Ironically after compiling my list of the best recent films to come out on DVD in 2012, the very best of the lot, Looper, was released on December 31st just missing my cut-off.

This is one of the most intelligent, impeccably written science fiction films of recent times, coming from a surprising source. Rian Johnson, the film’s writer-director burst onto the scene with 2005’s Brick starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt in one of his first major starring roles. Looper, only Johnson’s third film, also stars Gordon-Levitt, along with Bruce Willis and Emily Blunt.

Gordon-Levitt, who has done some of the most interesting screen work of any actor over the last decade is fondly remembered for his TV work as a teenager in 3rd Rock from the Sun, but his show business roots go back even further. A working actor since the age of six, he is the grandson on his mother’s side of award-winning director Michael Gordon (Cyrano de Bergerac; Pillow Talk).

Brick was a film I saw once about eight years ago, but haven’t thought much about since. What I found intriguing about it, aside from its unique high school murder mystery plot, was that although it takes place in Brick, New Jersey, it was filmed in San Clemente, California. At the time I had a passing acquaintance with San Clemente, but no knowledge of Brick. I did not, however, see much of a connection between the two. Now that I have been living in Brick since July, 2011, it will be interesting to revisit the film and see if I have a better perspective on the substitution of the southern California city for the New Jersey shore town.

Looper, which takes place in Kansas in 2044 and 2074, was filmed in Louisiana, another seemingly odd substitution of one well known location for another.

Gordon-Levitt plays the title character, a hired killer for the mob whose job it is to shoot blindfolded time travelers the mob has sent back thirty years to 2044 so that there is no trace of their deaths in 2074. He is mortified to learn that the new head of the mob has decided to close the program and send back old loopers for execution and one day has to confront his older self, played by Bruce Willis.

Willis escapes and other loopers are sent to find and kill him as well as Gordon-Levitt for not finishing him off. The remainder of the film traces the steps of the older and younger versions of the same character who in the form of Gordon-Levitt happens upon a young widow and her son. She is played by Emily Blunt. The meeting of the two and their subsequent relationship is played out much like the John Wayne-Geraldine Page romance in the now sixty year-old Hondo. Background on Willis’ character from 2044 to 2074 is also provided. It’s fascinating stuff.

Another film, another killer played by another prolific actor.

In William Friedkin’s Killer Joe, Matthew McConaughey, who had quite a year with his award-winning work in Magic Mike and Bernie plays a cop who moonlights as a killer for hire. Emile Hirsch plays a young man in way over his head who hires McConaughey to kill his evil mother on speculation. He is to be paid when Hirsh’s family collects on the mother’s insurance policy. Hirsch’s low-life father (Thomas Haden Church) and sleazy step-mother (Gina Gerson) are only too eager to go along as is his dim-witted sister (Juno Temple). One look at the provocative Temple and McConaughey decides to accept the deal provided he can have Temple as collateral. Hirsch has a change of heart even though he owes the mob money for the cocaine his mother stole and sold and faces an uncertain future, but it’s too late.

There are twists and turns a-plenty as the bizarre drama spirals to its sordid conclusion. This is Oscar winner Friedkin’s first film since 2006’s Bug, also written by Tracy Letts whose latest play to be filmed is the acclaimed August: Osage County, one of this year’s most highly anticipated films co-starring Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts.

If you’re looking for something more wholesome, Fox Classics has just released its first batch of films for 2013. Included in the release package are The Mudlark; The Fan and That Lady in Ermine.

Screen legend Irene Dunne had her last great role as the aged Queen Victoria in 1950’s The Mudlark, directed by Jean Negulesco. The story is from the same period in the monarch’s life as 1997’s Mrs. Brown in which the disconsolate widow is prodded into resuming her public life, not by John Brown who is a memorable character in the film played by Finlay Currie, but by a street urchin or “mudlark”, played by Andrew Ray. Alec Guinness co-stars as Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who has reasons of his own for enticing the queen out of her seclusion.

This true gem of a film has never been previously available on home video in any format in the U.S. Once seen, it is hard to forget.

Otto Preminger’s 1949 film, The Fan, is one of nearly twenty international TV and film versions of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan, the most recent being the updated 2004 Hollywood version starring Helen Hunt and Scarlett Johannsen called A Good Woman..

In this somewhat more famous version, Jeanne Crain plays Lady Windermere (Johanssen’s role in A Good Woman), Richard Greene her naïve husband, George Sanders the suave villain and the sublime Madeleine Carroll the mysterious woman with a past played by Hunt in A Good Woman. Martita Hunt and Richard Ney co-star in Wilde’s most famous play after The Importance of Being Earnest.

This is another gem that has previously never been released to home video in the U.S.

Also making its home video debut in the U.S. is 1948’s That Lady in Ermine. The musical-fantasy-comedy about a modern movie star and her ancestress, an Hungarian princess, would probably have worked better with someone like Marlene Dietrich in the dual lead, but a miscast Betty Grable does what she can opposite Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.. The two even get to duet on the Oscar nominated song, “This Is the Moment”. The film was begun by the redoubtable Ernst Lubitsch but fell to Otto Preminger upon Lubitsch’s untimely death. A curio at best, but an interesting one, it’s worth seeing at least once.

New DVD releases this week include Blu-ray upgrades of the Oscar winning films, Driving Miss Daisy, Mrs. Miniver and Grand Hotel.