The Good Shepherd (15)

Robert De Niro's second film as director is a fictionalised history of the CIA, an organisation which should have the motto: you don't have to be paranoid and alienated to work here, but it helps. Alongside a dozen big name guest stars (including Angelina Jolie, right) it features Matt Damon as Edward Wilson, a senior agent in the 1960s. Flash back to 1939, and Wilson is a poetry student at Yale who becomes a spy to do his bit for the war effort, and then never finds his way back to a normal life in peace time.

It's a film for fans of John Le Carre, rather than Ian Fleming. As cold and humourless as it is - in all of the 20-plus years that the film covers, Wilson smiles three times - it's a gripping thriller which is steeped in mystery, and yet still gives you the exhilarating sense that you're learning more than you should about code words, interrogations and assassinations.