Feature films
Ponsoldt's first feature film that he both wrote and directed, Off the Black (2006), premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006. The film stars Nick Nolte and Trevor Morgan.
Ponsoldt's second feature film that he also both wrote and directed was Smashed (2012), which starred Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Aaron Paul. Smashed premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2012, and won the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Prize for Excellence in Independent Film Producing. The film also received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Winstead's performance.
The Spectacular Now (2013), the third feature film Ponsoldt directed, was written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, based on the novel by Tim Tharp. The film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, where it was warmly received and was given the Special Jury Award for Acting for the performances from its two leads, Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley. New York-based distribution company A24 inked a deal for The Spectacular Now, which Ponsoldt shot in Athens, Georgia, in the summer of 2012. The film was released on August 2, 2013.
In The Hollywood Reporter, critic Todd McCarthy called the movie "a sincere, refreshingly unaffected look at teenagers and their attitudes about the future...Ordinary in some ways and extraordinary in others, The Spectacular Now benefits from an exceptional feel for its main characters on the parts of the director and lead actors." Cinema Blend called it "the rare Sundance coming-of-age story that feels like it matters," adding: "The Spectacular Now is an instant MVP of the first half of the festival, with potential breakout hit written all over it...you'll be hearing a lot about this one down the road, and it's got the goods to live up to the hype." Spin called the film "The next great teen movie." In Variety, critic Rob Nelson wrote: "The scars and blemishes on the faces of the high-school lovers in The Spectacular Now are beautifully emblematic of director James Ponsoldt's bid to bring the American teen movie back to some semblance of reality, a bid that pays off spectacularly indeed."
Ponsoldt's fourth feature as director is The End of the Tour (2015), with a screenplay by Donald Margulies, based on the book Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (2010) by David Lipsky. It follows Rolling Stone writer David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) as he interviews author David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) during the final week of the promotional book tour for Infinite Jest. The film also stars Anna Chlumsky and Ron Livingston. It premiered at The Sundance Film Festival in January 2015 and was released theatrically in July 2015.
Ponsoldt's fifth feature film is an adaptation of Dave Eggers's novel The Circle, about an omnipotent high-tech company known as "The Circle". Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, Karen Gillan, and John Boyega star in the film, which was released on April 28, 2017. Ponsoldt co-produced the film.
In August 2021, Bleecker Street and Stage 6 Films picked up the worldwide rights to Ponsoldt's coming-of-age film Summering, starring Sarah Cooper and Megan Mullally.
