I’m one of the few film buffs who wasn’t totally enthralled with “No Country For Old Men,” the Oscar winning Coen brothers film that came out last year. It’s not that I disliked it, and there were parts of it, particularly Javier Bardem’s riveting performance as the evil hit man Anton Chigurh, that I liked a lot. In some ways, my feelings about the film were similar to my feelings about the critically acclaimed but otherwise dissimilar “Juno” — I liked it, but not nearly as much as everyone else. Anyway, last night I ran out and caught “Burn After Reading,” the Coen brothers zany follow-up to the celebrated “No Country For Old Men.” I didn’t really expect much from the film, which received mostly positive but not overly enthusiastic reviews — a minor entry in the Coen brothers’ canon, these reviews generally agreed — but what do you know? I actually liked it better than “No County For Old Men.”

I’ve seen every Coen brothers movie, and I’m starting to think I prefer their so-called lesser works to their masterpieces. These lesser works are often weirder and quirkier, more misanthropic and clever (some would say more self-indulgent and self-amused), than the masterpieces, where the Coen brothers suppress their wilder instincts and focus on storytelling and character development. When the brothers do this, we get a film like “Fargo,” which is quirky and dark, but contains one unforgettably lovable character: Marge, the pregnant police detective played by Frances McDormand. But as much as I like “Fargo,” I actually like “The Big Lebowski,” the follow-up to “Fargo and widely regarded as a lesser work, better. Which makes me wonder if some of these lesser works aren’t so lesser after all.

In any case, “Burn After Reading” is a fine time at the movies. It’s a screwball comedy that centers around an incredibly dumb collection of people played by George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Brad Pitt, McDormand, Richard Jenkins and John Malkovich; one of the film’s running gags is that these incredibly dumb people are semi-important Beltway types who work at places like the Treasury Department and the CIA. The plot is much too complicated to really describe, but it involves the weird chain of events set in motion when Malkovich loses his CIA job, and McDormand and Pitt, best friends and colleagues at a gym — excuse me, a fitness center — obtain a disc containing what they believe to be important secret agent information. They trace the disc to Malkovich and attempt to blackmail him so that McDormand can use the money to finance the cosmetic surgeries her HMO refuses to cover. Meanwhile, George Clooney is carrying on an affair with Malkovich’s wife, played by Swinton, and dating numerous other people through an Internet dating site, and so it’s only a matter of time before McDormand meets Clooney through the dating site. (“They all seem to be sleeping with each other,” a CIA agent sent to investigate the ensuing mess informs his superior.)

The film is not unlike something Preston Sturges might have concocted, only infinitely more mean-spirited and perverse. The characters are completely unlikable, the movie is way too clever for its own good, and I’m sure people will complain that the film has no heart. But none of this really bothered me. The unlikable characters are so well played (Brad Pitt is tremendous as the dimwit fitness center employee) that I didn’t really care about the film’s lack of heart, and I even feel a twinge of compassion for McDormand’s hapless character, who is sort of a dumber, less morally grounded version of Marge. It’s probably a mistake to look for meaning in a Coen brothers film, but I couldn’t help but wonder if they were actually trying to say something about the state of America by setting the film in Washington D.C. and depicting a society where the worlds of fitness and politics are equally shallow and self-obsessed and constantly intersecting. Or perhaps the brothers just thought it would be fun to make a film about stupid people doing stupid things.

Also getting re-released on DVD today, in honor of its 25th anniversary, is one of my favorite movies, “Risky Business,” the film where Tom Cruise plays a high school student who hooks up with a prostitute and runs a brothel out of his house while his parents are out of town, all the while worrying about whether he’ll be accepted at Princeton and whether he’ll be able to recover his mother’s prized Faberge egg. I’m not a huge Tom Cruise fan, but he’s great in this film, as is Rebecca DeMornay, who plays the prostitute. Sometimes “Risky Business” gets lumped into the teen movie category, but it’s something else entirely, a dark human comedy that’s more suitable for adults than teens. Of course, I probably saw it when I was about 14. But I could watch it now and enjoy it just as much, if not more.