But that's exactly what Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" gains in its most recent movie version, which stars Jack Black as a loudmouth underachiever who works in the mail room of a New York newspaper. Black's Gulliver -- everyone calls him by his surname, owing perhaps to the fact that his first name is Lemuel -- doesn't have much in the way of ambition, but he is nursing a fierce crush on one of the paper's editors (Amanda Peet). He finally works up the courage to ask her on a date, but chickens out at the last second, and in order to explain his presence in her office, he awkwardly puts in for a travel-writing assignment (get it?).

So far, so nothing like Jonathan Swift. Gulliver does eventually make his way to the kingdom of Lilliput, whose diminutive residents are permanently at war with nearby Blefuscu, and makes himself useful by singlehandedly dispatching the Blefuscunian navy. But that's about all that remains of Swift's 1729 novel. Well, that and a scene in which Gulliver extinguishes a fire raging through the Lilliputian king's castle by voiding his bladder on the royal residence.

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In Atlantic City, corruption is the normal state of affairs, but when the wheels are properly greased, it stays beneath the surface. It’s only when the waters are muddied that women are gunned down on the boardwalk and apprentice bakers turn up in fishing nets. Nucky Thompson rightly saw Prohibition as a king-sized business opportunity, but the booming business has brought unwanted rivals sniffing around. Now, with an election approaching and the season’s plotlines coming to a head, it’s time to settle scores and cut deals, so everyone can go back to getting rich.

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Proof of Hardeen's theorem — or least part of it — is only a few feet away, in the queasy face of Harry Prince (Michael Badalucco), who has just lost his entire fortune to Charles Ponzi. (If you're keeping track of the timeline, that puts the episode in mid-August, 1921.) Perhaps Harry didn't want to be swindled, and certainly not ruined, but he wanted something else badly enough to ignore something he knew couldn't be true. It's an axiom of the con man's trade that you can't taken anyone who isn't willing to be taken. Self-interest is the most potent form of misdirection.

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Mickey tells Nucky that Meyer Lansky’s attempt to buy off Chalky White (who, let’s not forget, took Mickey’s place after Nucky cashiered him) was a ruse to determine the size of Chalky’s operation. The idea is for Chalky to play along, overstating the amount he can handle so that all of the D’Alessios show up, and then wipe them out in one swift blow. But the D’Alessios’ loose lips and Chalky’s rage derail the plan. During their initial meeting, one of the D’Alessios, flush with excitement over their bogus deal, tells Chalky they’ll make him rich enough to own "a Packard for every day of the week." Perhaps Chalky’s figured out by now that the young man who was lynched while loading Chalky’s car was meant to be him, or perhaps he’s just put off by their gloating familiarity, but it’s enough to start the wheels turning, and fast. Next thing you know, the three men are tied up on their knees, and a short while later, the two D’Alessios are dead, leaving Meyer Lansky to report back to Rothstein. (Incidentally, the scene demonstrates the wisdom in Terence Winter’s contention that using too many historical figures robs the story of tension. Even when there’s a gun pointed at Meyer’s head, you know he’s going to survive; he still has to become Meyer Lansky. Same goes for Nucky’s promise to make Rothstein "the richest corpse in New York.")

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After a brief prelude in which one of Al Capone's buddies tracks down the member of the late Sheridan's gang who slashed the face of Jimmy's girlfriend Pearl, now also deceased, the show throws us for a loop, cutting to the exterior of an isolated, rotting house in the woods. The setting is so alien to the world of the show it's as if we've slipped back in time, which in effect we have. The old man threatening stray cats with a fireplace poker in the house's filthy kitchen turns out to be Nucky and Eli's father, glimpsed briefly in "Nights in Ballygran." He's a surly, mean-spirited old coot, but his body is no longer up to the demands of his temper; as he spits venom at the invading pusses, he slips and falls, presumably breaking his hip, and requiring Nucky to grudgingly come to his rescue. As "Ballygran" hinted, Nucky is none too fond of his old man, and now we find out why: He was an abusive bully, scarring young Nucky's hand with the same fireplace poker for daring to reach for food before his old man had helped himself, and forcing him into a physical confrontation with four older boys who had stolen his prize catcher's mitt -- a battle that put Nucky in the hospital for nearly two weeks. It's no wonder he's learned to fend for himself, and to use cunning instead of force wherever possible. (The real Nucky, as I've mentioned before, was a physically imposing specimen, not someone you could imagine getting bullied.)

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Where are Nucky's thoughts straying? The answer arrives posthaste, as Margaret Schroeder drops in on head Dry Mrs. McGarry (Dana Ivey) for some matronly advice. (Perhaps it's a long shot, but I wonder if there's a chance the anti-drinking crusader might be named in tribute to cartoonist Eddie Campbell's fabulous drunkard Alec McGarry.) A man, Margaret tells her, has made her an offer. "Of what nature?" the older woman asks. "Domestic? Financial? Sexual?" Yes, as it happens, to all three.

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The issue is not buzz, bad or otherwise, but letting the cat out of the bag. Even more so than a twist-driven movie like "Inception," "Jackass 3D" plays best when you don't know what's coming next. One of the running gags threaded throughout the movie is what's termed "The Rocky," wherein jackass Bam Margera sneaks up behind an unsuspecting target, throws a cup of water in his face, and then, just as his victim's head turns to the left, smacks him silly with a right hook to the jaw. The slow motion in which the assault is filmed allows you not only to see the shock of the blow as it ripples through their fleshy cheeks, but to savor the successive waves of surprise washing over their faces.

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That Jimmy has picked up a few things from his erstwhile mentor, Nucky Thompson, is clear in the way he attempts to finesse Al's pistols-drawn approach to rival gangster Charlie Sheridan (Frank Shattuck). The purpose of their meeting, before which Torrio pointedly clears the room, is to inform Sheridan that Torrio will be moving in on his territory, a point Al has already made by breaking the jaw of an unlucky bar owner. Just before Sheridan and his flunkies enter, Jimmy warns Al to start small, drawing on their common experience as soldiers -- "You don't take over a county all at once." But the moment Sheridan lets fly a crack about "you New York fellas," Al hits back. Johnny Torrio, "also from Brooklyn," is taking over Greektown, whether Sheridan likes it or not.

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The central character in Winter's yarn, loosely based on the nonfiction book by New Jersey judge Nelson Johnson, is Atlantic City treasurer Enoch "Nucky" Thompson, a dapper political animal who in the show's first few minutes goes from cheering on the ladies of the city's Temperance League to arranging the first delivery of illicit liquor mere hours after Prohibition goes into effect. The real-life Thompson (or rather Johnson, as Nucky's surname is one of several changes Winter makes to free the show from the strictures of history) was a massive figure, 6-foot-2 with "paws for hands," but Buscemi's Nucky is more of a wheeler-dealer than a gangland bruiser. When he tells someone "I could have you killed," it's hard to know whether to believe him. (The response, "But you won't," is almost superfluous.)

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Anton Corbijn's "The American," adapted by Rowan Joffe from Martin Booth's novel "A Very Private Gentlemen," works at the edges of the espionage genre, where reflexivity shades into self-parody. It's built from stock, salvaged from bits of countless other films, but rather than disguise that fact, Corbijn incorporates the rust of those worn-out parts into his design. We've been here before, and so have the characters, and everyone's grown tired of the game.

As the titular operative, George Clooney is torpid with the weight of his past. (We could call him Jack, or Edward, but having several names is as good as having none.) The only time he moves quickly is when his life is threatened, as in the film's opening sequence, when he and a comely Swede take a post-coital walk and chance upon an assassin's tracks in the snow. He pulls her close to a hillside with barely a word, ignoring her bewildered questions as he pulls a gun from his coat and fires into the trees. A man's body falls to the ground and he sends her to call for help--and then, the instant her back is turned, he shoots her in the head.

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