2. Where to eat in Dallas right now: 9 hottest new dessert destinations. There's always room for dessert. It's there if you want to go out but you don't want to splurge for a whole meal. As luck would have it, Dallas has seen a big wave of new shops specializing in sweet treats, to fill all those needs and more. Here are nine new destinations for dessert.
3. Texas fashion designer closes all stores, including last one in DFW. Fans of Elaine Turner learned on November 14 that the popular Texas designer was closing her final store. Her Fort Worth store at The Shops at Clearfork, barely a year old, closed quietly in September.
4. These are the 12 best things to do in Dallas this Thanksgiving weekend. Thanksgiving weekend is when the holidays officially kick off in the Dallas area. Eight of the 12 events we're featuring are holiday themed, including ones with ice sculptures, theater, shopping, mazes, classical music, dancing, and lights galore. Here are the best ways to spend your free time this weekend.
5. Dallasites party like rock stars to raise $1 million at Perot Museum gala. If Billboard rated Dallas galas like they do songs, the Perot Museum's "Night at the Museum: Rock the Perot" bash would top the charts. More than 1,000 guests filled every floor of the nature and science museum for its annual gala on November 10. And the rock-star party proved to be a million-dollar fundraiser.
Hannah John-Kamen, Lewis Pullman, Wyatt Russell, David Harbour, Florence Pugh, and Sebastian Stan in Thunderbolts*.
For the longest time, keeping up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe felt essential for movie lovers, even if not every movie lived up to expectations. But since the end of the MCU’s Phase 3 in 2019 and the ramping up of related TV shows on Disney+, the quality of the films and the disparate nature of the storytelling has vastly brought down how important each new movie felt.
That disposable nature is on full display in the new Thunderbolts*(the asterisk makes sense by the end), which tries to make hay with a bunch of characters who’ve only been seen briefly before. Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), and Ava Starr, aka Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) are each mercenaries who work for CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Caught up in a scandal, de Fontaine attempts to have them eliminate each other, a scheme that results in them teaming up together.
Plans for revenge, which grow to include Yelena’s father Alexei, aka Red Guardian (David Harbour), and now-Congressman Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), are waylaid by the presence of Bob (Lewis Pullman), who shows up mysteriously during the main trio’s escape attempt. It’s the powers that Bob displays that become the main thrust of the film, with de Fontaine trying to harness them for her own good and the others joining forces to prevent him from doing too much harm.
Directed by Jake Schreier and written by Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo, Thunderbolts* does what most recent MCU movies have done: intrigue for a while before devolving into a confusing mess of CGI and poor storytelling. The filmmakers try for a light tone, especially through the comedic character of Alexei, but they never seem to find the right wavelength. The film takes a dark turn in its final hour, an interesting development that never reaches its full potential and comes to an abrupt end.
The collection of characters is as random as they come, with Yelena and Alexei last seen together in 2021’s Black Widow, John Walker last seen in the 2021 TV show The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Ghost last seen in Ant-Man and the Wasp in 2018. Bucky, aka The Winter Soldier, is seemingly meant to be the main connective tissue that casual fans will know and enjoy, but his storyline fails to make sense, especially when he shows up out of nowhere at a crucial point in the film.
Ultimately, the film never makes a case for audiences to care about anything that happens. They throw a bone toward relating it to Captain America: Brave New World, and, of course, hint at upcoming movies, but Phase 5 of the MCU (which started with 2023’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania) has been so disjointed that it feels like the majority of it will never be spoken of again. If it doesn’t matter to those making the films, why should the audience invest in anything the characters are doing?
Despite the subpar nature of the film, it’s cast very well. Pugh is a great actor who far outshines anything she’s asked to do. Harbour hams it up amiably, and Russell finds a way to make the most of his character. John-Kamen doesn’t get as much to do as others, but she has a nice presence to her. Pullman (who, weirdly, played another funnily-named Bob in Top Gun: Maverick) has a tricky role, but he makes it work. And Louis-Dreyfus understands how to toe the line between corrupt and wholly evil.
If the next phase of the MCU (which starts with the upcoming The Fantastic Four: First Steps) works, then the movies of the past few years will likely fade into oblivion. In the case of Thunderbolts*, it won’t be a big loss, as it showcases characters paired together for no discernible reason with forgettable results.
