WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Rian Johnson is one of those directors who is always worth watching. He only has two films under his belt – excellent high school film noir Brick and the little-seen but vastly-stylish Brothers Bloom – but this time he's widened his scope and delved into full-on science fiction. Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who also led Brick) both play an assassin who kills people sent back from the future via illegal time travel technology. The problems start when JGL's future self, Willis, arrives back for disposal. Should he kill himself? Can he trust himself? Etc.

Time travel's one of those things that doesn't always work on film, especially if you're a bit of a pedant ("But if they avert the war, Kyle Rees never comes back in time, John Connor is never born and they never avert the war! It's a huge paradox!"). But Johnson is a smarter and trickier customer than that, so this one should play around with the possibilities and give us a more Dickian twist to the tale (see, for instance, A Little Something For Us Tempunauts).

We're hopeful, too, that this could establish Johnson a little more firmly as a commercially attractive director, thanks to Willis' presence and Joseph "so hot right now" Gordon-Levitt's appeal (hopefully visible past the prosthetic nose). After all, we only have one Chris Nolan in Hollywood at the moment; we need a few more directors capable of making high-concept films with high IQs at the same time.

SEE ALSO Time travel stories like Terry Pratchett's Night Watch and Diana Wynne Jones' A Tale Of Time City also deal with characters meeting their younger / older selves, albeit in a sillier way.