weekend event planner

Here are the top 9 things to do in Houston this weekend

Round up the crew and spread the love at the Jameson's Love Thy Neighborhood Block Party.

Photo courtesy of Jameson's

The Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo is officially underway, which means many people and places around Houston will be getting into the rodeo spirit. One of those spots is B.B. Lemon, which is having a rodeo-themed party on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, where it will be launching its all-new brunch menu. (There will also be a raffle for someone to win four tickets to the George Strait show on March 17.)

Aside from the rodeo, look for fun events, including a former first lady and a big, wild whiskey bash.

Thursday, February 28

Goethe Pop Up Houston presents Pop Up Kino: Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

Thanks to Goethe Pop Up Houston, MATCH has been doing a monthly, German-movie night simply known as Pop Up Kino. The classic piece of German cinema that'll be screening this month is Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. Fassbinder's masterful homage to Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows follows a lonely widow who falls in love with a much-younger Arab worker and everyone and everything begins to turn against them. 6:30 pm.

Friday, March 1

The Rink Opening Party at Discovery Green
The Rink, Houston's first outdoor roller rink, returns for a third season at Discovery Green, open daily through Sunday, April 21. Among the weekly events scheduled at the rink: Time Warp Tuesdays (skate to songs from past decades), Let the Good Times Roll Date Night (bring your date and request a special song via Twitter or Instagram), and Superhero Saturdays (roller-skate with some of your favorite superheroes and storybook characters). The party is free, but skating fees apply. 6-10 pm.

Tommy Wiseau at Landmark River Oaks
It's gonna get crazy at Landmark River Oaks this weekend. Not only will the theater screen the so-bad-it's-magnificent cult oddity The Room as its midnight movie on Friday and Saturday night, but star-writer-director Tommy Wiseau will actually be in attendance. The man whom James Franco captured flawlessly in The Disaster Artist (aka the making of The Room) will be in town to take questions and, most likely, act very, very weird. 11:59 pm.

Saturday, March 2

Spring Fest at City Acre Brewing Co.
Apart from being the only craft-beer company/hall ran by the managing editor of Fangoria Magazine, City Acre Brewing has many fun events happening on their premises. One such event is their answer to Oktoberfest, called Spring Fest. This free garden party will be held at City Acre's robust garden, where guests are encouraged to feast on festive food (boudin balls, deviled eggs) and toss back exclusive beer debuts, including Holiday Hund cranberry kolsch, Ghost Prost Peaflower Pils, and Cedarbraish cedar-aged barleywine. 11 am-5 pm.

Karina Nistal Album Release Party at The Pub Galleria
For the past couple of decades, Karina Nistal has been literally singing and dancing her way in and around the Houston nightlife scene. She has dropped a couple of full-length releases in the past, albums that have shown off her aspirations as a dance-music diva. After trying to make a name for herself in Los Angeles, she's back in H-Town for the release party of her latest, crowd-funded album Je Ne Sais Quoi. Metanoia and DJs Joe B and BBC will also be on hand to provide some music. 8 pm-2 am.

Michelle Obama at Toyota Center
With the exception of Oprah and Beyonce, is there a more powerful, African-American woman currently rolling around than Michelle Obama? Witness the rapturous round of applause she received at this year's Grammys. Expect some more wild cheers from the crowd when she appear in Houston this weekend, having an intimate conversation with former NPR host Michele Norris, as part of the U.S. book tour for her memoir, Becoming. 8 pm.

Sunday, March 3

8th Annual Houston Kosher Chili Cookoff
Known as the largest kosher food event in Houston, the Houston Kosher Chili Cookoff celebrates the fellowship of the Jewish community with a day of food, live entertainment, contests and family-friendly activities, while raising funds for nonprofit organizations in the Houston Jewish community. Cookoff attendees have the opportunity to sample an unlimited amount of Houston’s best kosher chili and enjoy live music, a moonwalk, climbing walls, balloon artists, a jalapeño eating contest and more. Noon-4 pm.

Crawfish Season at The Rustic
Crawfish season is here, which means everyone and their momma will be having crawfish throwdowns all over Houston. Every Sunday in March, The rustic (Pat Green's popular restaurant/music venue) will be serving up crawdads in four different ways: crawfish with corn and potatoes (2 pounds), crawfish etouffee, fried crawfish tails, and the good ol' crawfish po' boy. 3 pm.

Jameson Love Thy Neighbor Block Party at 8th Wonder Brewery
Jameson's Irish Whiskey and 8th Wonder Brewery have joined forces for the Jameson's Love Thy Neighborhood Block Party this weekend. They have a once-off collaboration brew aged in ex-Jameson whiskey barrels called the "White Tuxedo." This imperial Dunkelweizen, brewed with Texas honey and champagne yeast, was inspired by Robert Ellis’ new album Texas Piano Man, which nods to a true-to-Texas, “approachable fancy” lifestyle that encourages “champagne everyday." Jameson's throws these bashes nationwide, so be prepared for one raucous block party. 3-7 pm.

event-planner

Movie Review

Action-packed Kraven the Hunter showcases gritty Marvel antihero

Photo by Jay Maidment

Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Kraven the Hunter.

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.

---

Kraven the Hunter opens in theaters on December 13.

movies film