Art attack…
★★★★★ OUT 8 JULY DIGITAL
I’m the thorns that protect the rose,’ insists gentle Alejandro (Julio Torres), shielding his monstrously rude critic boss Elizabeth (a roaring, magenta-haired Tilda Swinton) from the New York art world’s naked hatred. In this whimsical absurdist comedy, wannabe toy designer Alejandro will be sent back to El Salvador if he can’t urgently earn visa sponsorship by arranging an art show of the weird egg paintings made by Elizabeth’s cryogenically frozen husband Bobby.
Writer-director-actor Torres whips up a head-spinning combo of deadpan art-world parody and poignant immigration satire, as the naive Alejandro negotiates sex-worker cleaning jobs, scary sublets and Elizabeth’s tantrums, trying to stay one jump ahead of deportation. Infusing the chilly New York reality with lo-fi fantasy sequences enables Torres to show off his wayward imagination: Craigslist job adverts issue from a hissing spider web; Elizabeth’s rage is a cave-dwelling dragon; and an immigration application forms Escher-like stacks of boxy offices. Torres’ cute comic segments, however, can’t find a smooth way to land the story, since he’s forever cramming in capricious detours. What if Cabbage Patch dolls used smartphones to troll one another? How would a cryo-defrosted future work? And after the umpteenth iPhone-poking, insult-yelling interlude, the film proves that there can, almost unthinkably, be just Too Much Tilda.
THE VERDICT Torres’ charming but chaotic immigration-battle comedy turns New York into an offbeat world of whimsy.
DEEP SEA PG
★★★★★ OUT NOW CINEMAS
Following a lonely girl’s adventures aboard a floating restaurant filled with fantastical creatures, Deep Sea resembles Spirited Away, James and the Giant Peach and Life of Pi in its story. In execution, director Tian Xiaopeng’s (Monkey King: Hero Is Back) film is a dazzling showcase for CG animation; the gorgeous blend of 3D models and Chinese ink-painting designs fully justify a big-screen viewing. Yet at times, there’s almost too much visual chaos to absorb: while the rug-pull emotional denouement stuns, some of the middle act borders on exhausting.
INSPECTOR SUN AND THE CURSE OF THE BLACK WIDOW PG
★★★★★ OUT 21 JUNE CINEMAS
Set in 1934, this CGI animated noir adventure imagines a bug’s life as an Agatha Christie-esque mystery. T
