As far as movie formulas go, these Ocean's movies have it made. The first film, a remake of an amiable Rat Pack flick from the '60s, got most of its mileage from handsome, likable movie stars bantering just as we imagine handsome, likable movie stars bantering in their real lives. The second film refined the formula, practically dispensing with the heist plot and edging the series into the realm of pseudo-documentary (Julia Roberts' character gets mistaken for Julia Roberts by Bruce Willis, playing himself.) And probably the biggest laugh of this likable third entry comes when Brad Pitt's character (I forget his name) chides George Clooney's Danny Ocean (I only remember his because it's in the title) for packing on pounds in between heists — a dig at his Oscar-winning role in Syriana — only for Clooney to retort that Pitt himself should start a family and have a couple of kids — in reference to his misadventures with Angelina Jolie.

We're drawn to these films because they make us feel we've been offered a privileged glimpse into the actors' lives. Said actors are the anti-Cruises; their power comes not from their kooky aloofness, but from their seeming availability. That these privileged glimpses only serve (go figure) to make these folks seem even cooler and more appealing is all the better. It ensures that we'll line up the next time another Ocean's rolls out. Meta never seemed so sexy.

You might be wondering what this third entry is actually about. Here, Danny Ocean and his crew start feeling vengeful (but in a very relaxed, affable way) when their colleague and patron Reuben (Elliott Gould) gets stiffed by shark-like casino developer Willie Bank (Al Pacino) in the creation of a new Vegas playhouse. They then conspire to arrange for Bank to lose lots of money, while also thwarting his ambitions to get a coveted award. As usual, making all this happen requires lots of elaborately conceived, not to mention far-fetched, trickery.

But plausibility is not the issue here; we just want to spend some time with the movie stars. And while the film certainly delivers the goods on that score, director Steven Soderbergh and company are pulling back a bit. After all, Ocean's 12 was such a cavalcade of starfuckery that the plot practically vanished. Here, the plot makes a comeback, but its complexity may be at odds with our simple star-watching needs. Although the balance ultimately works here, it makes you wonder just how enduring the appeal of the series will be. Enjoy it while it lasts. — Bilge Ebiri

Having heartily skewered Romero-inspired zombie flicks in the 2004 cult hit Shaun of the Dead, director Edgar Wright and writer-actor Simon Pegg now turn their attention to American cinema's true plague: the Bruckheimer-derived buddy-cop picture. Their cheekiest idea this time is to dispense with the genre's usual wild-eyed renegades: Hot Fuzz's ostensible hero is one Nicholas Angel (Pegg), a doggedly by-the-book bobbie whose sterling arrest record and unimpeachable sense of professional ethics threaten to make the rest of London's police force look incompetent at best, wholly corrupt at worst. He's therefore transferred against his will to a quaint, cozy English village, where his new partner turns out to be the town drunk (Nick Frost, once again the ideal shambolic sidekick) and a typical day's work involves issuing a summons for jaywalking. Until, that is, various townsfolk begin meeting with mysterious "accidents," invariably in the vicinity of the village's unctuous excuse for a business mogul (Timothy Dalton).

Movies like Bad Boys II and Point Break are already more than halfway to self-parody, so it's remarkable how much comic mileage Hot Fuzz gets from shots of dorky English dudes strutting in slow-mo as a hot-orange fireball explodes directly behind them. It helps a great deal that Pegg, a ferrety screen presence whose entire head sometimes seems to be receding, possesses both pitch-perfect timing and surprising range; he's as magnificently uptight here as he was gloriously bewildered in Shaun of the Dead. But while nobody will fail to bust a gut laughing, it's hard to understand why a goofy lark like this should clock in at more than two hours. By the final half hour, it's hard to tell whether Hot Fuzz qualifies as spoof or straight-faced homage; Wright and company are having so much fun blowing shit up that their movie eventually threatens to become as tiresome as its targets. Save some of this stuff for the deleted-scenes section of the DVD, fellas. — Mike D'Angelo

Genre cannot contain Ryan Gosling. Last year's majestic inner-city-teacher drama Half Nelson didn't sound like much on paper, The Notebook must the sappiest romantic drama in recent memory, and Murder By Numbers — well, the title spoke volumes. And yet, despite an agent who appears to love cookie-cutter roles — I'll admit that his breakthrough as a neo-Nazi/Orthodox Jew in The Believer ruins this convenient thesis — Gosling has emerged as a possible Actor of His Generation. Brooding, sexy and self-aware, he generally refuses to do the homework as assigned; his appeal stems from his idiosyncratic approach to even the most standard roles.

Fracture, a decent legal thriller that borrows most of its cues from more successful predecessors, is no exception to the Gosling rule. He plays Los Angeles Assistant D.A. Willy Beachum, who decides to take on an open-and-shut attempted-murder case as his farewell to the public sector. (He's ready to cash in with a hot job lined up at a corporate firm.) The defendant, played by Anthony Hopkins as a cosmopolitan, minor-key Hannibal Lecter, shot his cheating wife and apparently signed a full confession, but because the arresting cop (and confessor) was also the guy fucking his wife — whoops! — the confession is thrown out. Thus begins a diverting battle of wits between the prosecutor with one foot out the door and his smarmy equal on the other side of the courtroom, who obsesses over finding the cracks in Beachum's cocky façade. As an audience, we take our cues from Gosling, who never treats his diagrammed moral dilemmas or legal quandaries as more than a board game. He keeps it fun.

Director Gregory Hoblit (Primal Fear) emphasizes cleverness over plausibility, so Fracture entertains but never quite thrills. Hopkins clicks on the cruise control as the detached, coldly British sociopath, and Gosling allows him to chew the scenery. By the time the killer is sending Beachum cracked eggshells in the mail, you might be busy brooding over the film's own considerable fractures (such as the believability of Beachum's romance with his new boss, or the idea that Hopkins' character could ever have been married). But I'd advise you to just kick back and enjoy the cartoon. — Akiva Gottlieb

"You got it backwards, kid," poker legend L.C. Cheever (Robert Duvall) tells his wayward son Huck (Eric Bana). "You play cards the way you should live your life, and you lead your life the way you should play cards." Since I'm not a personal friend of Curtis Hanson or Eric Roth, the two gentlemen who dreamed up Lucky You (Hanson also directed), I can't say whether they write Christmas cards the way they should write screenplays, but. . . well, you get the idea. Ostensibly a hard-hitting look at the emotional constipation of the professional gambler — a breed characterized by recklessness, compulsion, and an almost complete lack of empathy — this long-delayed film (key scenes were shot at the 2005 World Series of Poker) hammers home its banal message in dialogue so soap-opera direct that the poor actors all but wince in pain as they deliver it. (Often there's an uncomfortable pause, too: "Do I really have to say this?")

I know what some of you are thinking: "Who cares whether the dude wins Drew Barrymore's love or earns his daddy's respect? How's his game?" Unfortunately, while Lucky You is jam-packed with cameos from real-life pros — most visible are Sammy Farha, John Hennigan, Barry Greenstein, and Jennifer Harman — none of them seems to have contributed any poker insight. Huck has the best hand in every confrontation we see: When he wins, it's usually by picking off someone's stone bluff; when he loses, it's invariably because his opponent catches a miracle river card. More improbable still, the movie's sappy dramatic climax hinges on Huck's refusal to show his hole cards to the television camera at the World Series main event. (If individual players were allowed to veto the camera at will, there would be no televised poker, period.) Even the table talk here is often ludicrously overstated, with players delivering lengthy dissertations on the play of the entire hand, lest newbies in the audience be confused. Every good poker player knows that the most important skill is game selection. Choose another seat. — Mike D'Angelo