Earnest, sad, and righteous, they are not. More inspired by M*A*S*H or Dr. Strangelove than The Deer Hunter or Coming Home, a new pack of political films that defy the clichés of the post-9/11 Iraq War cinema has arrived. Rife with satire and absurdity, with more ambiguity and less agit-prop, they don't toe the MoveOn party line and go beyond the familiar war-is-hell mantra. As documentary filmmaker Michael Tucker says: "Yes, it's tragic and horrible. Duh. What else is there?"

For one, there's the bizarre madness of it at all, as shown in Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. While ostensibly a raunchy teen comedy, the film's archvillain is a racist, ignorant deputy chief of Homeland Security who sends Harold and Kumar to face the horrors of Gitmo. "While it's obviously absurd," co-writer-director Hayden Schlossberg acknowledges of the film's premise, "there's an element of truth. There have been people thrown in Guantánamo who have done nothing. We like the idea of doing something about these subjects in a way that's not serious."

"Sincerity handicaps you," explains Tucker, who co-directed a number of Iraq docs, including Gunner Palace. "Trying to be earnest about something—it does nothing to explain it," he says. "That's why the fiction films have largely failed—because people are already in that emotional place." 

The enormous popularity of women as film enforcers has stirred much debate over what these films say about women, feminism, Hollywood, and violence, and whether it's progress or exploitation. But no one has answered a more interesting question: What does this say about men? After all, none of the big female hits could have achieved its staggering popularity without nabbing a significant male audience, those same guys who were once the primary consumers of Die Hard, First Blood, and Commando. If men once lived vicariously through the escapades of John Rambo and Col. Matrix -- in movies where women were mainly crime victims or in need of rescue -- what does it mean when they love watching Lara Croft kick some bad-boy butt? It's a pretty sharp turn from misogyny to masochism.

It speaks to their anti-intellectualism and fundamental misunderstanding of science that for the makers of Expelled (and ID advocates more generally) the answer "we don't know yet" is a badge of shame. "We don't know yet" is what defines the fruitful frontier for science; it is what directs scientists' curiosity and motivates them to spend years on research. Research starts where knowledge and certainty drop off. It's one of the many ironies of "Expelled" that Ben Stein says he wants this movie to free people to ask questions about science, but the ID theories he defends would close off inquiry with nonanswers.

Like the decision to call evolution Darwinism, the omission of science from Expelled was a deliberate choice. In fact, it was crucial to the film's strategy. Because they know Americans revere freedom of speech and fairness, the producers cast the conflict between evolution and ID as purely a struggle between worldviews -- a difference of opinions, a battle of ideologies--in which one side is censoring the other. They know that the public will instinctively want to defend the underdog, especially when that opinion aligns with the religious beliefs many of them already share. It is a terrific strategy, but with one caveat: that airy skirmish of opinions must never, ever touch the ground of solid evidence. Because if it does, if viewers are ever allowed to notice that evolution is supported by mountains of tangible, peer-reviewed evidence gathered by generations of scientists, whereas ID has little more than a smattering of vanity-press pamphlets from a handful of cranks... the bubble pops.

The sight of male genitalia in the movies or on TV still manages to cause a kind of embarrassed discomfort that bared breasts do not. Perhaps it’s because men were in Hollywood’s decision-making positions of power (hard to imagine John Wayne or Cary Grant being commanded to go commando). And what powerful man really wants to expose that most basic symbol of virility in its flaccid, floppy form? And who the heck wants to pay ten bucks to see that?

But in the age of Hillary, men may want to get used to the male member being objectified and thus robbed of its power -- much the same way the naked female form has been used by men to strip women of their allure.

Indeed, with women continuing to take over roles of power -- studio heads, screenwriters and directors -- perhaps there will soon be a future where it won’t just be the female actresses worrying over nudity clauses.  

Are audiences suffering from war fatigue, as many have suggested? Do they have little interest in following a war on the big screen when they are surrounded by images and stories of it on the small screens in their home?

Moviegoers will not leave their homes unless they're being offered something in the theater they cannot find elsewhere, and what is notable about many of this year's political films is that very few of them actually stand up as triumphs of cinematic art and storytelling. In many respects, the greatest risk of making political art during wartime is that heightened political passion will trump artistic judgment, which in the case of moviemaking means that expressing a political stance will take precedence over character development and plot structure.