Texas hip-hop and electronic music fest JMBLYA dropped a hot bill in January but kept the location secret — until now. The unique two-day, two-city event will take over Fair Park in Dallas on May 5 and Austin's Circuit of The Americas on May 6.
The Dallas venue is the same as last year, but the 2017 locale for Austin is a major upgrade. In 2016 the fest was held in the parking lot of the Austin American-Statesman. This year, COTA will host JMBLYA at Lakeside Lot C, which offers plenty of room and free parking.
"It's surreal to think that this festival started inside of venues [Southside Ballroom in Dallas and Austin Music Hall in Austin] and now requires sites with room to grow," says Sascha Stone Guttfreund, founder and president of ScoreMore Shows, in a release. The Austin-based promoters are also behind Neon Desert Music Festival in El Paso and San Antonio's successful Mala Luna Music Festival.
"To me, COTA isn't solely a venue for us to grow — they are a great ally for us to grow with. They value the importance of producing great events as well as protecting the experience and the safety of the people who choose to attend."
The location announcement comes with two new lineup additions: Gucci Mane and Migos. These buzzy names will join headliner Chance the Rapper and Steve Aoki, Lil Uzi Vert, 6LACK, Young Dolph, Snow Tha Product, YFN Lucci, Pell, and DJ Mr. Rogers.
General admission passes for JMBLYA are on sale now for $60 (per day). A limited number of VIP packages are also up for grabs; they range from $99 to $299.
The most important thing for any movie to establish early on is its tone. No matter the genre, a film needs to make its audience understand how they should feel as the story unfolds so that they’re willing to go along with whatever transpires on screen. A film that doesn't do that, such as the new Onslaught, runs the risk of failing to connect with viewers even if it has some interesting or fun elements to offer.
One of the biggest issues for the movie is that it fails to fully invest in its main character, Celeste (Adriana Arjona). She’s a military veteran who now lives in and manages a desert trailer park, which is filled with a motley crew of offbeat people. She also has a contentious relationship with her ex, who unexpectedly drops off their daughter, Daisy (Blake Kennedy), soon after the film begins.
Celeste has a stash of high-powered weapons, showing she hasn’t left her former career fully behind. Her expertise comes in handy when something goes wrong at a nearby military contractor facility run by Hans Kemmler (Dan Stevens), and a trio of super soldiers escapes into the wild. Trained to kill everyone in their path, it’s not long before they set their glowing eyes on the trailer park.
Directed by Adam Wingard and written by Simon Barrett, the film has elements of horror, action, and comedy, but the filmmakers struggle to find the right combination of the three. Wingard and Barrett divide the film’s focus between the trailer park and the military facility for a long time at the beginning of the film, and the quirkiness of people at the former mixed with the bold weirdness of the people at the latter keeps viewers off balance in a bad way.
Once they finally settle into the main part of the story where the super soldiers go on a rampage, the filmmakers overpromise and underdeliver. The showdown between a seemingly unstoppable group and an angry woman and her band of misfits seems destined to be highly entertaining, but comes off as underwhelming. The sequence is filled with brutality with no meaning and heroics that feel more accidental than purposeful.
The ham-fisted way in which the story plays out is disappointing since the film has a bunch of characters who could have been great if used properly. The trauma of Celeste’s military career and personal life is hinted at, but doesn't come into play as much as expected. Hans and his wife Hanna (Rebecca Hall) are completely off-the-wall, but their eccentricities seem to be apropos of nothing. The super soldiers are initially intimidating, but the climactic sequence undercuts them significantly.
Arjona has yet to fully break out despite some good roles in Hit Man and the Disney+ show Andor. She makes for a good lead here, embodying the toughness of a military veteran while still being relatable. Stevens and Hall go all in with their bonkers characters, but the story doesn’t serve them well. Comic relief comes in the form of Reginald VelJohnson and Eric Wareheim, and they do a great job in smaller roles.
A movie like Onslaught is typically one where the audience just turns off their brains and enjoys the carnage. But Wingard and Barrett try a little too hard by throwing in oddball characters that don’t add much to the story, forgetting to pay enough attention to the mechanics of the plot in the process.
