On DVD

Ghost Protocol lies at the intersection of the incredible and the impossible. Specifically, where The Incredibles director Brad Bird transitions from cartoons to live action for a Mission: Impossible adventure, accompanied by his most animated leading man to date: Tom Cruise. The result, if you choose to accept it, is nothing short of exhilarating.

Brandon (Michael Fassbender) prepares for sex with quiet, unsmiling ease. Indeed, he seems to spend much of his day preparing for sex, in one way or another. He picks up women. He makes arrangements with hookers. At home, he stares intently at laptop porn with the self-induced trance of ritual. His work computer has so much illicit material that the IT guy assumes it must be a virus.

He's an attractive, suave guy with what looks like a well-paying job. Given this, his Manhattan apartment looks a little bare and shabby -- unadorned, at least. Watching Shame and observing Brandon's life, you begin to understand why: sex takes up most of his time, occupies most of his mind, and overrides most other concerns. He's so in control of his addiction -- and so similar to a certain sort of male mindset -- that it takes some time to register as such. But like a proper addict, he remains in search of his next hit. We don't see much of his friends, hobbies, or that office job -- because he doesn't, either.

Patric Chiha's Domaine begins with a seductive and cerebral sequence that unfolds with lovely, unstrained subtlety, from the first dim glimpses of a strawberry-red dress to a woozy bout of inebriated dancing between friends. In between, the group, led by Nadia (the incomparable Beatrice Dalle), muses on about mathematics, control, sexuality, and philosophy, but temptation is what is conveyed by Chiha's camera as it passes over the faces of the group. Pheromones drift in between all participants, but the palpitations of temptation in Nadia's nephew, Pierre (Isaie Sultan), are felt strongest. Like Pierre, we are enamored by Nadia's intellect and ability to be bound to nothing but her ferocious will and, yes, the bottle.

A biography should never make its subject more confusing. Enigmatic, perhaps, but it should also remain clear on what it wants to say about someone and, more importantly, how it wants to say it. With their take on former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, writer Abi Morgan and director Phyllida Lloyd have decided to jumble the already muddled mythos revolving around England's first female leader. While true to many of the actual events that shaped her reign, the approach is awkward and loaded with assumptions both cruel and cartoonish.

Throughout his storied career, filmmaker Werner Herzog has explored two main themes, sometimes simultaneously: man vs. nature, and man vs. his own nature. From early masterworks like Aguirre: Wrath of God to later efforts like the documentary Grizzly Man, the famed German director has uncovered the complexities of the human spirit while discovering the depths/heights to which ordinary people will strive to do extraordinary things. In his latest true life film, Into the Abyss, Herzog discusses a celebrated case in Conroe, Texas. Two young men, out joyriding and looking for cars to steal, ended up killing three innocent people. After a shootout and a series of confessions, the duo were sentenced -- Jason Burkett received 40 years to life, while Michael Perry was given death.

In a year that has been punctuated by films that aim to recapture the sterling glory of cinema's Golden Age (The Artist and Hugo led the way), War Horse arrives drenched in gleaming nostalgia and glowing reverie, a time capsule back to the days of John Ford and David O. Selznick. Its vistas are broad and all-encompassing; its frames could function as antique paintings. Yet, there are ways in which it pushes beyond those borders. The film closely adheres to the performance tics, broad themes, and square-jawed characterizations of a bygone era. Its style, however, explodes off the screen in a way that is entirely reverent to the blueprints left behind by the likes of Ford, Cukor, Fleming, and Lean, but imbued with the boundless technological tools of a new cinematic order that make its aesthetic all the more sumptuous. Indeed, it is like a polished, shiny, fully-restored classic.

It's clear that the wounds of September 11, 2001 remain close to the surface. We are still a nation grieving, trying to make sense of a senseless act while chasing the radicalized ghosts that continue to haunt us. The truth is that we may never heal, the scar as evident and glaring as the new construction going on at Ground Zero. Within this context we have the stirring Oscar bait Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. A flawed and often unforgiving film, this end of the year entry for professional prestige hits all the right notes. Oddly, they may not be the sounds and visions a decade-removed audience is ready for.

The history of pairing historical figures in fictional films is a mostly unfortunate one -- bold-face names facing off in situations contrived for maximum melodrama. David Cronenberg's scalpel-sharp rendering of the psychosexual triangle between Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Sabina Spielrein (a patient, and later therapist in her own right, who fascinated them both) almost falls prey to this failing. But a trio of astonishingly committed performances and a taut screenplay free of hyperbole and overstatement keep this drama relatively free of melodramatic pitfalls, while still relating a fully engaging story of an intellectual love triangle.

With its dark, brooding tone, transgressive cynicism, and grotesque approach to labyrinthine mystery, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is perfectly suited for the traditional, anti-Oscar version of David Fincher. Representative of the ironic punk visionary that he is, this film is aggressive and attitudinal, smothering the audience with moodiness and dread, applying impeccable visual elegance to sequences of gothic murders, heinous acts of sexual violence, and the most coldly intimate love story you will see all year. Often it feels as though this was Fincher's escape from the awards machine, and his meticulous-yet-carefree stylistic indulgence functions as a middle finger to the traditions that put him through the campaign ringer for The Social Network last year.