While a slew of films attempted to address Iraq from a fictional perspective this year, none had the efficacy of docs on the same topic, which have been rolling out for the past few years. Of all those docs, however, it's hard to find a more cogent overview than Charles Ferguson's profile of the first infrastructure-oriented boots on the ground and how they were basically undermined from the very beginning and how that got us where we are today.

Not questioning for a moment whether or not it was a good idea to go in in the first place, No End in Sight instead concerns itself with the dream that was a democratic Iraq and paints a pretty convincing picture that at first, at least, it was achievable. At least that's the impression you get from the insiders tasked with that mission who very honestly depict the clusterfuck that awaited them.

The most telling stat the film highlights is that the post-WWII occupation of Germany was literally years in the planning. The Iraq occupation, maybe 60 days. And strange as it may sound, after watching the film, the surge actually begins to make sense. Scary, unfortunate, eponymous sense.

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2. Charlie Wilson's War

"My loyalty? For twenty four years people have been trying to kill me! People who know how. And do you think that's because I'm the son of a Greek soda pop maker, or because I'm an American spy. Go fuck youself, you fucking child!"

After the implosion of Studio 60, it seemed we'd lost Aaron Sorkin to a self-righteous, shrill parody of his former self. Maybe it was the distance of adapting someone else's work, but his first post-60 script (and his first screenplay in 12 years) evidences a return to form.

The same sharp dialog that sets Sorkin apart to the point where you have to ask if a particular actor can speak Sorkin the same way you ask if they can speak Mamet, is firing on all cylinders here, placed in the mouths of some fine performers. Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman in particular form one of the year's best duos (right up there with Cheryl Hines and Adrienne Shelly in Waitress or Don Cheadle and Chiwetel Ejiofor in Talk to Me).

The film also manages to accomplish in the last five minutes what most of this year's war-themed movies couldn't manage in two hours. In that short space, the flick makes its point (something like, "If you don't invest in infrastructure after arming a bunch of people, many of whom would like to kill you, it'll probably come back to bite you in the ass") without much fanfare, and still has more to say than 90 percent of its kith. A lot of that is due to the respect it shows for its audience by letting them do the math.

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