Strangely overlooked in this year’s Oscar nominations — even for Marvin Hamlisch’s kinetic score — The Informant! gets inside the highly unreliable thoughts of Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a biochemist turned whistleblower for Archer Daniels Midland. Amid beige cubicles, the story unravels in surprising and funny ways, complete with bad disguises and James Bond-style tactics gone wrong.

Hamlisch is also the composer behind the musical A Chorus Line and the movie The Sting. In a recent visit to Studio 360, Hamlisch sat behind the piano and conjured up the melodies from his long list of musical credits.