"Cloverfield" -- New Yorkers go out of their heads as a 350-foot monster rampages through the city in this horror hit. Using a cast of unknowns to accentuate authenticity, "Cloverfield" is told from the perspective of a hand-held camera that had been recording a farewell party among friends. The lens is turned on the chaos that results as the Godzilla wannabe tears up the town.

"Charlie Wilson's War" -- A partying congressman, a Texas socialite and a slovenly CIA man secretly back Afghanistan against communist invaders, help bring down the Soviet empire and leave a legacy that resounds in the war on terrorism today. Director Mike Nichols' sharp foreign-policy satire stars Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the three unlikely masterminds of the covert U.S. response over the Soviet action in the early 1980s.

"The Savages" -- Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney are an ideal match in this hilarious and heartbreaking comic drama about emotionally stunted siblings forced to grow up and deal with each other and the little messes they've made of their lives. Hoffman and Linney play a brother and sister who have contentedly grown apart amid their self-absorbed lives but are forced together to care for the ailing father (Philip Bosco) who never paid much mind to them.

"The Orphanage" -- Good ghost stories are hard to find, so this subtle, creepy tale is a welcome arrival. Produced by Guillermo del Toro, the film stars Belen Rueda as a woman who once lived in an orphanage and returns there 30 years later with her husband and adopted son to open a home for children with special needs. But they're not alone: Ominous spirits of her old playmates haunt the place to reveal a terror she had long forgotten.

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