Gone Baby Gone (2007)

Directed by Ben Affleck, and based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, this is a brilliant, extremely gritty thriller that’s also a moving domestic drama. 

Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan play a couple who agree to investigate a missing girl in a poor part of Boston. They do so in parallel with the police, who are led by Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman. 

There are plenty of surprises as the plot twists and turns, but the resolution is satisfying and none of the threads collapse under scrutiny – as tends to happen with lesser storylines. 

One criticism: a lot of the dialogue is difficult to make out.

Green Zone (2010)

Exciting thriller loosely based on real events and directed by Paul Greengrass, with the familiar, dynamic style that makes his best films so watchable. 

It’s 2003 and Matt Damon is a US soldier in Baghdad, leading a unit in the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction. But working with a member of the CIA (Brendan Gleeson) and a journalist (Amy Ryan), he comes to realise that there aren’t any weapons to find and that the government has acted on false information. 

It’s a thriller, a war film and a conspiracy drama. 

Matt Damon – rarely less than brilliant – is as riveting as he ever was. 

The fast cuts make it especially exciting, and I like the "low-res" visuals (which were no doubt exceedingly expensive).