A miracle drug to help manage anxiety prescribed by a psychiatrist who might be just a bit more interested in receiving payment for helping test it out than in the welfare of their patient. What could go wrong?

In Side Effects, turns out that quite a bit goes wrong, and then unravels in layers with a complex "ah, you didn't see that coming!" sequence of twists that reminded me of the brilliant Inception.

Except it was way more daft and ultimately didn't really even make much sense by the time the closing credits roll.

Which is really too bad, because this medical thriller has a lot going for it, including a terrific performance by Rooney Mara as Emily, and the always likable Jude Law as psychiatrist Jonathan Banks, along with a smart production directed by Steven Soderbergh and set in upper Manhattan.

Emily's married to Martin Taylor (Channing Tatum, and c'mon on, what woman wouldn't want to be married to Channing?) and the film opens with Martin being released from prison, having been busted for various financial shenanigans. After years of waiting for him, Emily sinks into a depression as her fantasy of his return seems to collide with the reality of them stuck in a crummy apartment after his downfall.

While he was in jail, she'd been in therapy with the swank Dr. Victoria Siebert (Catherine Zeta-Jones) for depression and anxiety, but when the issue flares up again with Martin's release from jail, she finds a new therapist, Dr. Jonathan Banks (Law), who has his own up-and-coming practice and is happy to work with her. Is it because she's fragile and beautiful, as his colleagues later accuse? Perhaps...

The therapeutic path he prefers, however, is medications to "help you stay calm" and when the standard meds don't seem to work, he switches her to a promising new drug in its testing phase. But it sure seems to have some unfortunate side effects, including causing Emily to sleep walk and bursts of rage that husband Martin is at a loss on how to handle.

I've couched my descriptions carefully because as is to be expected in a thriller of this ilk, not everything is as it seems, and there are layers within layers and conspiracies within what seems the most innocent relationships.

There are two great reveals in the film, and while the first one was terrific and had me -- finally -- thinking "ohh, didn't see that coming!", the second reveal that shows the first to be yet another red herring just left me frustrated. Another modern Hollywood ending, where everything wraps up neat and clean, with the conspirators busted and the protagonist's life handily reassembled. The good guy wins, the bad guy loses. Hurray.

Or not.

My friends are used to me complaining about film endings. There are so, so many films that come out of the Hollywood machine that just end badly. An example? The idiotic ending sequences that mar the already bizarre Tim Burton remake Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I mean, the original film ended just perfectly, but the remake? Awful. Just awful.

And unfortunately while there's so much to like in Side Effects, it really needed to end after the first reveal, quickly after, leaving us frustrated and upset that the good guy didn't win and that there was much more going on during the film than we realized. A little ambiguity? That's good. Look at the delicious ending to Inception that still grabs me when I rewatch the film.

But I think the doctor should have prescribed just a bit less "tricky story twist" at the end of this particular film to create a more coherent and enjoyable movie.

That's why I really enjoyed the historical mashup Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Based on the book of the same name by Seth Grahame-Smith, it posits a slightly different Civil War era where the Southern slave owners are actually all vampires, while the North fights not just for the freedom of blacks but also for freedom from the enslaving clutches of the vampire hoards. There are obvious parallels between our contemporary views of slave ownership and the vampire/victim relationship, but rather than be a heavy theme, this is played out in an amusing and entertaining fashion.

In fact I was surprised just how much I enjoyed Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, as I delighted in the historical facts woven into the narrative and the bad-ass ninja Abe portrayed on screen by Benjamin Walker, spinning his silver axe blurringly fast as he kills the vampire hoards. With splendid special effects and some ingenious visuals that occasionally turned the action into sketched storyboards, it highlights the individual talents of director Timur Bekmambetov and producer Tim Burton.

The story starts with Abe as a young boy (played by Lux Haney-Jardine), working on the dock with his father Tom (Joseph Mawle). Slave parents are dragged onto a boat as their young son Will (Curtis Harris, played later as an adult by Anthony Mackie) fights to stay with them. When he's shoved down and beaten, young Abe runs to his rescue, just to be beaten too. Dad isn't okay with that and intervenes, just to have slaveowner and general bad dude Jack Barts (Marton Csokas) stop the fracas and threaten Tom that he'll have his revenge. And he does, killing Abe's mother Nancy (Robin McLeavy) while Abe watches, peeking through the bed slats.

That infuriates Abe and gives him his life's mission: revenge. Fortunately he bumps into the mysterious and charismatic Henry (Dominic Cooper), who promises to teach Abraham how to be a vampire hunter if Abe will pledge his loyalty to Henry and kill the vampires Henry identifies, not just go after Barts. This leads to one of the most enjoyable sequences in the film, the hero's journey moment of Abe learning how to channel his hate, his anger, his energy into a single thing: killing vampires. He chops down a tree with a single stroke of his weapon of choice: a silver-plated axe, and rapidly evolves from a hick woodsman into a ninja killer.

To be charitable, the first hour of Dark Shadows was terrific. The film opens in 1750 Liverpool, England, as the Collins family, including young Barnabas, departs for the Colonies, landing in Maine and establishing their fortunes as entrepreneurial pioneers. Twenty years later young Barnabas (Depp) is master of his community, a city named Collinsport, and adored by servant and townie alike. Unfortunately, when he falls for servant girl Angelique (Eva Green) but switches his amorous attentions to Josette (Bella Heathcote), Angelique gets mad and as she's a witch, she curses Barnabas, turning him into a vampire. She then buries him alive where he lays undisturbed for almost two centuries, waking up in the Hippie-inspired world of 1972.

Barnabas awakens and returns to Collinwood, the ancestral home, a delightfully creepy run-down 200-room mansion complete with turrets, peculiar sculptures and secret passages. He meets the last of the Collins line: Family matriarch Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer), her dubious brother Roger (Jonny Lee Miller), his son David (Gully McGrath) and her daughter Carolyn (Chloë Grace Moretz). Also in residence is Dr. Julia (Helena Bonham Carter), hired to treat David who is ostensibly crazy but actually seems the most sane of everyone in this Adams Family sort of band of oddballs.

The introduction of David's nanny Victoria (Bella Heathcote) and reappearance of the evil Angie (Eva Green) add to the storyline, but when Barnabas and Angie make love in her office, the film falls apart and never recovers. Worse, their love making scene is a disaster of epic weird masochistic proportions as they slam into walls, scratch each other, and turn what could have been creepy interesting into stupid appalling. But that's not the worst scene in the film: there's one later on when Victoria's explaining her childhood that would have fit far better in the torture-porn film Sucker Punch.

By the time the film wraps, there are so many inconsistencies in the story (can Barnabas survive direct sunlight or not?) so many random violent scenes, so much that doesn't really make sense even within the goth soap opera world of Dark Shadows, that most theatergoers seemed glad to see the credits appear. There's a really entertaining film buried inside Dark Shadows, with a delightful performance by Depp, but as is, however, I cannot recommend the film to anyone but the most hardcore Burton fan.

That's an intimidating challenge, especially for a director like Tim Burton who generally tackles stories that haven't been shown in film before and can be crafted in his own unique style. Think of A Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands, Big Fish and Mars Attacks!  Prior to this, the most popular story he'd tackled was Willy Wonka, which he twisted unpleasantly with his muse Johnny Depp proving too creepy in the title role.

And so it's with a palpable sense of relief that I can report Alice in Wonderland is terrific. It's the kind of story where Burton's dark vision works perfectly, where the strange, moody and oft-sinister fantasy world Carroll described in the book (and its sequel Through The Looking Glass) can finally be brought to the big screen in glorious 3D.

There are nods to other films -- the opening is very reminiscent of the 3D fly-through of London that opens A Christmas Carol, some scenes look like they're from The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and Underland (you read that right, "Wonderland" was a mis-pronunciation by Alice, according to the film) at moments looks an awful lot like the planet Pandora from the blockbuster Avatar -- and the ending is typical clunky Burton, but it's still a fresh and delightful take on the story.

I'm a fan of just about every type of film making, from the interpolated rotoscoping of the weird A Scanner Darkly to the stop-motion of Wallace and Gromit to the beautiful, distinctive animation of Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away to the almost completely green-screened adventure Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, if it tells a good story, it's good with me.

If you recall the weird but fascinating The Nightmare Before Christmas, you've seen the amazing stop-motion work of director Henry Selick. The writer of that film was the always-peculiar but terrific Tim Burton. Coraline has a different writer, though it has a very similar look and style.

Stop-motion animation is great for kids, but as a father of three younger children, I have to say right up front that Coraline is not a film for children. It got a PG rating from the MPAA, but I think that purely for thematic elements I'd have thought a PG-13 would have been more appropriate. An under-10 who saw this would have serious challenges sleeping for many days thereafter.