Cinephile.

Why settle for just one American in Paris when the new movie Paris, je t'aime can give you a multitude? This omnibus film (comprised of shorts directed by the likes of Gus Van Sant, Alfonso Cuaron, and the Coen brothers) assigns an arrondissement to each director alongside a simple challenge: Make a five-minute love story set in Paris. Though you might expect these shorts to be composed of emblematic Parisian images, the city and its thespians actually play a quiet supporting role, receding into the background as imported actors like Natalie Portman and Nick Nolte do their business.

Of the 18 love stories on display, the only one with a queer take comes from Van Sant, and his modest short is one of the most successful. It follows Gaspard (Gaspard Ulliel), a native Parisian who, upon setting foot in a print shop in the Marais district, immediately becomes besotted with printer's apprentice Elie (Elias McConnell, of the director's Elephant). The sexy Gaspard is thrown off his game by this quiet young man, whose placid nonreactions eventually prompt Gaspard to get ever more desperate and revealing. There's an easily guessed twist, but that's not the point of this exercise (as it unfortunately is in some of the other shorts, including Cuaron's); instead, the question is what Gaspard sees in the uncommunicative Elie. Is he charmed by the boy's beauty, or is it that he can project himself and his desires onto Elie's broad, blank canvas?

Other sterling shorts include those by Tom Tykwer and Olivier Assayas, which both concern American actresses (Portman and Maggie Gyllenhaal, respectively) who bewitch the Frenchmen who cross their paths, and especially the closing short, directed by Alexander Payne (Election, Sideways), about a middle-aged Denver mail worker (Margo Martindale) taking a trip to Paris for the first time. The woman's out-of-shape physique and badly garbled French make her stand in stark contrast to the chic Parisians around her, and she could have been an easy target for Payne, who's not always known to be so kind to his characters. Fortunately, what emerges is a generous and even moving moment when this woman, whose life appears so unsophisticated, finds a transcendent experience in a Paris park that reminds us that the desire for love and connection is the same in any language.

With all these Americans invading their turf, it's only fair that Europe get something in return, and the U.K. comedy Hot Fuzz works out a sort of foreign exchange by appropriating that most American of genres: the buddy cop movie. This is the new film from Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, who brought us the witty zombie spoof Shaun of the Dead and now have dunderheaded action movies like Point Break and Bad Boys H caught in their cross hairs. That choice of source material might be one reason that Hot Fuzz isn't as unexpectedly poignant as Shaun, but fortunately it's every bit as funny.

Pegg plays London supercop Nicholas Angel, whose maverick ways get him shipped off to the quiet country village of Sandford. With its friendly locals and dim police force, Sandford's an unexpected setting for a blow-'em-up, but that's what makes the film's descent into pyrotechnics such a blast. Whether he's jump-kicking a priest, filling out paperwork, or hunting down a wild swan with dim-witted sidekick Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), Angel's adventures are shot in the high-octane fashion trademarked by Michael Bay but so rarely applied to polite U.K. comedy. Perhaps in this unlikely hybrid we've finally found a use for it.

Another good-natured comedy just out is Diggers, written by and costarring Ken Marino (The State, Wet Hot American Summer). Marino and Paul Rudd play clam diggers getting slowly squeezed out of business in 1976 Long Island, a time when big corporations were making a play for the same waters these men's families had raked for generations. The financial crunch throws their personal lives into turmoil too: Rudd figures that the city girl he's seeing (Six Feet Under's Lauren Ambrose) is merely slumming it, while Marino and his long-suffering wife (out actor Sarah Paulson) struggle to put food on the table for their constantly expanding family.

These story lines could come off as grim, but Marino and director Katherine Dieckmann play against the material and find the good-natured gallows humor that comes from men who realize their careers are about to become obsolete. Marino's father worked as a clam digger, and his affection for the man suffuses the film with a warmth that is its best asset. Low-income Long Island is a far cry from Paris (or even Sandford), but once you get to know these characters, things seem a lot less foreign.