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"Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as a mob-employed hitman in Rian Johnson&amp;#039;s superior new time travel thriller Looper, which opens tomorrow (Friday, September 28). It&amp;#039;s been a busy year for the one-time 3rd Rock From the Sun star. Just&amp;amp;nbsp;prior to Looper he led adrenalin-pumping bike chase movie Premium Rush, and his role as John Blake in The Dark Knight Rises became one of the most hotly-discussed aspects of Christopher Nolan&amp;#039;s Bat swansong. Digital Spy takes a look back at Gordon-Levitt&amp;#039;s five greatest big screen turns.   Mysterious Skin (2004) Every now and then, you come across a film so troubling that you&amp;#039;re pretty sure you&amp;#039;ll never watch it again, regardless of how breathtaking it may be. Gregg Araki&amp;#039;s stifling drama, which centres on two teenage boys united by a traumatic event in their past, is a textbook example. Gordon Levitt&amp;#039;s promiscuous Neil remembers the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of his baseball coach all too well, while Brady Corbett&amp;#039;s Brian represses the memory entirely and become obsessed with alien abduction. Mysterious Skin is saved from total bleakness both by Araki&amp;#039;s ethereal visuals and by the leads&amp;#039; gut-wrenchingly raw performances.   Brick (2005) A neo-noir murder mystery set within a high school sounds like a recipe for genre-mismatch disaster, but that&amp;#039;s just one of the many expectations Rian Johnson&amp;#039;s debut feature confounds. Gordon-Levitt is lonely student Brendan, who becomes wrapped up in an increasingly warped and labyrinthine criminal underworld after his girlfriend (Emilie de Ravin) is found dead. Johnson&amp;#039;s off-kilter use of language and breakneck pace demand commitment from the viewer, but the rewards are worth it, and Gordon-Levitt is a steadfast human anchor at the centre of the intricately organised chaos.    500 Days of Summer (2009) Marc &amp;#039;The Amazing Spider-Man&amp;#039; Webb&amp;#039;s directorial debut used a nonlinear structure to turn a potentially conventional love-gone-bad story into a bittersweet, unusually truthful triumph. The professionally adorkable Zooey Deschanel plays manic pixie not-quite-dream girl Summer, whose cynical attitude to relationships doesn&amp;#039;t derail the affections of Gordon-Levitt&amp;#039;s Tom. His awkward, quietly idealistic charm is a pitch-perfect counterweight to Deschanel&amp;#039;s breezy space cadet, and if Webb&amp;#039;s script gives itself over to clich\u00C3\u00A9 at times, his performers never follow suit.   50/50 (2011) Based as it is on scribe Will Reiser&amp;#039;s real experience, this comically-tinged drama about a young man diagnosed with life-threatening cancer was always likely to have the ring of authenticity to it, but Gordon-Levitt&amp;#039;s brittle, painfully vulnerable turn as the stricken Adam cements its success. His chemistry with flippant-yet-devoted best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen) gives the film a core that&amp;#039;s at once very moving, very funny and resolutely unsentimental, and it&amp;#039;s thanks to the faultless restraint of his performance that Adam evokes tremendous sympathy without ever crossing the line into passive victimhood.   The Dark Knight Rises (2012) Going into Christopher Nolan&amp;#039;s final Batman chapter, Gordon-Levitt was handed both a blessing and a curse. Unlike co-stars Tom Hardy and Anne Hathaway, he wasn&amp;#039;t burdened with the weight of fan expectations, but he also had to make the entirely new character of young Gotham cop John Blake resonate amidst a cast of familiar faces. At once idealistic and emotionally shut down, haunted by a childhood that to a large extent mirrors Bruce Wayne&amp;#039;s own, Blake&amp;#039;s an intriguing figure even before That Final Montage. It&amp;#039;s a sterner, less soulful turn that we might expect from Gordon-Levitt at his best, but the steely charisma he emanates provided exactly the theoretical future this canny franchise needed.  Watch Joseph Gordon-Levitt speaking to Digital Spy about Looper below:  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/news/a408109/joseph-gordon-levitt-looper-stars-top-five-screen-roles/>