The Substance (2024)

The gothic fairytale The Substance very efficiently sets up how the peculiar science at its core works - an unboxing scene reveals boldly labelled products, one after the other, that neatly, cleverly explain the workings of a substance that promises rejuvenation to Demi Moore's has-been tv star Elisabeth Sparkle - but then the movie uses voiceover and those bold labels repeatedly flashed on screen to hammer home again and again what has been firmly established, making the really very humorous body horror movie more and more of a camp pantomime for imbeciles as it goes along.

★★★☆☆

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Margin Call (2011)

Like the 2007-2008 financial crisis that is this movie's context, the problem that befalls Jeremy Irons' investment banking megacorporation cannot be easily explained (something about a flawed equation and always out-of-frame data and graphs that herald tremendous financial loss) so it is hard to care much about this corporate thriller which has its ensemble cast spout platitudes every time the crux of the problem needs elucidation - plus, the people you might actually feel sympathy for, not smug suits staring out of their skyscrapers or weeping in sleek toilet cubicles but the hardworking public who you know ultimately lose out, are kept out of the picture.

★★☆☆☆

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Mr Brooks (2007)

One way the existence of this incredibly boring 2007 serial killer drama makes sense is if it were originally intended as a big-screen adaptation of Dexter, the tv series which commenced in 2006 -- perhaps the people behind Dexter pulled the plug and this became the movie not of Dexter the serial killer but Mr Brooks the serial killer with his alter ego, Marshall, and his blackmailer (a wannabe killer), and his pregnant daughter embroiled in some other crime of her own, and the police woman chasing him while going through a divorce, her partner in a fedora, and a whole lot of other convoluted Dexter-ish plot threads presented here with no discernible, marketable core premise.

★☆☆☆☆

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Ghost (1990)

It is often said of this hit romantic ghost story that Whoopi Goldberg steals the show playing Oda Mae Brown, a not-so-fake psychic, but in fact the whole cast - including Patrick Swayze as Sam, an all-round good guy murdered early on who tries as a ghost to solve the mystery of his death, and Demi Moore as Molly, his heartbroken lover - is so winning and likeable that it too, along with the movie's special effects and great humour, makes this a romantic, suspenseful, funny and only occasionally cloying romp.

★★★★☆

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