In the multiplex of my dreams, David Cronenberg would have been tapped to direct Iron Man instead of Spielberg heir apparent Jon Favreau. No disrespect to Favreau - Elf and the underrated children's storybook fantasy Zathura were both terrific popcorn entertainments - but only a director as deeply twisted and brilliant could have done full justice to Stan Lee's most damaged superhero. Imagine the fun Cronenberg might have had with Tony Stark/Iron Man's titanium-alloy suit, especially the way the form-fitting hardware becomes almost interchangeable with human flesh. Stark is just like the psychosexual fetishists in Cronenberg's Crash who deliberately stage car accidents so they can retro-fit their maimed bodies with machinery. Certainly, Stark's jerry-rigged new "heart" with all of its heebie-jeebie spare parts, dangling wires and primordial ooze would appeal to Cronenberg's appetite for icky goo.

But since this isn't a perfect world, we'll have to make do with the Iron Man we've got. Fortunately, it's a darn good one, delivering more bang for the buck than any comic book-derived superhero action flick since Spider-Man 2. It's also one of the most auspicious franchise inaugurations in recent memory (sorry Transformers). Favreau's most inspired decision was hiring a combustible live-wire like Robert Downey Jr. to play billionaire arms merchant Tony Stark. Downey brings such an impishness and joie de vivre to this comics-geek party that you can't imagine anyone else in the role. With his amusingly skewed line readings and always-on-the-make flirtatiousness, Downey is the funniest superhero on record. The amazing thing is that Downey somehow manages to make corporate sleaze Stark's eventual transformation into heroic good guy Iron Man not only plausible, but deeply affecting. Trust me, that's not as easy as it sounds.

Another smart thing that Favreau does is use the film's state-of-the-art digital effects to advance the story and characters instead of overpower or dilute them. And I can't remember a superhero movie that featured so much top-flight talent in supporting roles. Sure, you can bellyache all you want that Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), Rhodey (Terrence Howard) and the delectably monikered Pepper Potts are more Colorform archetypes (diabolical villain, selfless best friend, plucky Gal Friday) than fleshed-out characters. Yet that would shortchange the wondrous alchemy that a really gifted actor can bring to even the most unimaginatively conceived part. You'd swear these flyweight stick figures all had rich interior lives existing just outside the frame. No, Favreau isn't a visionary like Tim Burton, Guillermo del Toro or even Sam Raimi. He's not reinventing the wheel here, just giving it better traction. Plus, Favreau might have also finally figured out a way to get audiences to queue up for a movie that deals - however superficially - with our current Middle East imbroglio: add a Marvel superhero to the mix. Maybe somebody should have told that to the makers of In the Valley of Elah, Lions for Lambs and Stop-Loss. — Milan Paurich

Now playing areawide

Bab'Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul

Hollywood bookkeepers are burning out their iBooks calculating how much the direct-to-OMNIMAX editions of Indiana Jones and Speed Racer are bringing into studio cashboxes. In a better world than this, one or two vast IMAX/OMNIMAX screens and sound systems would be given over to a genuinely hypnotic spectacle, Bab'Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul, for a total-immersion experience in the gentle, trance-inducing Sufi brand of Islamic mysticism.

It's reminiscent of the nomadic docu-dramas of Tony Gatlif (Latcho Drom) in its unhurried pace. Bab'Aziz takes place in the present Mideast desert, yet whenever a piece of modern technology appears - a boom box, a vintage truck, electric lights - it seems an intrusion into a timeless realm that might be any period over the past millennium. Title character is a blind old man, a Sufi dervish, en route with his "little angel" granddaughter Ishtar to a psalm-and-dance gathering that happens once every 30 years. Bab'Aziz begins telling a tale of a powerful young prince who becomes transfixed by his own reflection in an oasis pool. It's a tale he is prevented from finishing, but which is doubtlessly autobiographical.

The duo crosses paths with various other interconnected wayfarers - a lovestruck backpacker in search of the girl who has stolen his identity to attend the dervish conclave, a vengeful wastrel who blames a dervish for the ritualistic demise of his pious twin, another young dervish smitten with a married woman in a disappearing palace. Dialogue is lyrical, often elliptical and cryptic, and it at least partially derives from the poetry of Rumi and other bards and balladeers in the Sufi tradition.

I couldn't claim to comprehend much of what was going on but couldn't look away, such is the visual and aural splendor of the Franco-Iranian-German-Hungarian-UK (whew!) co-production. The deserts of Tunisia are known to movie viewers primarily as where George Lucas made his pilgrimages to shoot Star Wars flicks. With no pretensions of being a backdrop to the antics of R2D2 and Jar-Jar Binks, the sandscapes and Seussian rock formations are like a character in themselves, and perfectly complimentary to the actor/singers in the cast - each one so distinctive in their appeal and visage that I truly fear heathen Hollywood agents will descend like King Richard's or George Bush's crusaders, to sack, pillage and abduct Nessim Khaloul or Hossein Panahi for bit roles in Pirates of the Caribbean IV: Jack Sparrow Meets Sinbad. Watch this lovely film instead. Go against the grain - and with those undulating dunes. — Charles Cassady Jr.

Bab'Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul: 1:30 p.m. Saturday, May 10 and 1:30 p.m. Sunday, May 11 at Cleveland Museum of Art Lecture Hall.

Diary of the Dead

Pardon the pun, but George A. Romero has done the zombie thing to death. This, the latest installment in his Night of the Living Dead series, follows a group of college kids as they try to make their way from campus to their parents' respective homes. The movie actually starts on a promising note as it shows clips of a news anchorwoman freaking out as the dead corpses around her spring to life and maul anyone in their vicinity. But the movie quickly becomes a rather clichéd film-within-a-film as a voiceover tells us that footage is only part of the story and now it's time we see the rest of the bloody mess through the eyes of a young filmmaker named Jason (Joshua Close), who caught all the action on his handheld camera.

Jason, it turns out, is in the midst of filming a horror movie of his own when he and his crew of students (and one bumbling, drunken professor whose only care is where he can get his next drink) get wind of a national crisis. They decide it's best to get the hell out of there and head home in the RV they've been using for the movie. But Jason insists on filming everything along the way, whether it's one of his friends shooting herself in the head after she runs over several of the living dead or an attack at a hospital where doctors and patients alike have been infected. Romero's movies generally have social themes attached to them, and this one is no different. Reports of border problems consistently emerge, suggesting that the zombie in this film is a metaphor for unwanted immigrants. It's also designed to be a critique of mass media as the students often say they don't know whether to believe the reports because the media can't be trusted.

As academic as some of the themes are, the real problem is simply that the film is a real bore. Compared to contemporary zombie flicks (like the tongue-in-cheek Shaun of the Dead or the truly frightening 28 Days Later), Diary of the Dead comes off as an amateurish, unoriginal endeavor. The no-name actors and actresses don't help and while the handheld footage gives the film a distinct look, it's nothing that Cloverfield didn't do better. — Jeff Niesel

Diary of the Dead: 9:10 p.m. Saturday, May 10 and 9:20 p.m. Sunday, May 11 at Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, 11141 East Blvd., 216-421-7450.