Fulfilling the ambitions of his debut Brick, Rian Johnson crafts a scintillating neo-noir gem of existential quandaries and inescapable fatalism with Looper. In 2044, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) works as a Looper – a mob assassin who, because it’s too tough to dispose of bodies in the future, kills targets sent back in time by his…

Subpar material gets a tonal and aesthetic – and, by extension, thematic – boost from directorial virtuosity in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, David Fincher’s American remake of the Stieg Larsson best-seller that was first adapted for the screen in its native Sweden, to largely dismal results, in 2009. Working from Steven Zaillian’s sharply…

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a film about death, and the dead men who willingly and hopelessly ensnare themselves in lies, subterfuge and detached amorality. Condensing John le Carré’s seminal 1974 spy novel (originally adapted into an Alec Guinness-headlined 1979 BBC miniseries) into an efficient, chilly feature-length gem of formal rigor and atmospheric bleakness, director…

Credit motion-capture technology for reinvigorating Steven Spielberg, who with The Adventures of Tintin (produced by Peter Jackson, who will direct its forthcoming sequel) recaptures the same buoyant, childlike B-movie zest that powered his first three Indiana Jones efforts. Never has the oft-derided animation process been put to better use than in this faithful imagining of…

Alexander Payne takes the easy way out time and again in The Descendants, a tale that wants to be mature but can’t help shortchanging its drama through constant reliance on its protagonist’s unimpeachable nobility. Lawyer Matt King (George Clooney) is a man faced with two unavoidable deadlines regarding his need to let go of the…

Peeling back societal facades of cheerful propriety and political correctness to reveal the ugliness of human nature is Carnage’s somewhat familiar and clichéd aim, yet Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s heralded play “God of Carnage” offsets its familiar thematic arguments with deliciously nasty wit and fractured, tension-wracked visual framing. After a dialogue-free credit sequence…