is unloading a new party experience for visitors this summer.
Sixteen shipping containers have been customized specifically for Lagoonfest Texas — opening May 28 — and will be used as bars, a restaurant, an entertainment stage, rooftop party decks, ticket booth, and restrooms to frame a diamond-shaped courtyard. Gone will be the party and event tents.
Container exteriors feature white shiplap and the interiors sport a white and natural wood color theme with black railings, white awnings, and furniture, per a press release.
Visitors can lounge in the plaza amenities during the day and after the sun sets and the lagoon closes, hang out in the courtyard to relax, eat and drink, and enjoy live music.
These containers and new courtyard are part of $2.2 million in enhancements to Lagoonfest Texas, formerly known as the Summer Lagoonfest.
Other improvements include deeper white-sand beaches that triple the amount of available beach; a greater selection of luxury cabanas and seating; more kayaks, stand-up paddle boards and sailboats; and a 185-foot, five-story waterslide.
Also cruising in is a new electric ferry that will transport people to a VIP luxury beach experience, where patrons can enjoy bottle service.
For kids and active types, Lagoonfest Texas also boasts the largest floating obstacle course on a lagoon in the U.S.
Admission for Lagoonfest Texas (which is nestled in the Lago Mar community at 3240 Lago Mar Blvd. in Texas City), starts at $15 for children under age 13 and $20 for those age 13 and older. Children aged two and under are admitted for free. Advance tickets are available online.
One of the oddest things about the blockbuster era we live in is that while Disney owns the rights to the majority of Marvel comic book characters, Sony Pictures owns the rights to Spider-Man and any affiliated characters. Since they’re sharing Spider-Man himself with Disney, Sony has been trying to capitalize on those rights by making stand-alone films using niche characters that only comic book fanatics would know.
Having exhausted Venom and whiffed on attempts with Morbius and Madame Web, they’re trying again with Kraven the Hunter. Also known as Sergei Kravinoff, Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is a self-styled vigilante who, as the film tells it, travels the world exacting vengeance on the truly bad people of the world. He’s the son of Nikolai (Russell Crowe), a hard-edged Russian oligarch, and brother to Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), who is relatively weak compared to the rest of his family.
The origin story has Kraven gaining his animal-like powers - including super-strength, speed, and jumping abilities - as a teenager from a mysterious serum given to him by a girl named Calypso (played as an adult by Ariana DeBose) after he was mauled by a lion. The two maintain a tenuous partnership as adults, with Calypso helping him hunt down other villains like Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola) and The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott).
Directed by J.C. Chandor and written by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway, the film looks and feels enormously lazy, something made merely to hold on to potentially valuable intellectual property. Other than the tense family dynamic between the Kravinovs, little makes sense in the story. Kraven has an indecipherable moral code that has him going after poachers - because he’s part lion? - in addition to other high-powered criminals, with no clear goal except to … get back at his father?
The laziness extends to the action scenes, which feature Kraven being mostly impervious to any damage, whether it’s hand-to-hand combat, knives, or guns. The CGI-heavy scenes don’t even allow moviegoers to enjoy an R-rated bloody free-for-all, as all of the blood splatter is computer-generated, too. Since apparently one Spider-Man villain is not enough, three others make appearances with abilities that are under-explained and CGI that is poorly done.
That’s not even counting Calypso, another Spider-Man villain whose purpose in this film is nebulous at best. Her early connection with Kraven is so coincidental as to be laughable, and her continued reasons for helping him as an adult strain credulity as well. The only saving grace of her presence is that the filmmakers don’t try to shoehorn romance into the plot; perhaps they’re saving that for the (inevitable?) sequel.
Taylor-Johnson has had one of the most prolific-yet-anonymous careers in modern Hollywood, with appearances in big films like The Fall Guy, Bullet Train, and Tenet that have made very little impact. Even as the star here, he fails to hold your attention, with the story and visuals doing him no favors. DeBose has followed up her Oscar win for West Side Story with schlock like I.S.S., Argylle, and this, which doesn’t bode well for her career. At least Crowe gets to chew the scenery.
With a contractual inability to mention the name “Spider-Man,” movies like Kraven the Hunter exist in a weird area that forces filmmakers to make up stories for characters to which most people have no attachment. And just like Sony’s previous efforts, it is a very poor way to spend two hours in a movie theater; avoid at all costs.
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Kraven the Hunter opens in theaters on December 13.