Numbskulls is more like it. Joshua Jackson (television’s “Dawson’s Creek”) plays an Ivy League student who joins a Firm-like secret society. This is a suspense thriller without an inkling of suspense, largely because every move Jackson makes is governed only by the obvious demands of a flimsy script.

Wicker Park, about a Chicago photographer (Josh Hartnett) investigating the disappearance of his girlfriend, goes about telling its story in the most complicated manner possible. The movie mostly consists of flashbacks and replayed scenes from different vantage points – techniques that are partly meant to keep us guessing, but are mostly there to cover up

When a modern cop (Jim Caviezel) hooks up an old ham radio, he’s somehow able to communicate back in time with his late firefighting father (Dennis Quaid). They change history in order to save the father from a fire, but their alterations inadvertently set a serial killer loose. If you take a deep breath and

One more schlocky entry to Angelina Jolie’s filmography and another in a series of thrillers about female FBI profilers who get too close to their work. The movie spends a lot of time covering up its obvious central mystery, then launches into a finale of ludicrous proportions. It’s about then you’ll be thinking of doing

Hitchcock lives in this deeply creepy story about a young man with a gift for impressions (Matt Damon) who lets his passions get the best of him. Like the best of Hitchcock’s work, The Talented Mr. Ripley puts you in the shoes of a killer and makes them feel as comfortable as your own. Also

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