Penguins: Awwwwwwww!

Meet Steve. He's a five-year old Adelie penguin about to embark on his first mating season. As if that's not daunting enough, he lives in Antarctica, the most forbidding climate on Earth.

 Luckily, he can talk, or to be more accurate, has borrowed the voice of Ed Helms to tell us about his fascinating, frightening, fabulous adventure full of dangerous foes like killer whales and leopard seals. But it's all worth it when he meets the love of his life in Disneynature's latest contribution to our knowledge and understanding of our planet and its inhabitants.

The kids will love this flick. That's kids of all ages, including those well into the double digits, read grandma and gramps.

Amazing Grace: Aretha sings

After more than four decades, Aretha Franklin fans can finally see the concert she gave in 1972 at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Los Angeles. The two-night concert was well worth waiting for.

You won't hear "Respect," "I Say a Little Prayer," "A Natural Woman," or any of the hit songs she'd already made famous. This concert served as the recording for her album, "Amazing Grace," which became the best-selling gospel music album of all time.

Even if you're not a diehard gospel fan, you'll recognize some of the songs, including "You've Got A Friend," "My Sweet Lord," and, of course, her heart-stopping rendition of "Amazing Grace."

Missing Link: Find it. See it. Love it.

It's been a long time since the Movie Slut has given a flick a no-holds-barred RAVE. Now she can't contain her enthusiasm for this visually stunning and fun family film.

Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman's voice) is a stuffy British explorer at a time when stuffy British clubs were the place to hang out when not out searching for mythical creatures. To everyone's surprise—including his—he discovers Big Foot, a lonely missing link and consents to help find Mr. Link's long lost relatives.

An odyssey follows that takes Sir Lionel and Link to the Pacific North West, back to England, through India and on to the Himalayas. The Movie Slut is sure you'll want to tag along on their journey.

Little: It's no "Big"

When Regina Hall is on the screen in this disappointing flick, she elevates it to an acceptable level of entertainment. Alas, she's absent for most of the film about a bad boss who learns the errors of her ways when she's magically returned  to middle school and discovers there's more to life than making big bucks.

The Movie Slut was hoping for a funny, smart film that added something to a bevy of movies about bad bosses and repeat childhoods. But it was not to be. But don't take her word for it. Here are comments from her movie companions.

Sid, 8. "I think the movie was super-duper predictable. On a scale of one to ten, I give it a zero, and,"Sid added, piling on a bit, "it was too long."

Annie, 13. "Maybe if I hadn't seen "The Devil Wears Prada," "Freaky Friday," and "Big," I would have liked it, but I thought it was cliched."

Barbara S., aka Nana, "I thought that the characters were very shallow and it was very predictable."

As usual, the Movie Slut found redeeming value in one department: Wardrobe. All the characters were impeccably dressed in interesting fashion-forward styles. Too bad they weren't also given a quality script.

Shazam!: Super Fun

Finally, a superhero who doesn't take him or herself too seriously. Unless, of course, arch villains are on the scene.

Backstory: Fourteen-year-old Billy Batson is an orphan with a history of escaping foster homes. Flashbacks reenact the moment his mother disappeared about ten years earlier and his many attempts to find her. Instead, he finds himself transformed into a superhero with a multitude of powers. Still a fourteen year old at heart, he employs his talents with all the maturity of a middle school student.

Think Tom Hanks in Big if he could fly.

The Movie Slut isn't this flick's target audience. Still, she enjoyed the wild ride even if the prolonged flight scenes went on and on and on and...

The Mustang: Not a gallluping success

Based on a real prison program in which inmates train wild horses to be auctioned rather than euthanized, this decent film about a violent convict and his equally unruly mustang never reaches the emotional pitch it should have. At least that's the Movie Slut's opinion.

Roman Coleman has been locked up for twelve years when he's approached to enter the program. His hair-trigger temper sent him to the big house for attacking the mother of his child, who never recovered from her injuries. And that temper is on display when we first see him behind bars.

He meets his match with the seemingly untrainable horse, which surely could happen. It just seemed too pat and predictable for MS, who expected more fits and starts, sweat and tears. Still, if you're an equine-lover, by all means buy a tic for this flick.

Aftermath: Love amidst the ashes

A young British couple, Rachael and Lewis (Keira Knightly & Jason Clarke), arrive in war torn Hamburg after World War II. The husband is a British army captain charged with rebuilding the city. They are to live in a spacious, gracious home owned by Stefan (Alexander Skarsgard) a wealthy German who's to be dispatched to a camp. But the kindhearted captain allows the German and his daughter to remain in their home in separate living quarters.

The contrived plot moves on to send the colonel out of town, leaving the beautiful wife and the handsome German to put their animosities aside.

What appears to be a typical love triangle, however, is anything but. There are five sides to this relationship, including Stefan's wife and Rachel's young son, both of whom died in bombing raids.


Despite the heavy-handed maneuvering, Aftermath is a decent flick that captures time and place more gracefully than the you-saw-it-coming-from-a-mile-away love story.

Badla: The Game Is On

Sherlock would have loved to solve this mystery. A dead man in a room locked from the inside. His lover found at the scene with a head wound suffered in the altercation.

Whodunit?
And why?

That's what a lawyer, who turns up to interview the wounded, bereaved lover, sets out to discover. But nothing is as it seems in this intriguing and fun Hindi film.

It may not all add up in the end. It may demand more than a soupcon of suspended disbelief. But, hey, it's a hell of a ride and well worth the trip.