Hold your horses, I'm aware that centered titles are generally frowned upon. However, when given a fixed size container, simply having everything left-aligned gives an empty impression – which itself is bad UX.
Is it more important to have good alignment than good looks? Alternative solutions are also much appreciated.
The empty impression is caused by the image not the text.
Take imdb.com as an example and look how they fill all the box with the image.
For me the way to go is left aligned text for readability and consistency and then playing with the sizes of containers and images depending on the proportions of each one. I would not recommend "tall and skinny" images.
The (2) and (3) look better.
What's important is that it looks good, and it will look good if you have a nice balance and a good alignment!
But:
Because you have a year at the end of your title, I would recommend using the (3) with all the text aligned to the left.
If you use centered for the title with that year, it will look ugly when you'll have long and short titles together.
If you put the year on another line below the title, then centered could be alright.
By the way, a good trick when doing that kind of layout:
Find a very long title and find a very short title, and do your layout tests with these 2.
This way you will already see what doesn't look balanced and you will also plan enough room and the right font size for the long and short titles. In your example the title is very short and that can be misleading.
