“TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY”

★★ (out of four)

“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” is based on the classic novel of the same name by John le Carre, which is widely considered to be the greatest spy story ever told. It is the sophomore directorial effort of Tomas Alfredson, who gave us the beautifully realized “Let the Right One In” just a few years ago. It boasts one of the most impressive casts of any movie last year, including Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Ciaran Hinds, John Hurt, Toby Jones and Tom Hardy. And it’s a gorgeous film visually, perfectly capturing the look, feel and all-encompassing paranoia of the Cold War at its apex.

“THE DESCENDANTS”

★★★

The film’s premise is intriguing, and rife with potential to explore moral complexities. George Clooney stars as Matt King, a workaholic attorney and father of two girls, whose wife is injured in a boat race and rendered comatose. As Mike, a self-professed “backup parent,” is faced with the prospect of caring for his daughters alone, he is further disturbed by the revelation that his wife had been carrying on an affair in the months before her accident. Burdened by this knowledge, he sets out along with his oldest daughter (Shailene Woodley) and her stoner boyfriend (Nick Krause) to find and confront the man who was sleeping with his wife. In the midst of all this drama is a subplot involving Matt’s control over a pending land sale (he’s a direct descendant of King Kamehameha, and holds sway over the family trust that includes 25,000 acres of pristine Hawaiian land), and its troubling connections to the central conflict.

“HUGO”

★★★★

This is about as old-fashioned as old-fashioned family films get, telling the relatively simple story of a young boy in 1930s Paris struggling to find his natural place in the world around him — not quite what you would expect from the man who gave us the pen scene in “Casino.” But armed with a mastery of filmmaking technique and a keen sense of character development, Scorsese proves once and for all that he truly is capable of anything. “Hugo” shows us a different side of the filmmaker — a charming, whimsical, thoroughly magically side that permeates through the entire picture and makes “Hugo” the one film from his repertoire that is guaranteed to leave you with the warm fuzzies.