Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of “Nightmare Alley” is a contemporary film noir teeming with howling winds, pelting rain and swirling snow. The movie, set in the years leading up — and including — the early months of World War II, chronicles the rise and fall of Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a charismatic drifter who joins a carnival, learns some tricks from a has-been mentalist, later uses those deceptions to enrich himself and, finally, plummets to his true and deserving destiny.