampanelli, who's been a stand-up comic for over 25 years, is known as the "Queen of Mean," a cross between Don Rickles, Archie Bunker, and a vial of estrogen. She entertains with her brand of insult comedy at Majestic Theatre.

Saturday, April 1

Edgefest 2017
There may no longer be an Edge anymore, but Edgefest lives on, at least for one last time. The 2017 edition of Edgefest, taking place at Toyota Stadium in Frisco, includes performances by Blink-182, The Offspring, 311, Chevelle, Toadies, the Naked and Famous, the Record Company, The Nixons, Dreamers, Goodbye June, Missio, Black Pistol Fire, Badflower, and The Wrecks.

Sunday, April 2

Gladys Knight in concert
The great ones endure, and Gladys Knight has long been one of the greatest. Very few singers over the last 50 years have matched her unassailable artistry. The seven-time Grammy winner has enjoyed No.1 hits in Pop, Gospel, R&B, and Adult Contemporary, along with success in film and television. She performs a retrospective of songs from throughout her career at Winspear Opera House, including from her latest album, 2014's Where My Heart Belongs.

The 2017 Dallas International Film Festival takes place through April 9 at various venues, mostly the Angelika Film Center Dallas.

Photo by Marc Lee

The 2017 Dallas International Film Festival takes place through April 9 at various venues, mostly the Angelika Film Center Dallas.

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Movie Review

Faces of Death returns with modern twist on cult horror film

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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