Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2006)

Based on the 2003 investigative tome, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a methodical primer on the men who wore some of the crookedest white collars in American history. Using the same modern-doc tricks as Michael Moore (ironic pop-song score) and Errol Morris (ironic stock footage), Alex Gibney audits the heated machismo, junk-math strategies, and thumb-twiddling denials that eventually led to the arrest of former CEOs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling and ex-CFO Andrew Fastow. It's hardly the final word on the subject, but Enron's accessible eggheadedness makes for an informative (and enraging) overview.

EXTRAS Plenty of background details, including extended interviews, copies of the Fortune articles that started the ship sinking, and a ''Where Are They Now?'' feature that will need to be updated later this year when Lay and Skilling's trial is scheduled to conclude.

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