James Gandolfini as Albert and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Eva in 'Enough Said.' Fox Searchlight

I can't say enough about the way "Enough Said" keeps its scintillating sense of humor as it grows deeper and more affecting. Nicole Holofcener's romantic comedy, in national release beginning this weekend, stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini as Eva and Albert, middle-age divorcees with kids who chance to meet when they're both facing the prospect of empty nests, and emptier lives. At first the story's tone suggests cheerful sitcom; these two ostensible adults conduct their courtship with all the suave sophistication of middle-schoolers. Yet the undertones have undertones in this beautiful movie, which drills into layers of loneliness, neediness and self-doubt.

The setup is beguilingly simple. Eva, a masseuse, is falling in love with the charmingly eccentric Albert, who runs a small television-history archive. At the same time, she's hearing horror stories from a pop-poet client about the client's ex-husband. (The poet, Marianne, is played to narcissistic perfection by Catherine Keener.) Eventually Eva realizes what we may already have guessed, or know from the trailer—that the man Marianne abhors is the same one Eva adores. Who, then, is this Albert person? Is he Mister Right-Despite-Some-Quirks, or Mister Couldn't-Be-Wronger? Marianne is too prejudiced to be a credible reporter, but Eva is too insecure to credit the evidence of her heart.

Watch a clip from the film "Enough Said." A divorced woman who decides to pursue the man she's interested in learns he's her new friend's ex-husband. Starring James Gandolfini, Toni Collette, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. (Photo/Video: Fox Searchlight)

"Enough Said" stakes a claim on our hearts before the first frame lights up the screen; it's the next-to-last film Mr. Gandolfini made before he died. To make matters simultaneously worse (for our sense of loss) and better (for the film), his performance is marvelous—centered, relaxed and so grounded in genial humanity that we quickly switch from watching a beloved actor who has left us to rooting for a character who deserves the best life can give him. Ms. Louis-Dreyfus is equally endearing, and this is ultimately Eva's film, since she's the one stuck in a sort of amatory "Rashomon"; it's painfully funny to watch her figure out which version of Albert is closer to the truth.

Pain is a significant part of "Enough Said," while funny is the film's mode at almost any given moment. Just as Ms. Holofcener did three years ago in "Please Give," she has packed a small world of intriguing people into a short running time—this one is three minutes longer than the previous one, which clocked in at 90 minutes on the button—and she's given every one of them lovely lines to toss off as grace notes. (After conducting an anxious search of Albert's bathroom for clues to his personality, Eva asks him why he has so many toothbrushes. "I don't know," he replies, amused and slightly defensive, "they're my friends.") The excellent cast includes Tracey Fairaway as Eva's daughter, Ellen; Tavi Gevenson as Ellen's friend, Chloe; and Toni Collette and Ben Falcone as Sarah and Will, a couple struggling with two relationships at the same time—their own and the one with their fractious housekeeper.

WSJ film critic Joe Morgenstern can't say enough about the way "Enough Said" keeps its sense of humor as it grows deeper and more affecting. He joins Lunch Break with a review of the film, which is the next-to-last film James Gandolfini made before he died. (Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures)

But oh, the pain of it all for Eva and Albert. Some of it is situational, and more or less general—the yearning for intimacy; the perplexity of sex; the mystery of personality at any age, but especially in middle-age, when new relationships may seem as impossible as they are desirable. Much of it, though, is specific to the conflicts and doubts that hold the heroine in thrall. If love is blind, conflicted love is deaf and dumb.

Eva is so needy that she projects her neediness on the blithely manipulative Marianne, who will never lack for company. She keeps listening to Marianne's stories about Albert, even though they're poisoning her relationship with the man she thinks she loves. Yet the most potent poison of the piece is fear—Eva's fear of growing old (she jokes about knitting, but continues to knit); of being alone, of not knowing enough, or feeling clearly enough, to trust herself with her own precious fate. She can't find the words to express the depths of her fear; that's understandable. Yet the movie expresses it for her, and entirely in the language of romantic comedy. That's remarkable.

'Inequality for All'

Watch a clip from film "Inequality for All," a documentary that follows former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich as he looks to raise awareness of the country's widening economic gap. (Photo/Video: RADiUS-TWC)

Jacob Kornbluth's lively documentary is both a polemic and a teaching tool. It's based on "Aftershock," a book, first published in 2010, by Robert B. Reich. Mr. Reich was, most notably, labor secretary under Bill Clinton, and is currently a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. As the film's instructor-host, talking straight to the camera or in a lecture-hall setting, he's consistently engaging and occasionally passionate about the widening gap between America's rich and poor. (The template here clearly derives from Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth.") As the film's star, he's extremely personable, as well as winningly self-ironic, and not only about his short stature, which he addresses with a sprinkling of polished jokes. Looking back on those Clinton years, he asserts that "we didn't do enough, we didn't really alter the underlying trend" of income inequality, and faults himself for growing predictable on the subject: "I became a true pain in the ass. People would roll their eyes."

Robert Reich RADiUS-TWC

For those conversant with his views, predictable may seem an understatement. Mr. Reich uses his platform to argue, as he has been doing over years and decades, for tighter regulation of the financial sector and, with Warren Buffett showing up in support, for higher taxes on the rich. "We need to replace trickle-down economics with middle-out economics," he contends. "The most pro-business thing you can do is help middle-class people thrive."

For wider audiences, though, Mr. Kornbluth's documentary argues eloquently for such unassailable goals as investment in education and infrastructure, and complements Mr. Reich's exposition with compelling interviews of middle-class Americans who don't understand what's happening to them. "How can we not have money?" asks one young woman who, with her family, lives hand-to-mouth, even though she's got a regular job. And with less of a political charge than its host's presence might suggest, the film puts what's been happening—the housing bubble, the 2008 crash, soaring health costs, stagnant salaries, the parallel emergence of the Tea Party and Occupy movements ("You've got a lot of people who feel the game is stacked against them")—in the context of a globalized economy and a host of technological revolutions that offer hope along with frightening dislocation. "I'm still a cockeyed optimist," Mr. Reich says. "That's why I teach."

'Don Jon'

Watch a clip from the film "Don Jon." A New Jersey guy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) develops unrealistic expectations from watching porn and works to find happiness with his potential true love (Scarlett Johansson). (Photo/Video: Relativity Media)

"You like movies?" an alluring Scarlett Johansson asks in a startlingly effective TV spot for Joseph Gordon-Levitt's debut as writer-director-star. (She asks it in the movie too.) Put me down as a definite yes. I not only like movies, and Ms. Johansson, but I like Mr. Gordon-Levitt a lot as an actor, and I wish him only the best in his future work as a filmmaker. There is, however, the matter of this particular movie, an overheated disquisition on the pleasures and limitations of masturbation.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Scarlett Johansson Relativity Media

The script is shrewd enough in its attitude toward porn (addictive, but empty calories), and its hero's devotion to porn. (Unlike the original Don Juan, Mr. Gordon-Levitt's Jon, a New Jersey guy dubbed Don Jon by his buddies, would rather go it alone.) But the ethnic tropes and accents are almost as cringeworthy as Jon's repetitive liaisons with his laptop computer. (Ms. Johansson's speech patterns are the delightful exception; who knew she could do Jersey with the casual aplomb of Streisand doing Brooklyn?) Enough gets to be enough long before the movie sets Jon on a journey that leads to Ms. Johansson's flesh-and-blood beauty, Barbara, and after some twists and turns, to him finding mutuality in sex and love.

'Friends With Money' (2006)

'Friends With Money'

Of the four women in Nicole Holofcener's third feature film, only Frances McDormand's Jane is flamingly angry; she's the most vivid character in the group. Not that the others don't have interesting problems, or that they aren't played with panache: Jennifer Aniston, Catherine Keener and Joan Cusack could bring panache to a reading of the stock tables. The movie, set on the affluent West Side of Los Angeles, is a series of acute observations in search of drama, while Jane, a precariously married woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, is her own drama queen.

'Manufactured Landscapes' (2006)

'Manufactured Landscapes'

Inspired by the work of the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal's landmark documentary depicts some aspects of the human enterprise described by the term globalization. The film starts with an eight-minute tracking shot down one aisle of a Chinese factory the size of a small town. Then it follows Mr. Burtynsky on a tour of industrial Asia in order to show the scale of man's activities, including China's Three Gorges Dam, and the impact they're having on our planet. I thought I had some sense of that impact until I saw this astonishing film.

'Looper' (2012)


Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as a young time-traveling assassin named Joe in Rian Johnson's remarkably elegant sci-fi adventure. The actor doesn't quite look like himself, thanks to prosthetic adjustments of his familiar features, though the explanation for that is soon apparent. And the character, confronting himself in a mirror, checks to see if his hairline is receding; it's a nice little joke with the same explanation in the intricate story, which is set mainly in 2044, and also features Bruce Willis. Don't worry about the plot's logic, just see the film next time you can.

Write to Joe Morgenstern at joe.morgenstern@wsj.com