Ocean's 11, American heist film, released in 1960, that featured the legendary  1960s "Rat Pack" of Las Vegas entertainers, including Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Dean Martin.

In the film, Danny Ocean (played by Sinatra) recruits a gang of his old army buddies to simultaneously rob five Las Vegas casinos. Overcoming various obstacles - including the arrival of  Ocean's wife (Angie Dickinson) - the men pull off the outlandish scheme but run into trouble when they try to leave Las Vegas with the money.

Perhaps no other film symbolizes the "cool" of the early 1960s more than Ocean's Eleven. Although a major box-office success, it was dismissed at the time as a virtual home movie for the Rat Pack, who squeezed in a shooting schedule amid their nightly performances at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The film featured a number of inside jokes, and much of the script was improvised by the Rat Pack, who considered two takes to be an excessive waste of time. Memorable moments include Sammy Davis, Jr.'s rendition of the title song and amusing cameos from Red Skelton, George Raft, and Shirley MacLaine. The final scene of the gang walking past the casino marquee that bears the names of the real Rat Pack members remains an iconic cinematic image. Ocean's Eleven inspired a later popular trilogy (2001, 2004, and 2007) that starred George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon.

The main sleight-of-hand at play in the illusion-themed sequel, Now You See Me 2, will be convincing audiences that a single oddball idea - and four bickering, bragging leads - can support a successful franchise. And while the first movie had a certain goofy charm, its appeal barely stretched to feature length. This time the director, Louis Leterrier, has been replaced by Jon M. Chu, who, with G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013), has proved himself more than comfortable with noise and nonsense.

And this cartoonish movie has plenty of both. A brief recap reminds us that the so-called Four Horsemen - Las Vegas magicians played by Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Jesse Eisenberg and Lizzy Caplan (replacing Isla Fisher as the token she-geek) - are lying low after robbing a casino in Paris. Called out of hiding by their handler-cum-F.B.I. agent (an essential Mark Ruffalo), our prestidigitators must steal a tech doodad that can control all the world's computers.

Technology might be the enemy of the plot, but it's the best friend of a movie that bounces from New York to Macau and from one stupendously slick stunt to another. Everything is supersized and preposterous, but Mr. Chu, with two films in the Step Up franchise under his belt, is undaunted by crowds and confusion. As is Peter Deming's cinematography, which uses speed and shadow to blur the ludicrousness of the cons and fake-outs.

But the film is an emotional black hole, its insufferably smug tricksters augmented by Mr. Harrelson - wearing too many teeth and a wig reminiscent of Don't Look Now-era Donald Sutherland - as his character's identical twin. They never let us forget that their chief superpowers are glibness and ego.

The glassy-eyed, almost sinister prettiness of Zooey Deschanel colours the spacey, detached mood of this romantic tragicomedy. Despite clever moments   and Hornbyesque touches of melancholy, it's let down by sitcom cliches, and by being weirdly incurious about the inner life of its female lead. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Tom, a failed architectural student who now has a stupid job composing gooey messages for greeting cards; the day he sets eyes on Summer Finn, his boss's gorgeous new assistant - played by Deschanel - is the day he falls  in love.

Their jokey, flirtatious relationship is based on a shared love of British bands such as the Smiths and on a giggly, conspiratorial feeling of superiority to the silliness and phoniness of everything that surrounds them. But the relationship, which lasts 500 days, is doomed, and Tom plays us scenes from random days, out of narrative order, to illustrate the painful business. The problem seems to be that he believes in love and she doesn't. Or is it that she just doesn't believe in being in love with him?

Deschanel's Summer herself is an enigma, and not always an intentional one. Her presence on screen is contoured in such a way as to be good-looking without being obviously sexy: often, she wears a very demure blue dress in translucent material over what appears to be an old-fashioned slip. Here, the film gives various clues to her increasing mismatch with Tom, but, frustratingly, Summer herself is a closed book.

It is a relief to have a film that tackles the painful side of romance, and this one has its good points.

The film, written by Aaron Sorkin, is based on Ben Mezrich's book "The Accidental Billionaires" and Sorkin's own research yet neither writer, predictably, was able to talk to Zuckerberg to get his point of view. So it is as a fictional construct - based on ample public sources, however - that "Mark Zuckerberg" achieves its Shakespearean dimension. He gains the whole world but loses his most meaningful asset because of a fatal flaw on view in the very first scene.

"Social" has the potential to be that rarity - a film that gains critical laurels and award mentions yet also does killer boxoffice. Certainly, Sorkin, the film's director, David Fincher, and its heavyweight producers have crafted a smart, insightful film that satisfies both camps. The hook is the film's of-the-moment topic but the payoff is its hero. Or antihero or villain or whatever.

The story thus becomes a tale of power, fame, betrayal, revenge and responsibility. Under Fincher's astute direction the characters fairly pop out at you. Even in a one-scene performance, famed Harvard president Larry Summers (Douglas Urbanski) startles the viewer with his abrupt impatience and sterling wit as he dismisses the twins' heavy-handed attempt to enlist the school in their cause.

There's no flaw here. So the film comes down to a mesmerizing portrait of a man who in any other age would perhaps be deemed nuts or useless, but in the Internet age has this mental agility to transform an idea into an empire. Yet he still cannot rule his own life to the point he doesn't lose what's important to him.