Trance

By the time director Danny Boyle sends Rosario Dawson off-camera to shave her hoohah, the only suspense left in his Mad magazine version of Inception is whether he’ll show the results. (He does. And the fact that Boyle and Dawson are reportedly a couple is a Hitchcock joke that’s more amusing than anything in this movie.) Trance starts as a buzzing heist procedural (with James McAvoy addressing the camera to outline the plan, a typically coy but effective trick that Boyle abandons with typically frustrating coyness), shifts into a mind game involving hypnosis and power, then becomes a bizarre love triangle pitting Dawson and McAvoy against Vincent Cassel (brawn and ooze). It’s a long, ludicrous way to go for a climax that even Brian De Palma would say is a bit much.