Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)

Human nature takes a beating in Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, a documentary which opens with a church dwarfed by a skyscraper. Director Alex Gibney dissects the greed-fueled "macho culture" of the energy brokerage corporation that rose and fell on corrupt business practices.

Based on Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind's book The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, Gibney's movie encapsulates into less than two hours the essence of the Enron story. Primarily, he focuses on the psychosis of President and CEO Jeff Skilling, the top point of a triumverate that also included Chairman (and later CEO) Ken Lay, and Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow.

Gibney's energetic direction and pacing makes eminently clear how Fastow, on behalf of Skilling, counted projected profits as if they were in hand and willed Enron's stratospheric stock into being. The film also benefits tremendously from audio recordings of amoral energy traders delighting in California's woes and video footage of regular internal rallies—in which Lay and Skilling promised employees that everything was going to be just fine, even as they strapped on their golden parachutes.