Critic’s pick: ‘The Ghost Writer’

For some reason, Ewan McGregor tends to slip under the radar despite countless brilliant performances, the latest as a ghost writer working on the memoir of a Tony Blair-styled prime minister in Roman Polanski’s excellent murder mystery. An actor of great subtlety, beginning with his drug-addicted star turn in 1996’s “Trainspotting,” McGregor has only gotten better: the tragic lover in “Moulin Rouge!,” the intrepid reporter in “Men Who Stare at Goats.” But as a writer trying to survive the shark-infested political waters he’s thrown into, McGregor is at his best yet.

-- Betsy Sharkey