Remakes and sequels have been a part of moviemaking from the very beginning. Rarely do they come off better than their first screen versions. Two adaptations of previously filmed works that do are Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, easily two of the ten best films of 2011.

Previously done as an award-winning TV mini-series in 1979, John Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a thinking man’s thriller, a suspense filled tale of the search for a spy at the highest levels of the British government. Alec Guinness so embodied Le Carré’s George Smiley that is difficult to think of any other actor in the part, but Gary Oldman is every bit as memorable in Tomas Alfredson’s new film.

The mini-series took more than six hours to spin its tale whereas the film does so in less than two hours running time. Extraneous characters and red herrings are swept aside to concentrate on the main story line. The result is a leaner, cleaner tale that still demands its audience pay close attention to detail.

The 1970s milieu is perfectly realized with stunning cinematography, crisp editing and a haunting score by the prolific Alberto Iglesias. It is perfectly played by Oldman and a marvelous supporting cast that includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong, Colin Firth, John Hurt and Kathy Burke.

Blu-ray extras include deleted scenes and interviews with the actors, author and director.

With the Swedish version of the intricate murder mystery, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels fresh in my mind, I was reluctant to embrace David Fincher’s Hollywood version of the first novel in the Dragon trilogy. My concerns were ill-founded. Fincher’s version is not a remake, but a take on the novel with a different approach. It is, in fact, more faithful to the source material than the Swedish version which emphasizes the title character over the disgraced journalist she assists in solving a decades old murder mystery. Steven Zallian’s screenplay in Fincher’s version restores the balance with the two characters given equal importance.

Exquisitely filmed on location in Sweden and Norway, brilliantly edited, with a pulsating score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the film is as audacious as any Fincher has given us.

Daniel Craig, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgard, Robin Wright, Joley Richardson and Rooney Mara in the title role are all memorable, but Noomi Rapace in the Swedish version left such an indelible impression that nothing Mara does comes close to equaling it.

The Blu-ray package contains a full disc of extras.

Yet another thriller that makes my list of the top ten films of 2011 is Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In.

This is another of Almodovar’s impossible to forget films with Antonio Banderas in his first film for his former mentor in more than twenty years.

Banderas plays a plastic surgeon with a God complex who clandestinely treats first one patient, then another, in his villa with the aid of his longtime housekeeper. Just when you think you have it figured out, the film goes in a different direction until it draws to its inevitable if highly satisfying conclusion.

Banderas hasn’t been this good in years, and the supporting cast including Elena Anaya, Jan Cornet, Blanca Suarez and especially Marisa Paredes as the housekeeper is outstanding.

Blu-ray extras include a making-of documentary.

Roman Polanski’s film of the Broadway play, God of Carnage is a huge disappointment. At one hour and nineteen minutes long, it may have lost more in the transition than the first two words of its title. Now simply called Carnage, it should be called Catastrophe, for that’s what it is, a shrill so-called comedy about four unbearably pretentious bores played by four actors who should know better, having twelve Oscar nominations and four Oscars between them.

Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly are the parents of an 11 year-old who was beaten up by Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz’s son. The film, which makes no effort to hide its stage origins, takes place entirely in the Foster-Reilley apartment except for opening and closing shots of the two boys. Veteran actress Julie Adams gets a screen credit as Waltz’s dialect coach.

Blu-ray extras include interviews with Waltz and Reilly.

Twilight Time continues its limited release Blu-rays with Demetrius and the Gladiators, the 1954 sequel to 1953’s The Robe that was put into production even before the original wrapped.

Time has been kinder to the sequel than the original, which is a bit too restrained for many in today’s audiences. The sequel is anything but restrained and just as bloody as the modern films and TV series it inspired.

Victor Mature, in one of his best roles, is the Greek slave turned Christian convert whose faith is tested when the woman he loves (Debra Paget) is raped and left for dead. Susan Hayward is the conniving Messalina, wife of Claudius (Barry Jones) and thus aunt by marriage to the mad Caligula (Jay Robinson).

There are no extras aside from the original trailer.

Warner Home Video continues its eclectic release of classic Warner Bros., MGM and RKO films which range from the silent era to the early 1990s.

MGM’s student protest film, 1970’s The Strawberry Statement was one of the better made films of the era which catered to the youth market. The film makes excellent use of then contemporary music including Buffy Sainte-Marie’s rendition of Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game” which is played over the opening and closing credits. Bruce Davison and Kim Darby star.

Warner Home Video provides two versions of the film, the U.S. release version and the international version with over four minutes of extra footage.

Two of Warners’ new musical releases run the gamut from good to bad.

The bad is Panama Hattie, the 1942 MGM film of Cole Porter’s Broadway smash hit which was written for Ethel Merman. Ann Southern, then a box office star, does what she can with the role, but neither she nor Virginia O’Brien in Betty Hutton’s stage role are up to playing the loud, boisterous characters they are given. They are also undercut by Red Skelton, Rags Ragland and Ben Blue, who are given way too much screen time as Sothern’s protectors. In fact, Skelton, then a rising star, is inexplicably given top billing over Sothern. Like most Broadway to Hollywood transitions of the day, the original score has been gutted. The interpolated “Just One of Those Things” sung by an unbilled Lena Horne in her first film is the musical highlight.

The good is MGM’s little known 1938 gem, Listen, Darling, an early Judy Garland film in which she gets to sing “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart”

Although Warner Bros, is presenting the film as a musical, there are, in fact, only three songs in the entire film. It is basically a family comedy in which Garland and friend Freddie Bartholomew set out on the road with Garland’s widowed mother, Mary Astor, and Garland’s little brother, Scotty Beckett, in search of a husband for Astor to keep her from returning home to marry the town’s stuffy banker (Gene Lockhart). Along the way they meet free-wheeling lawyer Walter Pidgeon and happy-go-lucky millionaire Alan Hale. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who Astor will end up with. The entire cast seems to be having a ball.

This week’s new DVD and Blu–ray releases include the Oscar nominated Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and a 70th Anniversary Edition of the classic Casablanca.