Two hours with Casino Jack and the United States of Money , a takedown of überlobbyist Jack Abramoff, won’t reassure anyone of the nobleness of spirit of Washington, D.C.’s major players. Documentarian Alex Gibney ( Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room ) is a showman and a bit of a sensationalist, a 21st-century muckraker laying waste to society’s rotten apples, who all too commonly also happen to be the ruling class.

The Road is another adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel, and if not as good as the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men , it’s even bleaker and more violent.

It’s rare that a film screens in Madison multiple times before it begins a theatrical run here. In recent months the Romanian film Police, Adjective was presented at the Wisconsin Film Festival and the Romanian Film Festival, and it also showed up in a Memorial Union screening. I mention this by way of saying that there’s been a lot of buzz about this film, and about the thriving Romanian film scene that produced it.

Like Police, Adjective , the Argentinean film The Secret in Their Eyes is set in a country still sorting out its repressive past. But unlike the Romanian film, The Secret in Their Eyes , which won the Best Foreign Film Oscar, depicts the repression.

Clint Eastwood’s Invictus brings to life an extraordinary true story that took place during Nelson Mandela’s first year as president — following the 1995 run for glory of the Springboks, South Africa’s long-mediocre, mostly white national rugby team, that, backed and encouraged by Mandela, made an improbable charge to the finals of the world cup rugby championship series.

At times Robin Hood feels like a training film for the Tea Party movement. There is much talk of tyranny and liberty. “We’ll only serve a law we had a hand in making,” complains an English baron at an angry outdoor meeting that features much shouting and bitterness.

Don Argott’s engrossing documentary makes no bones about its allegiances. The Art of the Steal bills itself, after all, as “the true story of a multibillion-dollar heist and how they got away with it.”

Fritz Lang’s great, hair-raising 1931 German crime thriller M was the masterpiece of his career and remains the true filmic father of all film noir. This new Criterion Blu-ray edition, a masterpiece of DVD production, belongs in the collection of every true movie-lover.

8 1/2 , Federico Fellini’s 1963 mega-classic about a movie director’s inner life and outer turbulence, is a masterpiece born of apparent chaos. Rob Marshall’s movie musical Nine , adapted from the Broadway hit inspired by 8 1/2 , is closer to chaos born of a masterpiece. That doesn’t mean it’s not entertaining.

In times of crisis, it’s important to stick to your routines. This much I take from The Sun , Russian director Alexander Sokurov’s film about Emperor Hirohito (Issei Ogata), who ruled amid Japan’s aggression and defeat in World War II.