More competent Hollywood craftsmanship from director Sidney Pollack, which may be why Nicole Kidman’s classy professionalism makes for a better fit than Sean Penn’s bleary realism. They play a United Nations translator who overhears an assassination plot and a Secret Service agent who investigates her claim, respectively. If their different styles often are at odds,

A glistening, sex-soaked French thriller, Swimming Pool is partly about a novelist’s search for inspiration, but it’s mostly about the sort of inspiration that can come from watching actress Ludivine Sagnier stretched under the sun in a barely there bikini. The main character is an older mystery writer (Charlotte Rampling), but Sagnier – as the

Freedomland thinks it is igniting a powder keg of class and racial issues, but the movie relies on a faulty fuse – namely director Joe Roth. Among the many missteps of the auteur behind America’s Sweethearts and Christmas with the Kranks is a loose reign on stars Samuel L. Jackson and Julianne Moore, playing a

The cast, clearly enjoying themselves, makes the most of this nasty little modern noir, an unlikely effort from Groundhog Day director Harold Ramis. John Cusack, once again playing a guy who seems disinterested even in his own lack of interest, stars as a midlevel mob lawyer who rips off his boss on Christmas Eve. Set

Mindhunters is a movie in search of a brain. This grisly whodunit, in which a serial killer picks off a team of FBI trainees who have been stranded on an abandoned island, seems to change its mind at least three times in the final 10 minutes about who the actual murderer is. With career-low performances

Insomnia would be a perfect police noir except that it’s missing one crucial element: the night. Set in northern Alaska, where the midnight sun keeps the darkness at bay, this smart crime thriller stars Al Pacino as a Los Angeles police detective called north to track down a suspected murderer (Robin Williams). Considering this is

This ambitious, inventive and visually stunning science-fiction thriller – about a child therapist (Jennifer Lopez) who enters the mind of a serial killer – never manages to justify all of the horrific images of death and torture that it shows. The movie doesn’t quite revel in them in the way that the similarly themed Seven

The secret of Secret Window becomes obvious fairly early, so thankfully there’s one thing more crucial to the movie: Johnny Depp. Depp has become more squirrelly as he’s aged, and as a mystery writer tormented by a mysterious stranger (John Turturro), he brings unpredictability to the screen without ever stepping outside of the story. The

The Sixth Sense-level whopper of M. Night Shyamalan’s period picture – about a 19th-century enclave haunted by creatures in the surrounding woods – is the best thing about the film, mainly because the rest of it is rather clunky (the assured filmmaking in Signs is only occasionally on display). Perhaps Shyamalan was looking for the