Copycat" (18) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin

The startling opening sequence of Jon Amiel's post modern thriller, Copycat, features Sigourney Weaver as Helen Hudson, a criminal psychologist who specialises in the psyche of serial killers. "I'm their damn pinup girl," she says. "They all know me." At the University of California in Berkeley to deliver a lecture on the personality traits of serial killers, she is attacked in the toilets by a member of her audience, a serial killer (played by an unrecognisably deglamourised Harry Connick Jr) who tries to strangle her.

A year after surviving that murder attempt Hudson remains traumatised, popping pills, lowering down brandy and suffering from agoraphobia which prevents her from leaving her high security San Francisco home. When homicide detectives played by Holly Hunter and Dermot Mulroney are investigating a series of apparently connected murders, they enlist her help - and it is Hudson who detects that the murderer is a copycat who is replicating the crimes of notorious serial killers such as the Boston Strangler, Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer.

Any movie on this theme will be hard pressed to match the recent achievements of The Silence Of The Lambs and Seven, and while Copycat is neither as complex nor as eerie, it remains engrossing, well plotted and a worthwhile commentary on the fascination with, and the pursuit of, fame by serial killers. Sigourney Weaver is particularly impressive in a good cast which also includes Will Patton, John Rothman and a promising Tom Cruise lookalike, William McNamara.

Following the lead of The Crying Game with its famous secret, the film's distributors have asked the media not to reveal the identity of the killer in Copycat, which seems odd given that the movie operates much more as a whydunnit than a whodunnit.

"Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead" (18) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin

Operating in the same territory as The Usual Suspects and Reservoir Dogs, Gary Fleder's first feature film may not pack the punch of those two films, but it does share some of their virtues - witty dialogue, strong ensemble acting and confident directing.

Andy Garcia plays Jimmy the Saint, a smooth talking retired gangster who now makes a living recording video messages from the terminally ill to their relatives (one of the elements that smacks a little too much of film school smart aleckery for the movie to be entirely convincing). When Garcia gets a call from his ex boss, The Man With The Plan (Christopher Walken) to perform a "small service", he assembles his old crew to do the job. But, of course, things go badly wrong and the gang members find themselves staring death in the face.

Garcia, a competent actor who has never quite managed to achieve leading man status, here gets the opportunity to show some real star quality, but his character is in many ways the least interesting on view, and has to contend with a painfully over extended romantic sub plot that sits very uneasily with the rest of the film. In this respect, as in others, screenwriter Scott Rosenberg's script sometimes tries to bite off more than it can chew.

The real pleasure is in the excellent performances from the strong supporting cast, particularly Christopher Lloyd as an ageing crook who becomes reconciled to the notion of his impending death, and Treat Williams as an oddly endearing psychotic. Christopher Walken continues his career long quest for the most diabolical character possible with his role as a mobster paralysed from the neck down, and there's a comic turn from Steve Buscemi as the most efficient assassin in the world, engagingly known as Mister Shhh.

Liberally, peppered with good, often very funny, set pieces, and demonstrating some real visual flair in its cinematography and design, Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead (the reason for the title is clear by the end of the film) is a promising debut from Fleder and Rosenberg, and should appeal to trainspotters and taranteenies. As usual with this sort of thing, the violence is not for the faint of heart.

"Mary Reilly" (12) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin

Dark, in every sense of the word, is Stephen Frears's belatedly arrived spin on the Jekyll and Hyde story in Mary Reilly, adapted by Christopher Hampton from the 1990 novel by Valerie Martin. This time, Robert Louis Stevenson's dual character is seen from the point of view of Dr Jekyll's timid maid, Mary Reilly (played by Julia Roberts) who, we are shown in flashbacks, suffered physical - and it is inferred, sexual abuse at the hands of her alcoholic Irish father (Michael Gambon).

Those creepy flashbacks create an unsettling mood which is heightened by the relationship that develops between her and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, both of whom are played by John Malkovich and appear, given his accent, to be American. Jekyll wears a goatee and short hair, while Hyde is clean shaven with much longer hair and it takes a very long time indeed for Mary Reilly to realise that they are one and the same person.

In visual terms the film is unusually dark, with cinematographer Philippe Rousselot using minimal lighting as if to recreate the available light of the story's 19th century London setting. Rousselot employed a similar device in La Reine Margot and he takes it to extremes here, to the point where characters and sets are barely visible.

The result only serves to emphasise the, sheer dreariness of this lifeless and seriously under developed picture, with Christopher Hampton's flaccid screenplay being the root of its problems. An insipid, glum looking Julia Roberts, using an odd Oirish accent, seems entirely miscast in the title role, while Glenn Close's brash parody of a brothel keeper seems to have strayed in from another movie.

The costumes by the accomplished Irish designer, Consolata Boyle, are fine, but like so much else in this film, the film is simply too dark to see them in any detail.

"Hackers" (12) Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin

Probably the last thing the world needs at the moment is yet another dumb cybermovie, but at least Iain Softley's offering has a little more style to it than some of the recent sad attempts. The abysmal plot amounts to little more than The Famous Five Go On Line, with Jonny Lee Miller (Sick Boy in Trainspotting) as the virtual Julian for a wide eyed bunch of high school computer hackers who become embroiled in an attempted fraud. The storyline is so unimaginative that we even get what Wayne's World memorably defined as the Scooby Doo ending (whereby the villain's false whiskers are gleefully whipped off).

However, Softley, whose last film was the Beatles biopic Backbeat, has a slightly sharper grasp, on 1990s pop culture than most of the journeymen who direct these things, and, has, assembled a lively soundtrack, including music from Orbital Leftfield and Massive Attack. He also partly addresses the difficult task of making computers cinematically interesting by blurring the distinctions between his "real" New York cityscapes and the virtual world of the hackers. Finally, Miller and co star Angelina Joliel nearly have enough sex appeal to carry the whole thing off. Let's hope they get a better vehicle for their talents soon.

"Barb Wire" (15) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin

"Don't call me babe!," is the poster slogan for this futuristic yarn cobbled together as a cinema vehicle for the very limited talents of the Baywatch star, Pamela Anderson Lee. She first delivers that admonition in the movie's opening sequence, demonstrating her sensitivity to the appelation, "babe", by flinging a high heeled shoe at the offender and implanting it on his face.

In that sequence, and for most of the film, she is squeezed into - and falling out of - a leather suit that seems several sizes too small for her, cueing more crude references to a character's breasts than any film has seen since the heyday of Barbara Windsor in the Carry On Movies.

The title of Barb Wire actually refers to the character played by Pamela Anderson Lee - the tough talking, high kicking Ms Wire runs a supposedly legendary bar and grill in the fictitious Steel Harbour. The time is 2017, during the second American civil war, and Steel Harbour is the last city in the US not under martial law.

Like virtually every other movie set in the future, its prognosis is grim, depicting a chaotic, noisy world where law and order seem like an antiquated notion. And the weather is rotten - it never rains but it pours in this future world. Or so it seemed for the first 50 minutes or so, by which time, worn down by the movie's creaking banality and sheer dartness, I made my excuses and left.