LEMONY SNICKET'S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS (PG) Morbidly witty, imaginatively stylized and with surprisingly little pandering to tiny or otherwise tiny-minded viewers, there's much to enjoy in this dark-but-not-too-dark fantasy about the trials and tribulations of a trio of ingenious orphans. Jim Carrey dons a series of elaborate disguises as the young pups' nemesis, an evil actor who keeps putting the kiddies in a succession of increasingly harrowing predicaments from which they must use all their considerable, McGuyver-like resources to escape. It's not exactly Shakespeare, but there are lots of curious characters, bizarre and outlandish landscapes, and a tone that's more or less faithful to the dark, disarmingly dry sensibility of the original books. The film is a production designer's dream, with wonderfully odd little Edward Gorey-esque flourishes and filigrees loitering about the edges of nearly every frame. Also stars Liam Aiken, Emily Browning, Timothy Spall, Billy Connolly, Meryl Streep and Jude Law. 1/2
THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU (R) While its joys are not so warming or self-evident as those of his previous Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson's latest movie is unlike any other. With The Life Aquatic, Anderson doesn't give us particularly likeable or even "real" characters, and the humor is so dry and understated that "jokes" frequently fly under the radar, but the film does present an entire, not-quite-alternate universe, one as inexplicably skewed and intricately self-contained as something you'd find in a big, fat novel by Thomas Pynchon. Anderson seems to be setting himself up as Hollywood's Pynchon, in fact, with a movie that, while technically a comedy, is often maddeningly enigmatic to the point of obscurity, set in a world a half-stop removed from reality and floating along on a narrative both elaborate and sketch-like. The movie's characters include some magnificently strange but emotionally distant birds (led by Bill Murray as the disagreeable but oddly charismatic Zissou), a guy who periodically croons Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie songs in Portuguese, and there are even a few mock action sequences as wonderfully inept and ludicrous as anything you'll see in Team America. Also stars Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum and Anjelica Huston. 1/2
THE MACHINIST (NR) Christian Bale sheds his pretty-boy image and some 60 pounds in order to play a tortured, skeletal loner who hasn't slept for a year and can't seem to distinguish between what's real and what's not. The film unfolds and Trevor slips deeper and deeper into what appears to be a delusional state, although the movie teases us with the possibility that maybe he really is the victim of some vast, bizarre conspiracy aimed at costing him his job, his sanity, maybe even his life. It's conceivable that the entire movie is Trevor's hallucination, and we're encouraged from the get-go to take everything we see with as many grains of salt as possible. The is-it-or-isn't-it reality submitted for our approval in The Machinist is far from inviting, but there's no denying that it manages to grab us from the first frame and not let go. Also stars Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon and John Sharian. 1/2
MEET THE FOCKERS (PG-13) If you liked Meet the Parents, odds are you'll love this sequel, which has pretty much everything the original had plus a little something else just to make sure all the bases are covered. Besides the patented oil-and-water dynamic between Ben Stiller and his future in-laws, we get an even more strained (and consequently, in movie logic, wackier) dynamic between those same, uptight WASPy future in-laws and Stiller's own oversexed and way ethnic parents (Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand). There's also a cute baby, a tiny dog and cat who do terrible (as in terrible-funny) things to each other, and Robert DeNiro wearing a fake boob. The main show here is Hoffman and Streisand, though, who are actually quite funny together, despite being saddled with a script that too often relies on jokes about old people having sex and that apparently thinks the ultimate in hilarity is to simply have someone say anything that pops into their heads in Yiddish. The movie also gets much comedic mileage merely by repeating the word "Focker" again and again, but, fortunately, there's a fair amount here that's genuinely amusing, too. Also stars Blythe Danner and Teri Polo.