Running time: 120 minutes . .

"I LOVE what you're thinking, " William Hurt tells Kevin Costner.

They're two sides of the same character, a split personality lurking behind the facade of a model husband and pillar of the community, egging him to commit reprehensible deeds he at once abhors and craves. His problem is that he's a serial killer who wants to stop but can't. He does it because he's addicted to it.

"You enjoy watching me suffer, " Costner says. "In a word, yes, " sneers Hurt. The exchanges work brilliantly, much in the manner of the older and younger Charlie in Hugh Leonard's Da or the two Lars in Brian Friel's Philadelphia Here I Come, but since Mr Brooks is a movie, Bruce A Evans feels a need to spice it up with sub-plots and twists that eventually reduce it to absurdity.

He gets bogged down in the complications of a blackmailer who wants to get in on the killing and a daughter who may or may not have inherited her dad's murderous genes, fluffing a chance to develop a Silence of The Lambs duel of wits between the conflicted Mr Brooks and a suspicious multimillionaire (! ) cop played by Demi Moore, who herself is beset by problems, including an ex who wants her money and a thug just out of gaol who wanted her dead. But then Ms Moore is no Jodie Foster.

The Counterfeiters (Stefan Ruzowitzky): Karl Markovics, August Diehl, Devid Striesow. Running time: 98 minutes . . .

A MAN in a threadbare suit, attempting to book into a swish Monte Carlo hotel just after the war ends, is treated with snobbish suspicion. "We require a deposit, " he's told. He opens a case full of banknotes, putting a wad on the desk. "Will this do?"

How he got his wealth is an extraordinary true story that raises challenging moral dilemmas. Flashback to Berlin in 1936, where Sally, as he is known, is arrested for forgery by Herzog, a Nazi cop. "You Jews, " Herzog sneers, "Tricks and fakery, that's what you're good at."

He's sent to Mauthausen concentration camp where he survives by painting portraits of the SS guards. Later on he's transferred to Sachsenhausen where Herzog is in charge of a top secret Nazi scheme in which highly skilled inmates are forced to forge millions of dollars and pound notes in order to destabilise the Allies. They're given fresh beds and food while the rest of the inmates are systematically abused and exterminated. If they refuse to collaborate, they too will die. Karl Markovics plays Sally as a pragmatist who does what he can but sees no point in being a martyr.

The Invasion (Oliver Hirschbiegel): Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Jeremy Northam.

Running time: 100 minutes . .

JACK Finney's sci-fi novel The Body Snatchers, in which alien life forms infiltrated the American population, was an ingenious metaphor of the 1950s Red Scare when it was first filmed in 1956, while a remake in 1978 tapped into the lack of trust of Washington in the aftermath of Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. German director Oliver Hirschbiegel's latest remake is triggered by contemporary fears about a possible global pandemic, not to mention hysteria about the threat of a demonised Osama bin Laden.

Nicole Kidman is a Washington psychiatrist who notices eerie changes in people around her after a space shuttle crashes back to earth, spreading unexplained alien spores in its wake. Their effect seems to be to drain people of emotion, making them docile and conformist and almost overnight resolving political conflicts throughout the world. She turns to Daniel Craig for help, desperate to save her son, but the zombie-like infected mobs close in. By avoiding overt alien imagery . . . and helped by Kidman's performance . . .

Hirschbiegel makes a fair attempt at generating the sense of a society controlled by fear Black Sheep (Jonathan King): Nathan Meister, Peter Feeney, Danielle Mason.

Running time: 87 minutes . .

TALK about wolves in sheep's clothing. Thousands of sheep convincingly mutate into ravenous monsters as the result of genetic engineering experiments that go wrong. Director Jonathan King doesn't spare the blood, but plays it for laughs, sending up New Zealand pride in their sheep farming traditions . . . and this after what they've just suffered in the World Cup. Too baaaa-d.