Even with a story that is contrived, implausible and filled with clichés, Paula van der Oest's Moonlight is an outstanding achievement. It shows us, very literally, that filmmakers may recycle as many plots as they like, for as long as they like, if they present them in a way that makes them seem original. As always, it is not what happens, but how it happens, that counts (I have revised Roger Ebert's oft-stated rule, because "what a film is about," thematically anyway, is in fact often important), and how Moonlight happens is through great visual storytelling.

Within the film's first few minutes, we are able to figure out how the whole story will play out, as it kicks off two familiar scenarios: drug dealers attempt to retrieve their product from the person who's run off with it, and a young girl falls for the boy she's nursed back to health. The two plots combine easily as they unfold into a basic couple-on-the-lam configuration, although not so much in the thriller sort of way. Moonlight isn't a suspenseful or action-driven film, although it isn't slow, either.

Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz opens his latest film in a nursing home on the day a traveling song-and-dance artist named Marc Stevens (Laurent Lucas) arrives to put on a show. We know his name is Marc Stevens because it's embroidered on the purple and gold cape he wears, and printed in large letters on the wall behind him. Stevens' act is somewhere between a performance by Freddy Mercury and a staging of Dracula. He hides behind a poofy, upturned collar and steps out into the audience to paw at old ladies, making love to them with his eyes as he sings. After the show in his dressing room, he allows the most lovesick old bag of bones to come in and meet him, briefly. She immediately confesses an all-consuming passion and tries to take him, right there at the make-up table. Naturally, I thought this was The Ordeal the film promised to subject me to, and on that basis I might have given it a five-star review.

However, after that excruciating scene, the film turns a corner into something more conventional and less horrifying than the prospect of octogenarian groupie sex. Marc leaves the gig in his van -- I looked, but couldn't tell if "Marc Stevens" was printed on the side of it -- and then breaks down somewhere in rural French-speaking Belgium. There's nothing but rustic, woodsy scenery as far as the eye can see. Nothing except an odd-looking little man who smushes his face to the driver's side window and asks for help in finding his lost dog, before quickly running away again. What follows is Deliverance with a twist, but the twist isn't executed with any care and the inbred yokels that predictably come crawling out of the woodwork don't come across as very frightening. Compared to the exotica that lurks around the foothills of the Appalachian mountains in the state where I grew up, these guys might as well be E.U. policymakers from Brussels.

Lunacy begins with an homage to the introduction of James Whales' Frankenstein, in which Edward van Sloan appears on a stage and warns us, the audience members: "I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even...horrify you..." Here, director Jan Svankmajer appears on screen and offers a much lower appraisal of his own work: "What you're about to see is a horror film. It is not a work of art. Today, art is all but dead anyway." After watching his film, I may be inclined to agree. Lunacy is a fascinating, confusing and ultimately head-spinning mash-up of some minor Edgar Allen Poe and the hedonist excess 'philosophy' of the Marquis de Sade, all bundled together in a film that seems to have been lensed around 1974.

I'm drumming my fingers on the keyboard to think of a way to describe the film's other key element -- meat. Lots of meat. Slabs of uncooked steak, created in stop-motion animation, appear every five minutes or so in this picture. We cut to them, jiggling and dancing like the "Let's All Go to the Lobby" hot dogs in movie concession ads, backed by calliope music. Apparently, the director felt he needed this to hammer home the 'We Are Nothing But Meat' message he was trying to convey, in case we didn't get it from the scene in which the Marquis' dinner guests are ritually fellated by girls with mouths full of chocolate cake.

The opening shots of Oliver Stone's new film are deliberately peaceful: A hot shower, an alarm clock gently switched off before it can pierce the silence, a leisurely pre-dawn drive to work. Little moments, charged with a strange electricity because we know they belong to a bygone era. World Trade Center is centered directly on that trembling fault line between the final, boring hours of the pre-9/11 world and a radically different future. Good fodder for a director who thinks in terms of decades, but apart from its focus on a seismic macro-topic, the work is barely recognizable as part of the Stone filmography. For better or worse -- sometimes worse -- this is a picture that abandons the outside world and focuses entirely on two victims, alone in the dark. There's never a mention of the snakes on the planes, only a near-postscript from a solitary Marine, who surveys the smoking wreckage and proclaims that "we're gonna need some good people to avenge this."

That Marine is Stone's only indulgence. Played by Michael Shannon, he's an anti-McVeigh who pops out of a cornfield somewhere with a wide-eyed fix on his mission -- to go and provide relief at the destroyed Trade Center. Arriving at the ruins, he slips past an improvised triage center on Liberty Street and is quickly on top of the rubble, searching for survivors with a flashlight. Below him, trapped in a pit of nightmares, are Sgt. John McLoughlin and Officer Will Jimeno, two cops who rushed into the concourse between one tower on fire and the other ominously concealed in smoke. McLoughlin, played by a gaunt Nicolas Cage, is seen leading his men into the inferno while brushing aside rumors about a "second plane" that may have hit the towers. Only at the moment of no return, with his ears imploding from the sounds of a falling world plunging toward him, does he realize what's afoot, and hurl himself into an elevator shaft just as a black freight train of debris blows by.

The latest thriller from Claude Chabrol is, surprisingly, a French attempt at an overwhelmingly American genre. I don't think the genre has a name, but it always poses the same question -- can I have sex with a crazy woman and walk away unscathed? Made famous by Fatal Attraction and its successors, this special catalog of films is one that American males cherish, because it allows us to work out our natural terror of dominant women and relish the idea that nymphomania may actually exist, if only in short, homicidal bursts. Who knew French men were struggling with the same issues? There are problems with this particular entry in the genre, but they don't lie with the crazy woman at the center, thankfully. Parisian actress Laura Smet perfectly embodies Senta, a fleshy mope who looks like a soiled carbon copy of Kate Winslet, with a broad, Rubenesque frame and snarling lips. Senta is a bridesmaid at the wedding of Sophie (Solène Bouton), sister of the arrow-straight and unadventurous Philippe (Benoit Magimel). Before the cake is cut, Senta is shooting daggers at Philippe and serving up lines like "I wasn't born to have a bad time." To show she's not kidding, she insists on sleeping with him on their first date. It takes a lot of crazy to make a man see the flaws in a woman like that.

A few minutes into the new documentary, My Country, My Country, there's an astonishing scene in which an Iraqi clinician, Dr. Riyadh, talks his way into a heavily fortified Army barracks and is granted a meeting with some Army functionaries in order to vent his anger over the violence in Fallujah. This is 2004, shortly after the siege there, and immediately before the commencement of Iraq's first post-Baathist election, which will be conducted amidst raging confessional and ethnic violence. As we see in the film, some militia members even pledge to mow down voters en masse if they dare to stand out in the sun, waiting to dip their fingers into purple ink. Why Dr. Riyadh is granted a meeting with the Americans at such a high-tension moment is not clear; it may be because he happens to be a candidate for elective office or because he's being tailed by an American camera crew. What is clear is that in the short sit-down that follows, he shames his counterparts with terse, cut-and-dry language and inarguable statements. "This is not Vietnam," he pleads. "These people have no food, no blankets, and no roof...this is a process of mass killing." The marine sitting across from him, in bulging combat gear, immediately answers back with rehearsed, insulting religio-babble: "I've heard everything you've said and it touched me in my heart." In other words, meeting adjourned.

Woody Allen returns this weekend as Sidney Waterman, an aging Borscht Belt magician with a silly stage handle -- Splendini -- and props that seem more like fire hazards than things one might use to make a living. Don't wait around for the prestige in Splendini's act -- you'll be waiting a long time. There's only a bare minimum of effort as he shuffles around in comfortable old duds, converses with the audience while he's supposed to be entertaining them, uses words like 'prestidigitation' and beckons the prettiest girl in the crowd up on stage so he can leer at her while promising to "agitate her molecules." Splendini's magic show is such a narrow affair it could only be attended by a crowd that has sought it out and arrived at the theater with total precognition of what's in store for them. The same holds true for Scoop, the second entry in Woody's Late European Period.

The lovely assistant summoned to the stage is journalism student Sondra Pransky, played by sore-throat ingenue Scarlett Johansson. Sondra is pushed into Splendini's disappearance box about the same time that he's seeing another volunteer -- a pasty Brit -- off stage, telling her "thanks, you're a credit to your race." Inside the box, Sondra is only mildly shocked to discover it's the domain of a ghost, played by Deadwood star Ian McShane. The ghost was a journalist who was killed after possibly learning the identity of the elusive Tarot Card Killer. Based on that unsourceable info, Sondra sets off on a wild scoop-chase with Sidney at her side. An atom of decency -- ours, not Woody's -- demands that their relationship quickly fold into a father-daughter rhythm, with Sondra pulling doting dad-figure Sidney around town by the ear and bouncing her theories about the identity of the killer off his Hubble-thick glasses. Their frantic quest is contrasted by the fate of the poor ghost, who is adrift on a fog-swept barge to nowhere that's crewed by the actual Grim Reaper. Backed into a corner by his own acknowledgment of an afterlife, Allen comes through with one that's as pointless as possible.

A loud splash disturbs the outdoor pool one night at The Cove, a drab, built-for-economy apartment complex somewhere in low-rent Philadelphia. The apartment's stuttering super, Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti) bounds out of his poolside bungalow, flashlight at the ready, thinking he's just caught one of the tenants in an unauthorized, off-hours cannonball. He's actually interrupted Story (Bryce Dallas Howard), a skinny dipper from the stars who has arrived in our world to complete a task so profound that she can't even articulate it. She can't articulate anything, in fact. Her role in the film will be to wander around aimlessly, speaking in a throaty hush and preferring to remain naked save for a man's button-up shirt that drops past her knees. Sometimes she gives off a seductive gaze and bares her long legs, while other times she wilts, as if her batteries are being drained by malevolent outside forces. She's like a cross between Annette Bening and E.T.

We eventually learn that she is a sea nymph from The Blue World, which sounds like a place you'd see on HBO's Real Sex, and she's come to deliver prognostications about the future of America. She can look someone in the eye and tell them exactly what happens in their future, and does so more than once, without even the courtesy of a spoiler warning. Why she crash landed at The Cove is a long story, matched in complexity only by the one about how she plans to return to her home planet. Her situation is so complicated that you wonder why she bothered making the trip; among other things, she must elude a wolfish predator with grass for fur, decipher complex symbology that will identify her Guardian and her Guild, and summon a giant eagle that can be ridden out of town like a flying carpet. Is this film derived from a bedtime story or the liner notes to a Led Zeppelin album?

It's hard to know, just from talking with Bai Ling, which of her roles have been leads and which have been walk-ons -- she seems to view all of her activities as equally relevant chapters in the Story of Bai. An eye-witness to the massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989, she departed for NYU film school in 1991 and began to land roles. Fifteen years later, she's a fixture on party circuits, an unabashed lover of American pop culture -- the trashier the better -- and, at 35, an actress with serious credentials. She recently played the female lead in The Beautiful Country and Face, both dramas about Asian-American identity, and was praised by the New York Times for showing "tremendous range" in the latter. Next up is a starring role in Shanghai Baby, adapted from the controversial 2001 novel about sexuality in modern China.

In between the big roles, there's a portfolio of pop-ons. You probably remember the eyeball-collecting villainess in The Crow, and the interpreter who delivers Chairman Mao's icy retorts in Oliver Stone's Nixon: "You're as evil as I am ....". She was also the begoggled ninja in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and has a quick comedic turn as a peep-show stripper in David Mamet's Edmond, released Friday. And yet another one is forth-coming, this time as an abstruse oracle called Serpentine in Richard Kelly's sophomore sprawl, Southland Tales.

Appropriately, the film Bai is best-known for is one she wasn't even in: Ling's posing with a large, phallic lightsaber in the June 2005 Playboy may have caused George Lucas to snip her role as Senator Breemu out of the wholesome-as-a-Happy Meal Star Wars: Episode III. Her comments at the time indicated that belief; Lucas denied it. When Cinematical recently spoke with Bai, in Manhattan to do press for Edmond, she was feeling diplomatic.

Two aging lions of French cinema, Gerard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve, are ex-lovers standing on a Moroccan beach, staring out across the Strait of Gibraltar towards Spain. For them, it's a moment to give over completely to the past, and imagine how things might have been if they had stayed the people they were thirty years ago. But despite being wrapped up in themselves, they are not alone. Behind them, beyond the forest clearing, there are hundreds of eyes peering out from behind the trees. Those eyes are also looking in the direction of Spain, but for very different reasons. We are in Tangier, a busy port with a hustle-bustle vibe more easily attributed to its sister city, Casablanca. Having acquired a reputation for being a path of least resistance to continental Europe, Tangier is now, among other things, a trampled corridor for illegal migrants arriving from all points of lower Africa.

With such tremendous background action going on in this film, there's a brazen competition for our attention, between the characters and the city itself. At one point, a casual conversation between Deneuve's character, a radio DJ named Cecile, and a friend on a city street is bluntly interrupted by an unexpected moment: A fleeing migrant sprints directly past the characters and the camera, before being halted and seized by the police. Cecile and the friend have to stop their conversation and just watch the event unfold, along with the audience. Changing Times, indeed.

"You know who I hate? Faggots. Because they hate women." When Glenna (Julia Stiles) says this, it's a casual admission; something tossed off in the down moments of a one-night stand. It's a confession to a near total stranger that presumably won't cause any ripples in her real life, or ever be mentioned again. But Edmond (William H. Macy) is way ahead of her. Before meeting Glenna tonight, he knocked the teeth of a black man all over an alley in Times Square, and considered it a victory not just for himself but for what he views as the long-suffering white race. What luck, that he's found a kindred spirit he can tell his story to, detail by detail! Edmond is David Mamet's contribution to that strange film genre that dates back to John Ford's The Searchers, in which a lonely anti-hero's expectations of how things should be racially-wise, sexual propriety-wise, and otherwise-wise, must be adhered to by the rest of the world, lest he go completely schizoid.

Despite the considerable violence Edmond eventually racks up, Mamet's motormouthed version of Travis Bickle ends up coming off more like the world's most annoying bar patron than someone truly menacing. His pathos is inherently comedic, even if the filmmakers don't want it to be. His bete noire, we find out, isn't really blacks or women or city life, but high prices! Repeatedly thwarted in his attempt to find a low-priced call girl, Edmond at one point becomes enraged when a peep-show stripper is unable to make change for ten dollars from behind her glass window. "Give me the ten dollars! Give me the ten dollars!" Edmond yells, exasperated at how he ended up at such a moment in his life. The arguing of these two characters is so absurd that it almost saves the rest of the film, which is plodding, labored, and ultimately too theatrically-grounded for its own good.