Trance

A London auction-house employee (James McAvoy) is the inside man in the theft of a multi-million-pound painting, but a blow on the head makes him forget what he did with it, so his partner in crime (Vincent Cassel) takes him to a hypnotist (Rosario Dawson) to try to jog his memory—and she quickly realizes there's more at stake here than a lost set of keys. With a script by Joe Ahearne and John Hodge, adventurous director Danny Boyle barges into Christopher Nolan territory, fashioning a convoluted Chinese box mystery with overtones of two Nolan classics, the where-have-I-been riddle-fest Memento and the dream worlds of Inception. It's a well-crafted puzzle, more teasing than tantalizing, more pat than satisfying. It even ends with an unanswered question like Inception, albeit without the same resonance.