Right off the bat let me say Rian Johnson’s Brick was one of my top movies of 2006. With this first film, a hard-boiled detective thriller set at a High School and made for $500,000, Johnson proved to be a director to reckon with presenting a familiar tale in new and very interesting ways.

Now, he’s back with his third film, Looper, and there’s finally a real teaser trailer for it to take a look at. In it, we see Joseph Gordon-Levitt confront his older self, personified by Bruce Willis, and get introduced to the time-travelling story of hit men who kill people from their own future.

In the film with Gordon-Levitt and Willis are Jeff Daniels, Paul Dano, Garret Dillahunt, and Emily Blunt. So, in addition to Johnson’s writing and direction, you’ve also got quite a cast as well.

Add all of that up and Looper looks to be quite a movie indeed. Can’t wait to see more.

Check out the trailer after the break. Looper hits theaters on September 28.

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Joseph Gordon-Levitt is fast becoming one of the most exciting actors of his generation. He generally makes smart choices, and even in the cash-grab roles, like Cobra Commander in the last GI Joe film, he brings a watchable angle to his character.

So when word got out that he was re-teaming with Rian Johnson for a hard boiled Sci-Fi tale about time travel and hit men, it piqued our interest. Then we found out that he was playing a young Bruce Willis, all of our hearts went aflutter.

So consider The Flickcast at maximum anticipation levels in the wake of these first images of Gordon-Levitt in subtle make-up to look like an young Willis. Word from early screenings and script reviews is that the movie might be stellar, and these early shots do nothing to change that idea. The first trailer premiered last weekend at Wondercon, so expect it to hit the internet soon enough.

Not terribly noticeable from these two shots is that the bulk of the subtle make-up was applied to give Gordon-Levitt a young Willis silhouette. This means the he isn’t meant to look exactly like Willis, as he doesn’t, but to give the impressions that he one day ‘could’ be Willis.

Check out the full new pictures after the jump.

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Director Rian Johnson hit it out of the park with his first film Brick (2005), a small, quirky indie film with a grade-A cast and some amazing style. The Brothers Bloom looked just as good, but unfortunately had a small run and I was unable to see it in theaters.

The film centers around two brothers, Stephen and Bloom, who after being orphaned and shuffled between various foster homes, become con men to make it in the world. They’re rather good at it, but after having made a name for themselves, Bloom decides he wants out. The two brothers, along with their sidekick and explosives specialist Bang-Bang, plan the perfect con to go out on: showing a reclusive but beautiful heiress, Penelope, a good time on a  journey across the globe. Problem is, Bloom can’t con a woman without falling in love in the process.

This film’s story makes it stand out. Because it’s a movie about con men, it’s hard to know when to trust what’s going on as the absolute truth. The movie will trick you, but that’s what makes it great to watch for the first time. You’ll be guessing the brothers, especially Stephen, at every turn.

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“I think you’re constipated in your soul,” Rachel Weisz says to Adrien Brody before going into an orgasmic fit at the oncoming thunderstorm in Rian Johnson’s second film, The Brothers Bloom. That was the peak of Weisz’s eccentric and electric role as Penelope, the mark of Adrien Brody’s Bloom and Mark Ruffalo’s Stephen Bloom.

Ruffalo’s Stephen Bloom is the storyteller, the man with the set-up, writing all the key roles and setting up the players. Brody plays Bloom, (Bloom?), the heartthrob, the bait if you will, that gets the women the men con. Tired of having a scripted life setup by his brother Stephen, Bloom sets off to live “a life that is unwritten.”  Just to be lured back into one final con: to get what everyone really wants.  The mark is Weisz’s Penelope a shut-in “rich bitch from New Jersey,” as Brody says.

The con is to swindle Penelope out of her bottomless treasure trove of riches in the name of getting a priceless book, which is really mostly scrap paper. The plan is to include her in the action. Through this, Stephen the storyteller introduces us to the world that he and his brother interact with including a cast of colorful characters such as Robbie Coltrane’s farting Belgian The Curator, and Maximilian Schell’s Diamond Don, and the brother’s nitroglycerin expert Bang Bang played with Chaplin-esque silent comedy by Babel‘s Rinko Kikuchi.

That setup really is just a con to get everyone involved. The perfect con, or as Ruffalo likes to say, is “to give everyone what they want.” To give Penelope an adventure, to live a life to which all of her separate and unique abilities can be put to use, and to give his younger brother a good life with a woman he can live with.  This is literally the sole purpose of Stephen’s final con-to give everyone what they want, including himself with heart breaking results.

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