Weekend Event Planner

These are the 10 best things to do in Fort Worth this weekend

It'll be Christmas in June when an exhibition featuring a favorite holiday special comes to Fort Worth this weekend. Other choices include three new local theatrical productions, two comedians, screenings of an acclaimed independent movie, two concerts, and the opening of a new art exhibition.

Below are the best ways to spend your precious free time this weekend. Want more options? Lucky for you, we have a much longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, June 15

Stage West presents I Wanna F*cking Tear You Apart
Best friends and roommates Sam and Leo are an unbreakable team. United by their cozy co-dependent diet of mutual self-loathing and Grey’s Anatomy marathons, this "us-against-the-world" pair loves each other to absolute death. But when a new friend enters the scene, doubt creeps in and a shattering secret is about to be dragged kicking and screaming into the light. I Wanna F*cking Tear You Apart, making its regional premiere at Stage West, runs through July 9.

Casa Mañana presents One Hit Wonders of the '60s and '70s
Casa Mañana's Reid Cabaret Theatre heads back to the ages of hippies and disco with One Hit Wonders of the '60s and '70s. The original artists of these songs may have had dreams of fame beyond a three-minute track, but these songs have stuck with us for decades. Audiences will hear favorites such as “Kung Fu Fighting,” “Spirit in the Sky,” “Ride Captain Ride,” “Afternoon Delight,” and many more. The production runs through June 24.

Improv Arlington presents LaVar Walker
Comedian LaVar Walker got his big break in 2012, winning the "Stand up its Miller Time" national comedy championship, earning praise from everyone from Shaquille O'Neal to Kevin Hart. He has appeared on Uptown Comic, The Mo'Nique Show, and BET's ComicView. He'll perform six times through Sunday at Improv Arlington.

Friday, June 16

Magnolia at the Modern: Munch
Henrik M. Dahlsbakken's Munch brings to the big screen the life story of one of the world's most significant modern painters, Edvard Munch. Misunderstood by his peers, rejected by the art establishment, wracked with grief over the loss of his younger sister and tortured by addiction, the film portrays Munch's life, painting an intimate and nuanced picture of the artist and his work across four chapters. The film, which is in Norwegian with English subtitles, will screen seven times through Sunday at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Theatre Arlington presents Fly By Night
A star-crossed prophecy. Two charming sisters and a luckless sandwich maker. A lot of music. Just not a lot of light. In this darkly comic rock-fable, a melancholy sandwich maker’s humdrum life is intersected by two entrancing sisters. A sweeping ode to young love set against the backdrop of the Northeast blackout of 1965, Fly By Night is a tale about making your way and discovering hope in a world beset by darkness. The production, which had its premiere in Dallas in 2013, runs through July 2 at Theatre Arlington.

Brit Floyd in concert
Brit Floyd's “50 Years of Dark Side” tour celebrates the 50th Anniversary of Pink Floyd’s album masterpiece, The Dark Side of the Moon. Featuring over two and a half hours of Pink Floyd music encompassing the band’s iconic career, the show includes state-of-the-art visuals (lights, lasers and animation) presented with immersive soundscapes and virtuosic musicianship. The concert will be at Will Rogers Auditorium.

Hyena's presents Slade Ham
Slade Ham went up against Kevin Pollak at the Just for Laughs festival and won, was a staff writer for the African Film Critics Awards, and appeared on A&E’s Flipped Off alongside Survivor’s Russel Hantz. He is a regular on the nationally syndicated Bob & Tom Show, co-host of The Outlaw Dave Show in Houston, and host of the bi-weekly Whiskey Brothers Podcast. He'll perform four times through Saturday at Hyena's Comedy Club.

Billy Currington in concert
Country singer Billy Currington must be doing something right, as he continues to be at or near the top of charts seven albums into his relatively short career with his most recent album being 2021's Intuition. He's chalked up 11 No. 1 Country Airplay songs since 2006. He'll play at Billy Bob's Texas.

Saturday, June 17

Fort Worth Museum of Science and History presents "Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!"
It may be hot outside, but visitors can step into the world of winter with the new exhibit, "Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!" The latest traveling exhibition from the Charles M. Schulz Museum examines the making of the animated classic and celebrates the anticipation, joy, and pitfalls of the holiday season. Included with museum admission, the exhibition will be on display at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History through August 20.

Amon Carter Museum of American Art presents Leonardo Drew: Number 235T opening day
Sculptor Leonardo Drew is the next contemporary artist to transform the Museum’s first floor galleries with a new site-specific commission. Known for his large-scale, multi-dimensional installations, Drew employs organic materials to create topographies that are at once looming in size and stunning in their intricacies. For Number 235T, Drew will anchor sculptural pieces that he refers to as “planets” and surround them with hundreds of smaller objects as he works to identify the interconnectedness of them all. The exhibition will be on display through June 2024.

Photo by Hannah Bell

Theatre Arlington presents Fly By Night through July 2.

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Movie Review

New thriller A Different Man: a lesson in be careful what you wish for

Photo by Matt Infante/courtesy of A24

Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan in A Different Man.

Movies that deal with physical or psychological differences in humans tend to be earnest affairs, with the affected person either rising above the odds or teaching people around them a lesson in compassion. Nothing of the sort is featured in A Different Man, where the only lesson learned is one of humility by the main character with the physical difference.

Edward (Sebastian Stan), whose face and head are enlarged from an unspecified condition, is an actor who makes a meager living starring in workplace education videos. He lives in a drab, rundown apartment, and seems generally depressed, just trying to get through each day without suffering some kind of humiliation.

His outlook starts to change when Ingrid (Renate Reinsve) moves in next door and treats him with kindness. Whether to attract her attention or to get out of his malaise, Edward agrees to an experimental treatment that promises to get rid of his condition. It’s no big spoiler to say that it works, but what happens after is a surprise, especially when Oswald (Adam Pearson), a man with a similar condition but a much sunnier disposition, comes into his life.

Written and directed by Aaron Schimberg, the film is nowhere near as straightforward as that synopsis makes it sound. Schimberg inserts all kinds of weird details, including a never-ending leak in Edward’s apartment and odd time jumps, that keep the audience on their heels. And while it would be wrong to say that Edward’s condition is ignored by others in the film, as he gets more than a few stares, few people actively comment on it.

In fact, Schimberg seems much more interested in Edward’s mental health than his physical state. His personality stands in stark contrast to that of Oswald, who seems to approach every situation with positivity and confidence, as if his condition didn’t even exist. The film has a lot going on after the two meet, but the push and pull between how each man approaches the world provides the central conflict.

Consequently, the film often plays out more as a comedy than as a drama. Edward’s post-transformation world is even stranger than the one he inhabited before, and every interaction he has is laced with an undercurrent of artifice, with no one acting in a normal manner. Edward finds himself in increasingly absurd situations that test his mental wellness, and the oddness of them elicit laughs more than anything else.

Stan is a chameleon of an actor who’s played everything from a Marvel superhero to an upcoming turn as a young Donald Trump. He plays both sides of Edward well, giving off a sad-sack energy no matter his physical state. But it’s Pearson who steals the movie, as he projects a spiritedness that turns Oswald from someone who might be pitied into someone who’s a force of nature. Reinsve makes for an able foil for both characters.

A Different Man is a film that’s in conversation with the recent The Substance, as they both deal with people who seek to change their appearance, albeit for very different reasons. In both cases, it falls under a “be careful what you wish for” scenario, with the solution not necessarily delivering the result the person wanted.

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A Different Man is now playing in theaters.

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