ALSO SHOWING
Shazam! (12A)
Big meets Superman in Shazam! – an endearingly silly origins story for one of DC’S less mainstream comic-book heroes. The story of an invincible, red-suited, lightning-wielding do-gooder whose alter ego happens to be a 14-year-old foster kid, the film is so attuned to the fundamental appeal that superheroes hold for kids that it feels like the first film in an age designed specifically with them in mind, not the ageing army of adult fans who long ago won the battle to make the world take comic books seriously. Zachary Levi and Asher Angel respectively play the superhero and his teenage alter ego while Jack Dylan Glazer steals every scene as his comic-book-worshipping foster brother. It doesn’t all work, but this is mostly sly, wry, irreverent fun for the 10-to-14-set – and those still in touch with the uncynical delights of being that age.
Pet Sematary (15)
Even by classic Stephen King standards, the horror master’s 1983 novel Pet Sematary was dark and disturbing and the King-penned 1989 film adaptation, directed by MTV stalwart Mary Lambert, was efficiently scary for its day, exploiting its upsetting premise for all it was worth and searing into the minds of anyone who saw it the nasty work a scalpel could make of an exposed Achilles’ tendon. The fact that the film version has been largely forgotten in the 30 years since will undoubtedly work to this new version’s advantage, which exhumes the story and manages to resurrect some of what made it so creepy. But as with the zombified pets that emerge from the titular misspelled graveyard, it comes back slightly altered and not necessarily for the better. Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, and John Lithgow star. ■