Ira and Abby, Robert Cary, 2006

Cary's comedy is by turns winning and clumsy, its relative strengths drawn from a well rounded cast and from writer/star Jennifer Westfeldt's on-screen airiness and off-screen ear for situational dialouge. In all, though, the film pales in comparison to Westfeldt's dizzingly charming 2001 effort Kissing Jessica Stein.

Michael Clayton, Tony Gilroy, 2007.

Gilroy's taut tale of corporate dysfunction is nothing less (or more) than an intelligent, well-scripted, skillfully mounted adult drama the likes of which are all too rare.

A Mighty Heart, Michael Winterbottom, 2007

Winterbottom's film, not unlike Paul Greengrass' ultimately more successful United 93, is an unflinching and largely unsentimental account of an event both highly sensitive and uncomfortably current in the public conscience, in this case the ghastly kidnapping and murder of WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Alex Gibney, 2005

Gibney's is a startling, if not entirely evenhanded, relation of the Enron corruption scandal, and while the sense of extreme fiduciary malfeasance is certainly palpable, Gibney finds it somewhat difficult to properly distill the company's complex accounting strategies and earnings reportage for the uninitiated viewer.

Pocket Cinephile on Senses of Cinema