It makes all the sense in the world. Really! Just ask him.

"It's a lingering sensation," Korine told Defamer in a recent interview. "I just started thinking of images like nuns riding bicycles out of airplanes — doing tricks in the clouds and stuff. I couldn't figure out where that was coming from. So if I was going to tell a story with nuns jumping out of airplanes, what could it mean? And I thought, 'What if they had no parachutes? What if they just believed enough that they would survive?' It's the same way the impersonators willed themselves to be those people. Maybe both stories speak to the idea of faith and a kind of strange magic in things — wanting to be something other than who you are."

Opening today in New York and May 9 in Los Angeles, Mister Lonely is in part Korine's way of both rationalizing and perpetuating that magic. More immediately, it's the meandering tale of a Michael Jackson impersonator in Paris (Diego Luna) who steals away to a colony of other impersonators sequestered in a Scottish castle. Led by Marilyn Monroe (Samantha Morton) and her misanthropic husband Charlie Chaplin, the remaining characters evoke Korine's '90s antagonisms Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy without leaning on their bleak dispossession.

"They had to be people who, in real life, I've liked and admired," he said, referring to an ensemble including Abraham Lincoln, the Three Stooges, Madonna, Queen Elizabeth II and Sammy Davis Jr. "Someone whose mythology I could bleed into the narrative of the movie. Or I could take Marilyn's depression or Sammy's sadism or Michael and his ethereal, bizarre nature and incorporate that into the storyline."

But their celebrity was essential, Korine added, hinting at a sort of accidental accessibility he hadn't achieved since scripting Kids in 1995. Most important was his conception of — or even his sympathy for — Michael Jackson himself. "Michael was symbolic of the world's greatest eccentric," he said. "Maybe somewhere in his story is the Greatest American Story Ever Told. It would take someone much smarter than me to tell that story or decipher it. But what I liked about him was what he stood for. He wasn't a man; he wasn't a boy. He wasn't black; he wasn't white. He just existed like a ghost to me. He was all of those things and none of them. I liked that idea."

Then there were the nuns, plummeting in prayer with powder-blue habits billowing behind them. Korine's friend and Julien Donkey-Boy cast alumnus Werner Herzog plays the wasted priest channeling God, urging them toward the miracle of survival. Korine hinted at the connections between narratives, but acknowledged only the sense in senselessness.

"There's not really a point to it," he said. "There hasn't really been to anything I've done. They're more just ideas. If I could express it in words, I don't think I'd film it. I'm trying to figure it out myself." Iron Man, eat your heart out.

WHAT'S NEW: Having achieved deafening critical and civilian buzz over the last week, the only remaining question about Iron Man is not if it will kill this weekend, but how it will kill. A close read of the historical record suggests the latest Marvel hero is in for at least an $80 million weekend (including last night's late screenings), but we think that's conservative — accounting for neither repeat viewings nor the Robert Downey Jr. Factor making this as much of an adult treat as a teen/fanboy orgy. We'd be surprised if it didn't break $60 million by Sunday and maybe even $90 million when the dust clears Monday.

Also opening (for what it's worth): Made of Yawner — ahem, Honor, starring Patrick... whoever. Indies of note include the Toronto '07 opener Fugitive Pieces, the coming- of- age- via- sweding- Stallone film Son of Rambow, and the Argentinian teen hermaphrodite drama XXY.

THE BIG LOSER: As long as he's wishing critics dead, we might as well get our money's worth: David Mamet's Jiu-jitsu saga Redbelt isn't so bad, but we expect Iron Man to vanquish its testosterrific charms in the weekend's qualifying rounds before moving on to the more saccharine, sinewy Dr. McDreamy and Co. Come to think of it, the Sony conglomerate as a whole will be missing Spider-Man right... about... now.

THE UNDERDOG: We'll be hearing a bit more from the filmmaker later today, but writer-director Harmony Korine's comeback Mister Lonely is a maverick wack-job of the highest order: A Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) runs off with Marilyn Monroe (Samantha Morton) to a Scottish colony of other celebrity impersonators, while a drunken priest (Werner Herzog) exhorts a troupe of flying nuns a hemisphere away. Infinitely warmer than Korine's previous directing efforts Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy (what isn't?), it's no less hypnotic, funny and confounding.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD's this week include The Golden Compass, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, 27 Dresses, the reissued Sarah Jessica Parker/Helen Hunt masterpiece of 1985, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, and the nifty microbudget drama from director Todd Rohal, The Guatemalan Handshake.

Are we overestimating Iron Man? Underestimating it? Will anyone but our mothers consider seeing Made of Honor in the next three days, if ever? Stake your claim to bragging rights by placing your bets below.