My favorite discovery at Toronto, however, is the deliriously unhinged Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, which was met with laughter and audible gasps during its initial press screening. Although it bears some resemblance to the original Bad Lieutenant, Abel Ferraras 1992 grungy classic about a drug-addled cop, Mr. Herzogs redo is its own beast. Nicolas Cage, delivering his loosest, twitchiest, most furiously engaged performance since Vampires Kiss (1988), in which he swallowed a ****roach for his art, plays the title character, a detective whos badder and madder than most. Written by William Finkelstein, a veteran television writer (L.A. Law), the plot hinges on familiar dirty business (a multiple murder, drug deals) that becomes increasingly irrelevant as the mood and filmmaking heat up.

In this brightly lighted nightmare, a post-Katrina New Orleans that might have been conceived by Hieronymus Bosch but could come to the screen only through the feverish imaginings of Mr. Herzog, a dead mans soul dances near his body and googly-eyed iguanas trade seemingly knowing looks with the pop-eyed lieutenant. To watch Mr. Cage melt with pleasure as he lights up his lucky crack pipe or seize up with spasmodic giggles, is to understand that Mr. Herzog has again found a performer as committed to representing unspeakable human will as Klaus Kinski, the star of Herzog masterworks like Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Here Mr. Cage and Mr. Herzog take you into a hell that leads straight to movie heaven.

Its such a pleasurable trip that it was easy to forgive Mr. Herzog for his other Toronto selection, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, a thin, strained kookfest about a lunatic (Michael Shannon, who should beware of taking on too many such roles) that plays like an inert pastiche of a David Lynch film. Mr. Lynch actually produced My Son, which might explain the presence of Grace Zabriskie and a dwarf. Surely the original story meeting between Mr. Lynch and Mr. Herzog was more entertaining