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.

Mary Queen of Scots: ...and Elizabeth 1

It's 1869, England and Scotland are going at it like a couple of rivalrous siblings. Mary is the Queen of Scotland. Elizabeth is on the English thrown. Talk about formidable foes.

Their struggles for power are all the more daunting because they are women in a men's world.

Margot Robbie is an excellent Elizabeth. Saoirse Ronan is her upstart nemesis. We all know the off-with-her-head ending. It's getting there that his beautiful costume drama is supposed to unravel. Alas, it doesn't. Maybe if she cracked open a history book, the Movie Slut would have understood all the twists and turns.

But should she really have to do homework before visiting the multiplex?

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

So you think Peter Parker is the one and only Spider-Man.

How quaint.

So you think there's only one universe.

How last millennium.

In the latest Spider-Man flick we learn about the multi-verse and the other Spider-folks. A break in the time/space continuum brings them together to fight the evil Kingpin.

Miles Morales, a Brooklyn teen, and the Spider-Man in the universe The Movie Slut calls home, is our hero.

It's all flying fun (especially when Peter Porker, aka a Spider-creature Miss Piggy would love, is on screen) and the animation is out of this world, er, universe.

The Favourite:

Poor Queen Anne (Olivia Coleman). She's unsound in body and mind. Luckily she has Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) to make governing decisions. Of course, Lady Sarah always has her own best interest and that of her husband in mind.

It's early in the 18th century. Britain is at war with France. No matter, courtiers are having a grand old time while the peasants pay and die.

Enter Abigail (Emma Stone). She ingratiates herself, first to Lady Sarah and then to the Queen, not to improve conditions for those who are suffering, but to elevate herself and replace Sarah. The formidable Sarah doesn't give up easily.

Let the feathers fly.