Total Recall: Scarlett Johansson's Best Movies

We count down the best-reviewed work of the We Bought a Zoo star.

After six years, Cameron Crowe has finally delivered his (non-doc, non-music video) follow-up to Elizabethtown -- and he's brought with him an impeccable cast that includes Matt Damon, Thomas Haden Church, Elle Fanning, and... drum roll please... the subject of this week's feature, Scarlett Johansson! A multiple Golden Globe nominee, tabloid fixture, and object of desire for a sizable segment of the population, Johansson stars opposite Damon in We Bought a Zoo as a character who may nor may not be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. We aren't sure yet -- but we do know we like Scarlett, and it's about time we paid tribute to some of her finer film moments. Let's go Total Recall!

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72%

You know what you're going to get when you see a movie adapted from a Nicholas Sparks novel -- but if you had to choose a director to tastefully burnish Sparks' wide sentimental streak, you could do a lot worse than Robert Redford, and 1998's The Horse Whisperer stands as glowingly compelling proof. Starring as an embittered amputee, the teenage Johannson held her own against an all-star cast that included Dianne Wiest, Kristin Scott Thomas, Sam Neill, and Redford himself -- and impressed critics like Maitland McDonagh of TV Guide, who warned, "Curl your cynical lip if you want, but there's a place for heartwarming, life-affirming, even weepy dramas."

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72%

Before Hollywood gave us multiple versions of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, we got Girl with a Pearl Earring, Peter Webber's adaptation of the Tracy Chevalier novel that purports to tell the story behind the Vermeer painting of the same name. Johansson stars as Griet, Vermeer's maid, who captivates the painter (played by Colin Firth) and aggravates tensions with his covetous patron (Tom Wilkinson) and jealous wife (Essie Davis). While Earring wasn't a huge hit, and critics generally agreed the book was better than the movie, it still entertained writers like Shawn Levy of the Oregonian, who argued, "It offers a credible account of artistic inspiration inside of a blissfully peaceful and painfully lovely shell."

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74%

Finally capitalizing on Hollywood's long-held knowledge that a movie titled Scarlett Johansson Jumps Around in a Tight Leather Catsuit would make $100 million, Jon Favreau cast Scarlett as the mysterious Natasha Romanoff -- a.k.a. Black Widow -- in Iron Man 2, thus finally giving her a part that required her to jump around in a tight leather catsuit. That wasn't enough for most critics to forgive the fact that the second Man was generally less fun than its predecessor, but it still did pretty well on the Tomatometer -- and with scribes like Tom Long of the Detroit News, who wrote, "There are too many new characters, too many crossing story lines, not enough romance and our hero's a smug jerk for the first half hour. Who cares? Iron Man 2 still rocks."

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76%

After Batman Begins hit big, Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale had their pick of projects to choose from -- and they opted to reunite for The Prestige, a film Nolan had been eyeing since his post-Memento days. In this adaptation of the Christopher Priest novel, Bale stars opposite Jackman in the tale of two feuding early 20th century magicians who battle on the stage (where they sabotage one another's acts) and off (where they vie for the affections of a lovely assistant, played alluringly by Johansson). With a plot hinging on a series of progressively more unpredictable twists and turns, The Prestige was bound to provoke a number of divergent responses -- and it did, splitting RT's top critics almost down the middle -- but with gross receipts over $100 million and a Certified Fresh Tomatometer score, it packed enough of a suspenseful flourish to earn praise from scribes such as Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, who observed, "there are nifty tricks galore up the sumptuous sleeve of this offbeat and wildly entertaining thriller."

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77%

Before they teamed up for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Johansson served as Woody Allen's muse in Match Point, a thriller about the doomed love affair between an adulterous retired tennis player (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and the beautiful woman (Johansson, natch) he woos away from her fiancee and uses as a distraction from his wife (Emily Mortimer). Something of a grim departure for Allen, Match Point retains his fondness for tangled relationships, but instead of using them as grist for mere conversation about the battle of the sexes, they serve as the prelude for one of Allen's darkest third acts. "To call Match Point Woody Allen's comeback would be an understatement," warned Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman. "It's the most vital return to form for any director since Robert Altman made The Player."

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1924174/news/1924174/

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