The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)

The joys of The Little Shop of Horrors, which as a musical continues to lure to theatres crowds that raucously sing along and guffaw, elude me and watching this 1960 movie which started it all - not a musical but a camp scifi with a wet sense of humour and a cult following, made on a budget of $30,000 - I am nonethewiser, mystified as to why people so enjoy the story of a plant named Audrey Two which has an insatiable appetite for human blood..

★★☆☆☆

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The Pledge (2001)

The trouble with director Sean Penn's mostly-gripping The Pledge, about a cop who promises a grieving mother to find the killer of her child, is not Jack Nicholson's gnarlier-than-usual detective (compare him with the clean-cut Foyle-like turns of It Happened In Broad Daylight's Heinz Rührmann and Cold Light of Day's Richard E Grant) nor the story's movement from the Swiss Alps to Nevada, but Penn's muddling Dürrenmatt's screenplay - a jaunty mystery with a detective-novel ending - with the author's later book, "The Pledge - Requiem for the Detective Novel, which refashions that screenplay's plot into a much darker existential drama; Penn borrows scenes from the earlier 1958 adaptation and incorporates aspects of the screenplay (such as a sequence that demystifies the serial killer), and so detracts from the book's grim philosophy.

★★★☆☆

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The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981)

The byline promises it, but not only did I not "feel the heat" or even vague chemistry between the leads, I even felt my body temperature drop a degree or two at the sight, at one point, of Jack Nicholson's pancake derriėre and at the film's persistence in showing over and over hands clawing at Jessica Lange's crotch, moments added, I suppose, along with Technicolour and a bewildering circus visit, to justify this remake of the 1946 James M Cain adaptation, but neither is a terrific film because no matter which way you tell it, at the heart of the story Cora and Frank's murder of Cora's husband, roadside-diner owner Nick, never feels remotely necessary.

★★☆☆☆

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Room 237 (2012)

Reviewers can be prone to overthought or unchecked enthusiasm about their favourite films but the fanatics narrating this frustrating documentary, who share but barely elucidate their thoughts on Stanley Kubrick's The Shining including that it contains embedded messages in details such as the patterns of the Overlook Hotel corridor carpets or secret images photoshopped into the clouds in the sky, are on a level that in other circumstances might be able to be diagnosed and treated with neuroleptics.

★★☆☆☆

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Batman (1989)

The batsuit is so rigid poor Michael Keaton can only turn his head by moving his whole upper body - it looks like Batman slept badly - and the movie, er, literally follows suit in that it too is awkward and unmoving: Tim Burton's Gotham is a poorly populated theatre set, the hero is oddly mannered and neurotic, and the story is lifeless with neither the camp fun of the Adam West tv series (except for Jack Nicholson's Joker's half-hearted band leader marches x 2) nor the weight and menace of the much later Christopher Nolan movies.

★★☆☆☆

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Something's Gotta Give (2003)

In this movie-length laundry detergeant commercial, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Amanda Peet and Keanu Reeves, clad in brilliant whites, float around what looks like Martha Stewart's house or an IKEA showroom and engage in romantic dalliances, come to terms with old age, get over their age biases and conquer their body hang-ups.

★★☆☆☆

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The Departed (2006)

Some tension is eventually delivered in Martin Scorsese's remake of the terrific 2002 Hong Kong action suspense thriller, Infernal Affairs, but only after a long and unconvincing set-up featuring too much farcical humour, too many implausibilities and inconsistencies, and too many Hollywood heartthrobs and not enough gravitas for the cat-and-mouse story of a crooked cop and an undercover agent.

★★☆☆☆

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The Witches of Eastwick (1987)

A trio of women, Jane, Sukie and Alexandra (Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Cher, redheaded, blonde and brunette) conjure up a dark, mysterious stranger using their collective feminine powers of creation, bringing havoc to their conservative New England town, in this riotous, star-studded film version of John Updike's distinctly feminist novel looking at gender politics, standards of social propriety (old-fashioned versus new) and good old good and evil, creation and destruction.

★★★★☆

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