Leave it to filmmaker Paul Verhoeven to go and sex up the Holocaust flick. The latest from the man who forgot to budget for underthings on 1992's "Basic Instinct" and personally accepted his Worst Director Razzie for 1995's camp classic "Showgirls" is the slick "Black Book," an alternately silly and suspenseful yarn that recounts the wartime adventures of a Dutch Jewish woman who outfoxes Nazis using her brains, her body, and some very delicately applied bleach.

And Verhoeven, remember, is also the same guy responsible for 1987's "Robocop" and 1990's "Total Recall," so every sizzling romantic interlude he stages is offset by an equally seductive orgy of violence, beginning with the aerial decimation of the farmhouse where Jewish refugee Rachel Stein (newcomer Carice van Houten) had been hiding. Thus begins an odyssey in which Rachel attempts escape only to see her family mowed down and looted at the behest of a squishy, scarred Nazi (guess whether they'll cross paths again!), an episode that prompts her to join the Resistance in The Hague and move our plot along.

Now disguised as a blonde shiksa named Ellis de Vries, the revenge-minded Rachel seduces a widowed Gestapo agent (stunning Sebastian Koch, "The Lives of Others") and moves freely about Nazi headquarters as their new secretary, sneaking away from bed and office to report back to her fellow freedom fighters. Of course, the increasingly bold and perpetually unlucky Rachel gets in over her dark-rooted head (and non-denominational heart), though she'll learn that double-crossing and anti-Semitism are not exclusively Nazi qualities.

At two-and-a-half hours, "Black Book" is slightly stretched, but Verhoeven, working in his native land for the first time in more than two decades - and with The Netherlands' largest filming budget to date - has crafted an old-fashioned Mata Hari tale: often riveting, occasionally ridiculous, almost always entertaining. Throw in lots of guns, add a bit of full-frontal nudity, and it's vintage Verhoeven, no matter the language. Not surprisingly, though, there's something oddly chilly about it all, the ambitious, all-things-to-all-people narrative leaving little room for emotional involvement.

But Verhoeven still has an eye for the ladies. (We do have him to thank/blame for Sharon Stone.) As Rachel, Carice van Houten is a true find, her juicy elegance bringing to mind a young Miranda Richardson, or maybe an interesting Kate Hudson. She's in nearly every frame of the film, compelling whether her hubris is running amuck or when suffering from the vilest of indignities. And what's the next step when you've made a splash in international cinema, shown a willingness to unclothe, and are distractingly gorgeous? Bond girl, rumored Bond girl.

I hope you're not disappointed that "The Pervert's Guide to Cinema" isn't my eagerly awaited porn tutorial, though now I'll have to ditch my working title. This "Pervert's Guide" features renowned Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek holding forth on what might be his favorite subject: the movies. Referencing more than 40 films that span time and acclaim, from 1931 classics like "Duck Soup" and "City Lights" to 2003's polarizing "Dogville" and "In the Cut," Zizek addresses how cinema is "the ultimate pervert art: it doesn't give you what you desire; it tells you how to desire."

There's something bittersweet about having something as pleasurable as art deconstructed, knowing that it's merely one person's interpretation and not gospel (yeah, I see the irony in that sentence). Some of his theories are revelatory, some are just plain bonkers, but Zizek offers up interesting conjecture about, among other things, the overintensity of David Lynch, the symbolism of toilets and tulips, the real purpose of the Marx Brothers, and how the realization of fantasy can be a nightmare.

Rather than just focus her camera at the charmingly rumpled Zizek and let his Count von Count accent and sibilantic speech impediment do all the work, director Sophie Fiennes (this brings my tally up to five, making them the British Culkins) artfully incorporates her star into a number of the movies he references, whether he's navigating a boat through "The Birds'" Bodega Bay, watering a "Blue Velvet"-like flower bed, or relaxing in Neo's wingback from "The Matrix". And what better way to absorb the intangible notion of philosophy than to juxtapose it against our favorite legal form of escapism? I love being tricked into learning.

"Black Book" (R), directed by Paul Verhoeven, is now playing at Little Theatres and Pittsford Cinema | "The Pervert's Guide to Cinema" (NR), directed by Sophie Fiennes, shows at the George Eastman House's Dryden Theatre on Saturday, May 19, at 8 p.m.