The best place to be in Dallas on a hot summer night is inside an air-conditioned building — bonus points when that building is full of dinosaur fossils.
Thursdays on Tap, Dallas’ favorite Thursday night hangout, is back in full swing at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science now through October 26.
Photo courtesy of Perot Museum
Thursdays on Tap is the place to be for curious adults.
Whether you’re looking for a fun date night or a unique place to meet up with friends or coworkers, Thursdays on Tap is the place to be for the 21-and-up crowd each Thursday from 6-10 pm.
It gives you the unique opportunity to explore the Perot Museum’s premier exhibit halls without the daytime crowds or kids — and with a drink in hand. In addition to full museum access, guests can also enjoy:
Live music from local artists
Delicious snacks and meals from food trucks parked outside
Craft beers, courtesy of Community Beer Co.
Cocktail and wine options, which now include Sonoma Time Frosé
For more information and to purchase tickets — you'll want to do that in advance, these adults-only gatherings do tend to sell out — visit here.
If you do want to bring the kids to explore the Perot Museum's five levels of discovery and adventure, there’s no shortage of fun to be found during the day.
Marvel at everything from towering dinosaurs to space exploration to diamonds. Take part in hands-on STEM activities, race a T. rex, catch a 3-D film, and so much more.
Austin Abrams has been a professional actor for 15 years, but the 30-year-old seems to just now be getting his due. After years of mostly supporting roles in films like Paper Towns, Brad’s Status, and Weapons, he has been charged with leading two films in 2026 where he’s largely acting by himself: First Resident Evil and now Whalefall.
Abrams plays Jay Gardiner, who has returned home to California a year after the death of his hard-ass father, Mitt (Josh Brolin). The two had a tempestuous relationship, and while his mom (Elisabeth Shue) and sisters (Jane Levy and Emily Rudd) reminisce fondly about him, Jay finds it difficult to come up with good memories. The two did share a connection with the ocean, and Jay decides to honor him by going scuba diving.
Ignoring warnings of whale activity in the area, Jay makes his way out into a notoriously dangerous part of the ocean near their home. Soon after he starts swimming, he encounters a sperm whale chasing after a giant squid. Jay inadvertently gets sucked into the enormous creature’s mouth and, ultimately, inside its body. Faced with a seemingly inescapable situation, Jay’s only hope lies in the lessons his father taught him.
Directed by Brian Duffield and adapted by Duffield and Daniel Kraus from Kraus’ book of the same name, the film is at its best when it depicts Jay struggling to survive within the whale. The claustrophobic nature of the setting and the various obstacles (multiple contracting chambers, the squid, and more) he faces make every scene inside the whale feel as intense and cover-your-eyes scary as any great horror movie.
Naturally, the entire movie can’t be about his survival efforts, and so the filmmakers toggle back and forth between Jay’s ordeal in the whale to memories of times with his father. Not so coincidentally, these remembrances come with subtle or overt wisdom from Mitt that would serve Jay well in his current situation. More often than not, these flashback scenes are so on-the-nose that they come off as cheesy instead of inspirational.
It’s also difficult to derive any big emotions from the story other than revulsion at the way Jay’s body is brutalized while he’s inside the whale. None of the characters in the film receive a notable introduction to the audience before big events start happening. It’s next-to-impossible to be invested in their stories when their personalities are being revealed in bits and pieces throughout the movie.
Abrams does well enough in bringing out the terror Jay feels in the whale and the sullenness/anger he has toward his father in other scenes. But whether it’s because his lines in the whale are hard to understand (he’s often talking around a scuba mouthpiece) or the disconnect the character has with father, there’s just something missing in his performance. Brolin’s performance is one-note, and Shue, Levy, Rudd, and John Ortiz don’t appear enough to make a big impact.
With Kraus onboard as the co-writer of the film, it may be the case that Duffield was not given leeway to change the story of Whalefall too much. What might have worked in the book doesn’t seem to translate equally to the film, and while Jay’s nightmare in the whale is effective, the rest of his story doesn’t come across as successfully.
