ALSO SHOWING
ABOMINABLE (U)
★★★★★
A GRIEF-STRICKEN teenager repairs fragments of her broken heart by reuniting a mystical mountain creature with its parents in this sweet but familiar computer-animated yarn.
Resourceful teenager Yi (voiced by Chloe Bennet) intends to honour the memory of her recently deceased father by visiting his favourite locations around China. During a night-time visit to the roof of the family’s apartment block to play her father’s cherished violin, Yi stumbles upon an injured Yeti, which has escaped from the clutches of deranged explorer Burnish (Eddie Izzard) and British zoologist Dr Zara (Sarah Paulson).
A tender bond forms between the girl and the stricken creature, whom she christens Everest.Yi pledges to return her new friend to his snow-laden home in the Himalayas. Two young neighbours, Jin (Tenzing Norgay Trainor) and Peng (Albert Tsai), become Yi’s accomplices as she and Everest travel more than 3,000km west by land, sea and airborne giant dandelion seed head.
JOKER (15)
★★★★★
THE joker’s wild in director Todd Phillips’s profoundly disturbing character study.
Rubbish bags clutter Gotham’s streets on the 10th day of a city-wide collectors’ strike as Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix, pictured) studiously applies white face make-up and an exaggerated red smile.
A gang of youths steals the advertising board he has been hired to twirl in colourful apparel and beat the mentally unstable loner when he chases them down an alley. Arthur returns home, bloodied and bruised, to his ailing mother Penny (Frances Conroy), a former employee of billionaire philanthropist Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) who has announced his candidacy for mayor.
An impromptu act of violence on a subway train propels Arthur into the glare of the media’s eye.
As Gotham teeters on the brink of insurrection and a young Bruce Wayne (Dante Pereira-Olson) witnesses the lawlessness first-hand, Arthur becomes a grinning poster boy for the downtrodden, discarded and disenfranchised.
JUDY (12A)
★★★★★
IN A long, distinguished career on stage and screen, Judy Garland was twice nominated for Academy Awards and lost both times. Fifty years after her death in London, Garland may have her glittering moment in the Oscars spotlight thanks to Renee Zellweger’s tour-de-force portrayal in Judy.
When we meet Judy (Zellweger, above) she is embroiled in a tug-of-war with third husband Sidney Luft (Rufus Sewell) for care and custody of their two children. Crippled by debt and financial mismanagement, Judy reluctantly agrees to a five-week run of shows at a nightclub in London.
Tormented by ghosts of the past, a sleep-deprived Judy threatens to self-sabotage what remains of her legacy.