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The following reviews are by Rick Groen and Liam Lacey plus James Adams, James Bradshaw, Guy Dixon, Simon Houpt, Mark Peranson, Michael Posner, Jennie Punter, V. Radhika, Kate Taylor and Brad Wheeler. Films are rated out of four stars, in descending order.

The Good, the Bad, the Weird

Kim Jee-Woon (South Korea)

With one of the most exciting and possibly longest horse-chase gun battles committed to celluloid, this Korean spaghetti western is both an exotic treat and an old-fashioned rollicking action pic. After meeting on a train in the Manchurian desert in the 1930s, the destinies of a gifted bounty hunter, a sadistic gang leader and an eccentric train robber become intertwined with that of a valuable map. The biggest budget Korean flick to date, this film is visually rich and fully loaded with wildly inventive comedy and action sequences. The director has fun with conventions, yet the movie feels fresher than Hollywood's most recent batch of westerns. J.P.

Sept. 12, 9:30 p.m., Roy Thomson; Sept. 13, 2:30 p.m., Elgin

Rachel Getting Married

Jonathan Demme (U.S.)

Many films have used the ritual of a wedding to peer into the dysfunctions of a troubled family, but none better than this. In its raw honesty and emotional grit, Demme's work here is unsurpassed. Borrowing a little from Robert Altman, and a little more from the Dogme directors, Demme brings a probing camera to the gathering of a Connecticut clan, digging beneath the surface of the rehearsal party chatter — the gaiety real and forced, the speeches graceful and cringe-making — to examine some very large themes at a very intimate level, themes like sin and atonement and the blood that sometimes runs thinner than water. As the sister who gets checked out of rehab long enough to attend the wedding, Anne Hathaway delivers a nuanced and revelatory performance (expect Oscar to call). But so does Rosemarie DeWitt in the title role. The love/hate tension between them, filtered through the crowd around them, is almost voyeuristic in its intensity. Normally reserved for action flicks, that edge-of-your-seat cliché has a new home here — the rawness will have you leaning into the screen, often uncomfortable but always entranced. R.G.

Sept. 6, 6:30 p.m., Roy Thomson; Sept. 7, 11 a.m., Elgin

Hunger

Steve McQueen (U.K.)

The debut film from Turner Prize-winning artist Steve McQueen is a harrowing experience and a rule-breaking tour de force. Hunger focuses on the 1981 death of Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands over the course of 66 days in the Maze prison. Without endorsing Sands's and his fellow IRA soldiers' tactics, the film places his death in the context of religious martyrdom and portrays the choice of extreme physical degradation — naked and starving in excrement-covered cells — as a form of sacrifice echoing Christ's death. That's not the same as saying McQueen endorses their actions. At the film's centre comes an extraordinary, single-take, 20-minute conversation between Sands (Michael Fassbender) and a sympathetic priest (Liam Cunningham) who tries to convince him this is an ego-driven suicide mission by a man who is no longer in his right mind. For those who are expecting Ken Loach-style propaganda, that's not McQueen's aim. This is a portrait of a hideous human drama, with distinct resonances of the martyrdom and torture in the post-9/11 world. The prison guards here are also victims in a literal sense: They were killed by IRA assassins at the same rate as the prisoners starved to death. L.L.

Sept. 6, 9:30 p.m., Scotiabank 1; Sept. 8, 9 a.m., Scotiabank 2

JCVD

Mabrouk El Mechri (France/Belgium/Luxembourg)

Loaded with hilarious in-jokes and packing an unexpected emotional wallop, this smart postmodern hostage pic stars martial-arts action thesp Jean-Claude Van Damme as a washed-up version of himself. In this brave career jolt, Van Damme transforms his leaden acting into Buster Keaton deadpan, pitch-perfect for the string of humiliations — a custody battle, losing a role to Steven Seagal, an unco-operative ATM — that lead his character to a botched Brussels post-office heist. Cops, fans and his parents gather, believing he's gone postal. But can this celebrity become a real-life hero? Shot in dreamy sepia hues, with a fab cast and intellectual and visual zip, JCVD opens the Midnight Madness program in style. J.P.

Sept. 4, 11:59 p.m., Ryerson; Sept. 5, 3:15 p.m., Scotiabank 1.

RR

James Benning (USA)

Barring a change of mind or circumstance, RR will be the last of James Benning's films shot on 16 mm, and it ends with a locomotive, pointedly stopped in front of a wind farm outside Palm Springs, Calif. It's the last in a line of 43 trains shot across the U.S., each one a witness to America's overconsumption. Those familiar with Benning's recent landscape films will be comforted by the fixed camera and the film's continental scope, but in RR the signified (the train) takes over from the signifier (the camera), each shot lasting as long as it takes for a train to traverse the frame; this is both an aesthetic and a political choice. Each shot comes as a surprise, and every one is mesmerizing (yet unspectacular), yet RR acquires a cumulative power over its running time, as the simplicity of the structure gives way to infinite experiences. A masterpiece of structural filmmaking. M. Peranson

Sept. 7, 6:30 p.m., Jackman Hall.

C'est pas moi, je le jure! (It's Not Me, I Swear!)

Philippe Falardeau (Canada)

This hilarious, wonderfully detailed and sometimes heart-breaking story of a family's disintegration in late-1960s suburban Quebec focuses on Léon (Antoine L'Ecuyer), a precocious 10-year-old misfit who wreaks secret havoc on the vacationing neighbours' house, experiments with suicide and falls in love with the smarty-pants girl next door — all in one summer. Based on two semi-autobiographical novels by the son of the late statesman Jacques Hébert, the pic has the eccentric energy of Falardeau's previous TIFF fave Congorama (2006), but with its tight storytelling and emotional depth, this talented filmmaker has hit a world-class stride. J.P.

Sept. 5, 4:30 p.m., Winter Garden; Sept. 7, 7:45 p.m., Varsity 4 or 5

Cooper's Camera

Warren P. Sonoda (Canada)

Move over Chevy Chase — another dad is ready to ruin Christmas in a relentless, gut-wrenchingly funny comedy of bad behaviour. The Daily Show regulars Jason Jones and Samantha Bee (real-life spouses) play Gord and Nancy Cooper, whose marriage unravels on Dec. 25 in front of a used video camera, mostly operated by the youngest of their two sons, as extended family gathers for multiple rounds of drinks and humiliation. Dave Foley bares it all in a cameo as Gord's naughty neighbour. Co-written by Jones and Mike Beaver (who also plays loutish Uncle Nick), the pic is destined to become a holiday classic. J.P.

Sept. 7, 8:15 p.m., Varsity 8; Sept. 10, 2:45 p.m., AMC 2; Sept. 12, 6 p.m., AMC 6.

Tulpan

Sergey Dvortsevoy (Germany/Switzerland/Kazakhstan/Russia/Poland)

Weird winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes, Tulpan is Sergey Dvortsevoy's first "fiction" feature after a number of equally immersive award-winning documentaries. The film finds young Asa coming back from naval service and being rejected as a suitor by Tulpan because his ears are humongous. Despite this humorous synopsis, it would be a mistake to typify Tulpan, as per the TIFF program guide, as a warmly accessible film for all audiences: This is serious filmmaking. What gives the animal-heavy Tulpan its real kick — and elevates it beyond the Weeping Camels of the ethnographic film world — is the way Dvortsevoy integrates non-fictional elements into a developed plotline. It's an extension of what he calls "life cinema," showing the simplicity and warmth of the world by mixing naturalism and poetry. The strategy comes to a head with the filmic moment of the year, perhaps the greatest on-camera animal birth in cinema history. M. Peranson

Sept. 8, 6:15 p.m., Scotiabank 4; Sept. 10, 3:45 p.m., Scotiabank 1.

When It Was Blue

Jennifer Reeves (USA/Iceland)

Reeves's captivating tour de force explodes all preconceptions about both experimental and environmental film. When It Was Blue is a frenetic double-projection montage structured in four parts representing the directions of the compass and the seasons; this is a serious, eye-popping work that examines the beauty still present in our endangered world, as seen by a talented artist. Reeves spanned the globe (including Vancouver Harbour), then hand-painted her 16 mm images, resulting in a wide-ranging play on the notion of "blue" — the colour, the sensation, the sinking realization that the natural world (and 16 mm film) must be captured as much as possible before it disappears. The screening will be accompanied by haunting music from a band led by Icelandic composer Skuli Sverrisson, who wrote the score, and should be a can't-miss event. Take that, Godfrey Reggio. M. Peranson

Sept. 8, 9 p.m., Jackman Hall.

Soul Power

Jeffrey Levy-Hinte (U.S.)

The 10 minutes or so of James Brown performing at his Soul Brother Number One peak is worth the price of admission fivefold. With the letters GFOS (as in, Godfather of Soul) stitched into the torso of his flared cat suit, Brown was the man no man could hold back — and a consummate, gracious entertainer, as the backstage footage shows from this legendary 1974 concert in Kinshasa. Brown came to perform in an auxiliary music festival tied to Muhammad Ali and George Foreman's famous rumble in the jungle heavyweight bout, a concert put together with all the blind optimism of Woodstock and any other groundbreaking festival of the era. The editing is skillful, but it's the wealth of footage of the Spinners, B.B. King, Miriam Makeba and others, to say nothing of incredible scenes of street musicians and early 1970s African fashion, that immediately gives this documentary a place among the best concert films of the era. G.D.

Sept. 13, 10 a.m., AMC 3

Tony Manero

Pablo Larrain (Chile/Brazil)

Raul is a small-time thug in Santiago, Chile, circa 1978 — five years after the fascist military coup that deposed Salvador Allende's democratically elected Marxist regime. He's also obsessed with/possessed by Tony Manero, the disco-dancing fool played by John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Raul (superbly played by the veteran Alfredo Castro, who also co-wrote the screenplay) has mastered all of Travolta's moves, thanks to repeat viewings of SNF at a local repertory house, and now he's keen to enter a televised Travolta look-alike contest. It sounds charming, but it's not: In fact, Raul's quest for disco perfection is downright murderous, pursued with an intensity reminiscent of Al Pacino in The Godfather, Part Two. Larrain's film, his second full-lengther, is a tough, multilayered near-masterpiece, expertly exploring the ways an authoritarian regime warps the personal and the political. J.A.

Sept. 13, 12:30 p.m., Scotiabank 3

Waltz With Bashir

Ari Folman (Israel/Germany/France)

Persepolis meets Full Metal Jacket in Ari Folman's powerful and original animated war film, an "animated-documentary" investigation into the filmmaker's experiences as an 18-year-old soldier in the Lebanon war of 1982. Folman was present at the most notorious episode of that war, the massacres of hundreds of Palestinian refugees at the Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon, conducted by Christian Phalangists, in an area of Israeli control. The film is presented as the filmmaker's quest to recover his own blocked memories of the event; it involves a series of intersecting stories that eventually converge on the three days of the massacre. The film uses a detailed realistic animation technique. The stories, often based on the soldiers' recurring nightmares, add sequences of surreal horror to the depictions of actual fighting. Ultimately, Folman's film reaches its climax when the technique switches from animation to stark archival footage of the aftermath of the killings. L.L.

Sept. 4, 9 p.m., Ryerson; Sept. 7, 4 p.m., AMC 3.

Dernier Maquis

Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche (France/Algeria)

The third in a loose trilogy about the place of France and religion in the minds of Algerian immigrants, Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche's quietly daring Dernier Maquis mostly takes place in an isolated industrial park near Paris, where lower-class workers are engulfed by striking stacks of red pallets — quite literally billions of them. The boss, named Mao (played by the director) is a Muslim who employs other Algerian workers in his factory, and causes a storm when he decides to build a mosque and appoints the new imam by edict. Ameur-Zaimeche approaches his themes using a loose, episodic structure, including a terrific digression involving a wayward raccoon, and as such has made an eye-opener that sneaks up on the viewer, giving a real feel for how these workers approach their daily lives with both humour and anxiety. M. Peranson

Sept. 5, 12:15 p.m., Scotiabank 4; Sept. 6, 6:15 p.m., AMC 5; Sept. 11, 9 a.m., Scotiabank 3

Happy-Go-Lucky

Mike Leigh (U.K.)

Sally Hawkins scooped up the best-actress award in Berlin last February for her endearing, Chaplinesque turn as the irrepressible Poppy, a garrulous London schoolteacher who is like a human Weeble: No matter the adversity, she'll wobble a bit, but won't fall down. The story is slight, a series of scenes that edge along slowly and gratifyingly: When her bike is nicked, Poppy takes driving lessons from an instructor (the fabulous Eddie Marsan, Reg in Leigh's Vera Drake) who seethes with ugly, inchoate rage; she watches a Flamenco teacher spontaneously combust with her own comically unbridled passion; and she embarks on a tentative romance with a social worker possessing dreamy eyes. Even as Leigh captures lightning in a bottle — as is his wont, he and his actors created the scenes through improvisation — he keeps things from veering into the mawkish or twee, and allows the dark to creep in where it may. A lovely, small-scale gem. S.H.

Sept. 8, 7 p.m., Isabel Bader; Sept. 10, 9 a.m., Scotiabank 2

Il y a longtemps que je t'aime (I've Loved You So Long)

Philippe Claudel (France)

Kristin Scott Thomas goes dowdy and quietly deep as a woman tentatively emerging after being locked away in a metaphorical and literal prison. Fifteen years after going to jail for an unspeakable crime whose details only slowly trickle out, Juliette Fontaine (Scott Thomas) is taken in by the family of her younger sister Léa (Elsa Zylberstein), who longs to rebuild their relationship. Director Claudel, a French writer best known for his First World War tale Les âmes grises, makes an impressive feature debut that exhibits a novelistic control of narrative and interest in peopling his frame with a landscape of fully formed characters. If his philosophizing is at times didactic, it's in purpose of a fine goal. And Scott Thomas is magnificent. S.H.

Sept. 10, 8 p.m., Winter Garden; Sept. 12, 11:45 a.m., Scotiabank 4

Last Stop 174

Bruno Baretto (Brazil)

Director Bruno Baretto (Four Days in September) and writer Braulio Mantovani (City of God) weave a tapestry of social cause and effect that ripples through the slums of Rio de Janeiro and obliterates the line between criminal and victim. His gritty and grimy portrait of two troubled and orphaned young men, culminating in a real-life bus hijacking that rocked Brazil in 2000, gives a voyeuristic view of the seedy back streets ruled by guns and drugs as well as main thoroughfares where stoplight robberies are commonplace. Huddled beneath the threat of violence are quietly flourishing religious devotion, broken families struggling to mend themselves and non-governmental organization workers offering oft-abused altruism. The film's almost documentary-style realism and emotional force are spurred by the central actors, all of whom were chosen from theatre groups in those very same Rio slums. J.B.

Sept. 6, 2:30 p.m., Isabel Bader; Sept. 9, 2:30 p.m., Scotiabank 1; Sept. 11, 6:30 p.m., Scotiabank 4

Miracle at St. Anna

Spike Lee (U.S./Italy)

A powerful film which few directors can deliver, and none quite the way Spike Lee can. It swings between ensemble piece and close character studies, following four stranded soldiers from the African-American 92nd Division, the Buffalo Soldiers, caught behind enemy lines in Second World War Italy. The horrors of war and racial injustices are overwhelming. And as ever, Lee and his gifted lead actors unveil centuries of black American history and beliefs in even the simplest gestures and dialogue. The only complaint, though a testament to Lee's mastery, is that what he gives us could easily have run nine or 10 hours, rather than crammed into two-plus hours. It's that rich. G.D.

Sept. 7, 9 p.m., Elgin; Sept. 9, 11 a.m., Elgin; Sept. 13, 8:30 p.m., Ryerson

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Peter Sollett (U.S.)

It's infinitely sweet but goes down a treat, a teen comedy modern in everything except the title, which, nodding as it does to that iconic Dick Powell/Myrna Loy tandem, sets the bar high. Well, Michael Cera and Kat Dennings make the leap just fine. In yet another outing as awkward adolescents with a gift for deft gab, they're a pair of bridge-and-tunnel kids thrown together through a single New York night, searching for some legendary underground band and finding you-know-what. Occasionally, the subplots wend off too preciously into your standard gross-out terrain, but whenever the starring tandem share the same two-shot, the silver glints on the screen — they play off each other with a beguiling insouciance. The indie score, salted with a few standards, complements the mix nicely, and director Peter Sollett turns after-hours Manhattan into a heady visual cocktail. Just drink it in. R.G.

Sept. 6, 6 p.m., Ryerson; Sept. 7, 9:30 a.m., Ryerson

Pescuit Sportiv (Hooked)

Adrian Sitaru (Romania/France)

Director Adrian Sitaru's first feature, this darkly comedic and subtly cynical drama is set in a Romania where woman sell themselves by the side of the road for the price of a beer. Mihai is a stressed-out and disillusioned school teacher (a middle-aged rebel deftly created by Adrian Titieni) going on a picnic with his married lover Mihaela (Iona Flora plays the anxious and querulous younger woman) when they hit a prostitute on a country road. Believing they have killed her, they panic and bundle her into their car; when she awakes, she turns out to be a cheerfully manipulative character (a gleeful Maria Dinulescu) who hijacks their day out, inserting herself into the evident fissures of their clandestine relationship. The results are Pinteresque, but with more humour than menace. K.T.

Sept. 8, 9:30 p.m., Varsity 4; Sept. 11, 9:45 a.m., Scotiabank 4; Sept. 12, 5:30 p.m., Varsity 6

Salamandra

Pablo Aguero (France/Germany)

Pablo Aguero's heartbreaking first feature eschews the conventional dramatic arc to offer a child's perspective on the chaos of life and politics. Six-year-old Inti (an impressively sensitive Joaquin Aguila) is just learning to read, puzzling out the signs of the adults' world, when he is taken from the safety of his grandmother's apartment by a mother he doesn't know. The twitchy, naive and impulsive Alba (Dolores Fanzi makes this unwittingly abusive mother tragically sympathetic) was one of the disappeared during Argentina's dirty war and has now returned to reclaim her child. (It is typical of the film's fidelity to Inti's limited understanding that this background is never fully explained.) She takes him off to a hippie commune in Patagonia: It is El Boson, the place — not coincidentally, considering the portrait both shocking and wondrous that he paints of it — where Aguero himself was born. K.T.

Sept. 11, 10 p.m., Jackman; Sept. 13, 3:15 p.m., Varsity 4

Un conte de Noël

Arnaud Desplechin (France)

It sure ain't the Christmas ol' Dickens imagined. The Vuillards are a Parisian family of dysfunctional overachievers, bizarre enough to make The Royal Tenenbaums clan look like candidates for a Hallmark card. As they gather for the festive season, and ghosts of tragedies past compete with demons of time present, the battleground is drawn. Of course, this being France, irony and a certain insouciant hauteur are the weapons of choice. And don't expect a grain of sentimentality — the candour in this crowd borders on the brutal. Led by Catherine Deneuve as the least maternal of mamas, the cast is uniformly sound and the direction always crisp, even through a 2 1/2-hour journey. Yep, this is intriguing fare, illuminating in its very nastiness, but the thing should come with an advisory: For the sake of our seasonal sanity, please open well before Christmas. R.G.

Sept. 8, 9:15 p.m., Scotiabank 2; Sept. 10, 12 p.m., Scotiabank 2

Cloud 9

Andreas Dresen (Germany)

A controversial Canadian comedy at last year's festival was known as YPF, which stood for Young People Fucking. Cloud 9, from German director Andreas Dresen (Summer in Berlin), might be called OPF. This modest, heartfelt drama follows a seamstress and married grandmother, Inge (Ursula Werner), who makes one too many adjustments on a handsome old customer's trousers, and the next thing you know she's in a head-over-heels sexual affair. For a while, she tries to hide her erotic awakening from her depressive husband, Werner (Horst Rehberg), but she is unable to slip back to her routine life. The erotic warmth between the lovestruck seniors has a palpable glow, even if their naked bodies have a few more folds and lumps than we usually see on the movie screen. There really isn't much more to the story, except the familiar message that, at any age, one person's liberation can be another's downfall. L.L.

Sept. 5, 3 p.m., Scotiabank 4; Sept. 11, 6:45 p.m., Scotiabank 1

Adoration

Atom Egoyan (Canada)

Atom Egoyan's latest film, Adoration, is a multipurpose mystery, family drama and exploration of ideas about cultural identity in the post-9/11 era. Though the plot borders on the abstruse, it's also the director's best film in a decade. A high-school boy named Simon (Devon Bostick) tells his class a bizarre personal story: Before he was born, his terrorist father tried to put his pregnant mother on a plane, along with a bomb. Later we learn that Simon's French teacher (Arsinée Khanjian) has enlisted him in a peculiarly dark prank. She also seems to be stalking Simon's uncle, Tom (Scott Speedman), an angry tow-truck driver with father issues. Though there are moments when the drama turns into intellectual debate, the film is also emotional, moving with a fluid, mounting tension and moments of anguish and strange, startling humour. No doubt the story is contrived, but that's part of Egoyan's point: All stories are; the fascinating thing is the needs that lie beneath the stories we tell. L.L.

Sept. 8, 6 p.m., Elgin; Sept. 10, 12:45 p.m., Scotiabank 1.

Il Divo

Paolo Sorrentino (Italy/France)

Giulio Andreotti was the central figure in a half-century of Italian postwar politics; a seven-time prime minister who, in spite of his gnomic, unprepossessing appearance and lack of charisma, stayed in power thanks a set of machinations that would make the Borgias blush. Unlike most political biopics, director Paolo Sorrentino's film is pure, exuberant razzle-dazzle, including ironic voice-over, playful graphics and a blackly humorous montage of the "natural" deaths that came to Andreotti's rivals. (Often accused, Andreotti was always acquitted). The film gets a bit abstract when it catches up to the prime minister's seventh parliament, in the early nineties, exploring the leader's elaborate links to the Vatican, organized crime and big business; most viewers may get lost in the tangle. Fortunately, there's always the fascination of watching actor Toni Servillo, who does a brilliant job of playing Andreotti (known as Beelzebub) as a kind of devil with a clown's exterior. L.L.

Sept. 9, 4:30 p.m.; Winter Garden; Sept. 11, 9 p.m., Scotiabank 3

Che

Steven Soderbergh (USA/Spain/France)

Grand folly or almost masterpiece? That was the tone of the debate when Steven Soderbergh's 4 1/2-hour, two-movie, Spanish-language film biography of Ernesto (Che) Guevara was unveiled before the press in Cannes in May. In fact, the double movie represents a solid, though not revolutionary, achievement. Both films are handsomely shot, mostly outdoors with limpid high-definition digital cinematography, but they are otherwise distinct in tone and style. Che: Part 1 is an action film, which covers the improbable success of Fidel Castro, Guevara (Benicio Del Toro) and their rag-tag army to overthrow Cuban dictator Juan Batista. The film moves through superbly staged series of famous battles leading to the government's overthrow, intercut with sequences of Che reviewing his career and flirting with ABC correspondent Lisa Howard (Julia Ormond) and his 1964 speech to the United Nations. Part 2 begins shortly before Che, disenchanted with governing and wanting to spread the revolution through Latin America, sneaks into Bolivia, where he hoped to train guerrillas and lead a revolution. The second film progresses toward disaster as relentlessly as the first film did toward triumph. The local peasants and Communists won't work with him; the government, backed by the CIA, has his fighters on the run before they have had time to train. A measure of the movie's strength and weakness is its reliance on Del Toro's charisma in the central role: In the film's second half, he disappears from the screen in several scenes and the film devolves into a confusing chronicle of political infighting amidst doomed and frightened soldiers in matching hats and beards. L.L.

Che (Part 1 and 2): Sept. 12, 9 a.m., Ryerson; Che (Part 1): Sept. 9, 9 p.m., Elgin; Sept. 11, 2:30 p.m., Elgin; Che (Part 2): Sept. 10, 9 p.m., Elgin; Sept. 12, 2:30 p.m., Elgin.

Examined Life

Astra Taylor (Canada)

A thoroughly engaging documentary that simply portrays leading philosophers thinking aloud, playing off the centuries-old practice of great thinkers finding epiphanies in city rambles. So you have, among others, Avital Ronell discussing the tyranny of "meaning" while strolling a Manhattan park, Peter Singer examining the ethics of spending while idling by Bergdorf Goodman and the always entertaining Slavoj Zizek challenging what he deems the new conservatism of ecology at a trash dump. Cornel West steals the show (and naturally testifies to the showmanship of oratory) as he extrapolates on the funk and blues of human nature in the backseat during a New York drive. G.D.

Sept. 5, 5:15 p.m., AMC 9; Sept. 7, 10 a.m., AMC 9; Sept. 13, 9:15 a.m., AMC 2.

Sugar

Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck (USA)

A film geared toward the Slow Movement — that is, for those in the mood to take the time to enjoy the simpler things in life. And what better theme than baseball and the story of a Dominican ace pitcher trying to make it the minor leagues? Rich in texture and colour, music and aura, Sugar follows the athlete through predictable ups and downs as he attempts to adjust to the American way. But that familiarity is the point. The film is about looking at America through the eyes of a new immigrant, one who feels he has sometimes seen too much. G.D.

Sept. 8, 9 p.m., Scotiabank 4; Sept. 10, 3:30 p.m., Scotiabank 2.

Toronto Stories

Sook-Yin Lee, Sudz Sutherland, David Weaver, Aaron Woodley (Canada)

The city acts as both backdrop and subject matter. But really this collection of highly crafted shorts by a host of Toronto's name directors is a showcase for their divergent styles. Woodley turns the Don Valley into a childhood mystery about a Gollum in a sewer pipe. Weaver remakes Union Station and other everyday corners into a gritty inner city in a story (starring Gil Bellows) of the homeless rendered epic. Sutherland tells the warmest story despite its tale of convicts and gun-toting confrontations. Most compelling is Lee, who is veering into a kind of film-based performance art, on the topic of sex and coupling. G.D.

Sept. 9, 6 p.m., AMC 6; Sept. 11, 3:30 p.m., AMC 2.

The Hurt Locker

Kathryn Bigelow (USA)

Bigelow's latest is mostly a series of set pieces. But what set pieces! Always a master kineticist, Bigelow outdoes herself in this 130-minute epic centred on a company of U.S. grunts charged with defusing one improvised explosive device after another in and around pre-surge Baghdad. The company has only 38 days left in its tour of duty when a swaggering Jeremy Renner joins the unit as its hot-shot bomb-disposal technician. Are his smarts and adrenalin-addiction going to keep them safe — or get them all killed? Bigelow and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd crank up the tension to nail-biting, gut-churning extremes and the mayhem is powerfully visceral. Some may chafe at the film's lack of context, but haven't 5 1/2 years of war given us all the context we need? J.A.

Sept. 8, 6 p.m., Ryerson; Sept. 10, 9 a.m., Ryerson.

Le Silence de Lorna (Lorna's Silence)

Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne (Belgium/France/Italy)

The directing-writing team of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne is best known for its documentary-style dramas of marginalized youth in contemporary Belgium (including Palme d'or winners, Rosetta and The Child). The brothers' latest film is, for the Dardennes, almost a straightforward thriller. Actress Arta Dobroshi plays Lorna, a young Albanian woman who has become caught up in a criminal scheme to get citizenship for a Russian criminal. As the film starts, she has already completed the first stage, marrying a disposable drug addict to get her citizenship. Then her conscience kicks in. Lorna's Silence is probably the Dardennes' most conventional-looking effort to date, shot in 35-mm in the relatively attractive city of Liège. The apparent thriller sets up an unexpected allegorical ending. Perhaps not quite the razor-sharp effort of their last few films, Lorna's Silence proves the Dardennes aren't afraid of looking conventional. L.L.

Sept. 7, 6 p.m., Scotiabank 1; Sept. 10, 9:45 p.m., Scotiabank 1.

Un été sans point ni coup sûr (A No-Hit No-Run Summer)

Francis Leclerc (Canada)

Top-down in that busy summer of 1969, when the world got Woodstock, the moon got company and, more important to a 12-year-old boy besotted with baseball, Montreal got the Expos. Yes, it's another coming-of-age tale, where the mood is elegiac and the bitter invariably mixes with the sweet. The elevating difference here is director Francis Leclerc's knack for infusing the piece with deliciously provincial detail, like Quebecois kids embracing American sitcoms but with a cultural twist — these garçons belt out the Gilligan's Island theme in gleeful French. What's more, the film builds toward the genre's tired clichés — the budding romance, the big game with the hated rival, the dawning realization that parents are fallible and flawed — only to veer deftly away, leaving the charm (and it's considerable) to bubble up through a series of lovely anti-climaxes. None more lovely than the one at the summery centre: a boy, and a city, losing their hearts to a losing team. R.G.

Sept. 6, 3 p.m., Scotiabank 4; Sept. 8, 9:30 p.m., Scotiabank 3.

Four Nights with Anna

Jerzy Skolimowski (Poland/France)

Polish master Skolimowski returns as a director (and producer and screenwriter) after a hiatus of more than 15 years with this absorbing effort, set in a small, impoverished post-Communist Polish town. Artur Steranko (brilliantly) plays Leon Okrasa, a lumbering, seemingly cretinous jack-of-all-trades at the crematorium of the local hospital. After the death of his grandmother, for whom he's been caregiver, Leon decides to act on the crush he's developed for a broad-shouldered nurse living near his hovel by stealing into her room late at night and observing her as she sleeps. Creepy? For sure. But this stalker romance is also blackly hilarious, inventive, rich in atmosphere and pathos, and thought-provoking. At 70, Skolimowski shows the restraint, sophistication and attention to detail of a mature master. J.A.

Sept. 9, 8:45 p.m., Varsity 1; Sept. 10, 3:15 p.m., Scotiabank 4

It Might Get Loud

Davis Guggenheim (U.S.)

An exercise in reverence to three era-defining guitarists. Jack White of the White Stripes shows us his off-beat take on Americana. U2's the Edge, with his vast array of effects pedals, has more than a little of the svelte, technological sheen of new Dublin. Jimmy Page … well, Page is the nice, wizened student of the guitar that he is. Taking us to their houses and practice studios, along with key locations in their hagiography (including Headley Grange, where Led Zeppelin recorded so much of its best material), we get glimpses of their creative process, favourite guitars and, most interestingly, Page's and White's record collections. But artists don't like to reveal everything. The result, although enlightening for guitarists and fans, feels incomplete. G.D.

Sept. 13, 12 p.m., AMC 6

Dernier Maquis

Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche (France/Algeria)

The third in a loose trilogy about the place of France and religion in the minds of Algerian immigrants, Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche's quietly daring Dernier Maquis mostly takes place in an isolated industrial park near Paris, where lower-class workers are engulfed by striking stacks of red pallets — quite literally billions of them. The boss, named Mao (played by the director) is a Muslim who employs other Algerian workers in his factory, and causes a storm when he decides to build a mosque and appoints the new imam by edict. Ameur-Zaimeche approaches his themes using a loose, episodic structure, including a terrific digression involving a wayward raccoon, and as such has made an eye-opener that sneaks up on the viewer, giving a real feel for how these workers approach their daily lives with both humour and anxiety. M. Peranson

Sept. 5, 12:15 p.m., Scotiabank 4; Sept. 6, 6:15 p.m., AMC 5; Sept. 11, 9 a.m., Scotiabank 3.

O'Horten

Bent Hamer (Norway)

Dry, absurdist comedy from the director of Factotum and Kitchen Stories (TIFF '03) follows the fortunes of quiet 67-year-old train conductor Odd Horten (Bard Owe), whose routine near-solitary life is transformed by a series of increasingly strange encounters after his retirement. Pedestrian events like selling a boat, losing a pipe and an ice storm become opportunities for surreal observation, but Hamer never allows things to get silly. After rescuing a rumpled retired diplomat with a gift for driving blind, Odd is inspired to take a life-changing leap of faith. A film propelled by subtle joy. J.P.

Sept. 4, 8:45 p.m., Varsity 2; Sept. 6, 12:15 p.m., Scotiabank 3.

Tokyo Sonata

Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Japan/Netherlands/Hong Kong/China)

Known primarily in these parts as a genre filmmaker, Kiyoshi Kurosawa proved he had just as much to say about the disintegration of a Japanese postnuclear family in 2003's Bright Future. Tokyo Sonata starts even gentler, as a look at an increasingly common phenomenon, earlier enshrined in Laurent Cantet's Time Out: the laid-off worker who pretends to still have gainful employment. In Japan, the shame of such circumstance is toxic — it sickens the Sasaki family, and Kurosawa's film as a whole. To ruin any of the plot would be criminal (suffice to say, criminal elements do, in fact, intrude), as this ordinary family deals with ordinary circumstances in arguably extraordinary ways, especially in the film's raucous second half. Though far from flawless, it's an adventurous work that is both disturbing and ultimately moving. M. Peranson

Sept. 9, 5:30 p.m., Scotiabank 1; Sept. 11, 7:15 p.m., Isabel Bader; Sept. 12, 2:15 p.m., AMC 7.

L'heure d'été (Summer Hours)

Olivier Assayas (France)

Director Olivier Assayas's slender but perfectly pitched family drama serves as an exploration of the legacy of French culture in the modern world. (Like Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon, the film was commissioned by Paris's Musée d'Orsay, to celebrate its 20th anniversary.) An imperious mother (Edith Scob) summons her adult children to her home and assigns her son (Charles Berling) with the task of dispensing her inheritance, including some prized furniture and a painting collection by her beloved uncle. One sibling (Juliette Binoche) is a designer living in New York; another (Jérémie Renier) runs an Asian sneaker factory. Neither of them places the same value on these objects as their brother does. Assayas, who makes films both experimental (Irma Vep) and grandly traditional (Les destinées sentimentales), is expert at handling the subtle undercurrents of tension in this eminently civilized family facing a painful generational and global shift in values. L.L.

Sept. 8, 4:15 p.m., Winter Garden; Sept. 10, 9:15 a.m., Scotiabank 3

Linha de Passe (Passing Line)

Walter Salles, Daniela Thomas (Brazil)

Walter Salles's and Daniela Thomas's drama, set in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, follows a family consisting of a maid and her four sons by four different fathers. Never less than competent, occasionally engrossing, the film suffers a little from what feels like a sociology lesson about the poverty trap, served up in a family drama. Mom, who works as a maid, is pregnant again and is about to be laid off by her employer. One son, Dario, wants to be a professional soccer player, but at 18 may already be too old; another has dedicated his life to religion. A third has a son of his own whom he rarely sees and can't support on his motorcycle-courier salary. Reginaldo, the youngest, is obsessed with finding his father. Their five stories, followed from May to September, each hit a climax on the same day. L.L.

Sept. 5, 2:45 p.m., Ryerson; Sept. 8, 6:45 p.m., Scotiabank 1; Sept. 10, 6:15 p.m., AMC 7

Liverpool

Lisandro Alonso (Argentina/France/Netherlands/Germany/Spain)

The latest from Argentine director Lisandro Alonso (La Libertad, Los Muertos) follows a middle-aged sailor returning to his mountain home in Tierra del Fuego, where he comes to terms with his family history. Impatient viewers may grow frustrated with the precisely composed images, sparse dialogue, languid pace and a story in which most of the information is withheld, but Liverpool has a strong retrospective impact and there's a not a false move here. L.L.

Sept. 10, 9:30 p.m., Jackman Hall; Sept. 12, 3:30 p.m., Varsity 5

Nurse.Fighter.Boy

Charles Officer (Canada)

In this film by Canadian Charles Officer, a beautiful nurse with sickle-cell anemia (Karen LeBlanc) and a shambling, melancholy underground fighter named Silence (Clark Johnson) find each other by chance — or is it the spells cast by her precociously wise 12-year-old son (Daniel J. Gordon)? In Officer's gorgeously crafted feature-directing debut, Toronto back alleys become a backdrop for romance, a boxing club a place for healing. This urban story about life's crossroads is propelled by a fantastic soundtrack, poetic visuals and nuanced performances from the trio. An enchanting film of subtle emotional power and many small pleasures. J.P.

Sept 8, 6 p.m., AMC 3; Sept. 10, 2:30 p.m., AMC 5

Three Monkeys

Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey/France/Italy)

Fans of the moody, elliptical films of Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Distant, Climates) will probably be divided by this latest film, which is a departure from his usual wry and quiet dramas for an almost conventional movie with a plot straight from a forties film noir. When a politician accidentally kills a man with his car, he persuades his chauffeur to take the rap in exchange for a payment when he gets released from jail. As the jail term goes on, the chauffeur's wife and teenaged son suffer and the wife seeks out an advance payment. One bad thing leads to another. Ceylan's approach is oblique, emphasizing the after-effects more than the actions, with a lot of frozen, painful moments between the characters. Though Three Monkeys feels conventional compared with Ceylan's other work, it maintains its auteurist imprint, especially the rich colour palette and suggestive HD camerawork that helped Ceylan take the best-director honours at Cannes this year. L.L.

Sept. 5, 9:15 a.m., Scotiabank 4; Sept. 6, 12:45 p.m., Scotiabank 1

24 City

Jia Zhang-ke (China)

Celebrated Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke (Platform, Still Life) blends documentary and fiction in this studied, melancholic homage to China's militaristic, closed-in past. The subject is a self-contained factory town that existed in the centre of Chengdu, capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan. Originally built to produce aviation engines, Factory 420 drew workers from across China, and sustained a self-contained community until the 1980s. Now, it has been demolished to make way for a luxury apartment complex called 24 City. The movie consists of nine direct-to-camera interviews with various inhabitants, along with elegantly composed shots of the area. Without warning, Jia combines actors with real-life subjects. His justification is that history is a mixture of imagination and fact. Thus, we have actor Joan Chen telling the story of a factory girl, known for her prettiness, who says she was dubbed Little Flower because she looked like a character of that name played by Joan Chen. The minute, often banal memories of the individuals trace a history of China over three generations, set against monumental, painterly images of the giant factory being dismantled. L.L.

Sept. 7, 8:30 p.m., AMC 10; Sept. 9, 3:15 p.m., AMC 1; Sept. 11, 6:15 p.m., AMC 2

Voy a Explotar

Gerardo Naranjo (Mexico)

The passion, discovery and confusion of first love is beautifully captured in Gerardo Naranjo's dreamy yet energetic film about two misfit teens who fabricate a story that they're on the lam when they're actually camping out close to home. Roman is the self-destructive rich son of a politician and has been tossed out of every private school; Manu is a gentle, imaginative soul, yet world-weary at 15. As light comedy and tender romance gradually give way to darker themes, Naranjo never strays from the tiny, fragile universe the pair has constructed. A fest gem. J.P.

Sept. 7, 6 p.m., AMC 7; Sept 9, 9:15 a.m., Scotiabank 4

Wendy and Lucy

Kelly Reichardt (USA)

Kelly Reichardt's follow-up to her drama Old Joy seems to owe a large debt to Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Rosetta, the story of a girl on the margins of society, incrementally losing one small battle after another. Michelle Williams, who is persuasive as the down-on-her-luck Wendy, even has the same bob haircut and hoody worn by Émilie Dequenne. She also has a dog, named Lucy, that ups the ante on pathos. On her way to Alaska, where Wendy hopes to land a job, her car breaks down — and then her dog gets lost. Running a brisk 80 minutes, the film follows Wendy like a rat running around a maze as she keeps returning to a sympathetic security guard, who lets her use his cellphone number, and an indifferent mechanic (Will Patton). The economy of the movie and a handful of vividly shot scenes — including a visit to the city pound, and an encounter with a mentally ill man in the woods — enliven this somewhat predictable exercise in tugging at the heartstrings. L.L.

Sept. 5, 7:45 p.m., AMC 7; Sept. 7, 12:45 p.m., Scotiabank 2

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Kevin Smith (U.S.)

3/4

The star rating above is a hybrid. By conventional cinematic standards, Zack and Miri Make a Porno is a 1 1/2 -star film, a jejune mess of improbabilities and impossibilities. On the other hand, it is a Kevin Smith movie — a critic-proof, slacker-loving, hose-headed world unto itself, automatically "deserving" four stars. Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks are the titular (heh-heh) leads here. Pals since grade school and (platonic) roommates for years, they decide to make a porn flick — Star Whores, featuring Darth Vibrator and Lubed Guy-baller, is their first attempt — to earn the money necessary to restore power and water service in their crummy Pittsburgh apartment. Much mayhem and potty-mouthed mirth ensue, of course. Porn legend Traci Lords has a cameo while long-time Smith associate Jason Mewes, looking like the young Iggy Pop, reveals his full monty. J.A.

Sept. 7, 9:15 p.m., Ryerson; Sept. 9, 3 p.m., Elgin

Appaloosa

Ed Harris (USA)

In his first directorial outing since Pollock, Ed Harris is looking to paint himself a widescreen western, but he seems stuck between palettes, unsure of whether to go with the old-fashioned John Ford hues or take up a more revisionist Clint Eastwood brush. Harris stars along with Viggo Mortensen, playing a pair of brutally efficient lawmen hired to clean up yet another bedevilled town. So far, it's a straight shooter, but when Renée Zellweger pops up as the chubby-cheeked apex of a love triangle, things start getting odd and oddly contrived. The film keeps promising to chip the rust off western myths, only to lapse back into convention. By the time the strong, silent type is riding off into the sunset, Unforgiven has pretty near given way to unforgivable. R.G.

Sept. 5, 6 p.m., Elgin; Sept. 6, 9 a.m., Scotiabank 2.

Blindness

Fernando Meirelles (Canada/Brazil/Japan)

Blindness received an overcritical mauling at last spring's Cannes festival, an overreaction to an opening-night film with ugly images and high-flown pretensions. Directed by Fernando Meirelles from a novel by Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese author Jose Saramago, Blindness takes a metaphor that goes back at least to Plato and the Bible, about people who are spiritually blind to the truth in front of their eyes. It's also about a literal epidemic that strikes blind the population of an unnamed city, leading to the collapse of government and the rise of blind, warring gangs. Julianne Moore, who starred in the similarly themed Children of Men, is compelling as the doctor's wife who mysteriously maintains her sight, but the story arc is awkward. Canadian screenwriter Don McKellar and Meirelles have overemphasized the allegorical intentions of the novel (especially in intrusive voice-over segments provided by Danny Glover). Meirelles uses a variety of visual textures — especially dramatic fades to white to indicate the onset of blindness — creating less of a visceral reaction than a contemplative one. While the approach is high-minded and honest to Saramago's novel, it saps the vitality of the story. Too often, the viewer is conscious of watching a lesson. L.L.

Sept. 6, 9 p.m., Elgin; Sept. 8, 11 a.m., Elgin

Down to the Dirt

Justin Simms (Canada)

Based on the 2004 novel of the same name by Joel Hynes, Down to the Dirt starts off, deceptively, as a numbing "I-gotta-git-outta-here" Newfoundland slice-o'-life melodrama. But when Keith Kavanagh, a self-destructive boozer/poet played by the multitalented Hynes, does escape to St. John's from his outport hometown with girlfriend Natasha (Mylène Savoie), the movie, directed by first-timer Simms, gets really interesting — in a squalid, darkly humorous, Atlantic Canada Gothic kinda way. Things get even more twisted when Keith, travelling to Halifax in pursuit of a reformed Natasha, has a scary run-in with a prostitute and her crackhead boyfriend (Hugh Dillon in a riveting cameo). J.A.

Sept. 9, 8:45 p.m., Scotiabank 4; Sept. 11, 3 p.m., Scotiabank 3.

Pride and Glory

Gavin O'Connor (USA)

From Serpico through Prince of the City and beyond, we've seen this before: Dirty New York cops hunker down to protect themselves and their corrupt laundry, even as a lone crusader takes the high road to truth and justice. Oh, but the road is bumpy, the hand-held camera is jumpy, and at least one of the bad apples is almost risibly rotten — the movie tries to overcome a trite narrative by overheating the violence. What saves the thing from sinking under the weight of its own hyperbole is the quality of the cast — Ed Norton, Colin Farrell, Noah Emmerich and Jon Voight all do yeoman's work keeping a lumpy script afloat. Barely. R.G.

Sept. 9, 6:30 p.m., Roy Thomson Hall; Sept. 12, 2:45 p.m., Ryerson.

Stone of Destiny

Charles Martin Smith (Canada/U.K.)

The gala closer for this year's festival, Stone of Destiny is a heist film with a nationalist twist. Based on a true story, it features Charlie Cox as a Scottish university student who, in 1950, hits on the idea of energizing the moribund Scottish independence movement by stealing the emblematic Stone of Scone installed in Westminster Abbey by the English 650 years before. Smith, who also wrote the screenplay, is all brisk efficiency over the course of the movie's fat-free 96 minutes. The fine cast of underdogs includes Robert Carlyle, Billy Boyd, Kate Mara and Brenda Fricker. Still, while Stone carries its history lightly, can a film about Scottish nationalism do well in the United States without Sean Connery or faux Scot Mel Gibson in the cast? J.A.

Sept. 13, 6 p.m., Elgin; Sept. 13, 8 p.m., Roy Thomson Hall.

Detroit Metal City

Toshio Lee (Japan)

Country bumpkin Souichi moves to the big city to pursue his dream of becoming a trendy popsmith. Instead, he reluctantly becomes the swaggering, sexist Johannes Klauser II, the makeup-wearing front man of death-metal faves Detroit Metal City, whose followers believe he sprung from hell and whose female manager keeps a tight leash. As the jittery Souichi, Kenichi Matsuyama carries this frothy musical film, the musician struggling to hide his alter-ego from his college crush while a duel with death-metal legend Jack Dark (Gene Simmons) looms. Based on the extraordinarily popular manga (Japanese comics) series. J.P.

Sept. 5, 11:59 p.m., Ryerson; Sept. 6, noon, Scotiabank 2; Sept. 11, 8 p.m., Varsity 4 or 5.

Before Tomorrow

Marie-Hélène Cousineau, Madeline Piujuq Ivalu (Canada)

From the production team behind Atanarjurat: The Fast Runner and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen comes this Inuit drama, based on the novel by Danish writer Jorn Riel, about a grandmother and grandson who become trapped on a remote island. Co-directed by Marie-Hélène Cousineau and Madeline Ivalu, the movie is quiet, studied, sometimes moving but dynamically weak: To put it another way, not a lot happens, very slowly. Shot over four seasons, and book-ended by songs in French and English by the McGarrigle Sisters, Before Tomorrow is at its best in the earlier scenes showing day-to-day Inuit life and the dramatic northern landscape. As the world of the film becomes more narrow, it feels more solemnly drawn out than is necessary for its emotional payoff. L.L.

Sept. 7, 2:30 p.m., Scotiabank 4; Sept. 9, 8:15 p.m., Varsity 5; Sept. 12, 9:30 p.m., Varsity 3

Lion's Den

Pablo Trapero (Argentina/South Korea/Brazil)

There's a kind of international art-house formula which director Pablo Trapero's Lion's Den conforms to: the pretty-girl-in-trouble movie. In this case, the pretty girl, Julia (Martina Gusman), is in deeply serious trouble. She wakes up in her apartment, pregnant, next to two men's bloodied corpses, and soon finds herself heading off to a purgatorial sentence. The peculiar circumstances of Julia's crime (too much sex and drugs) is essentially a set-up for a look at an Argentine prison where female inmates bear and raise their children in overcrowded, squalid conditions. The movie follows Julia's life for the next four years, the politics of inmate life, her difficult relationship with her rich mother and her bond with her son, whom she is supposed to give up at the age of 4. At its most interesting when it shows the lives of women and children prisoners, the film has the feel of a movie-of-the-week cliché when it returns to Julia's improbable crime. L.L.

Sept. 8, 8:45 p.m., AMC 7; Sept. 10, 6 p.m., AMC 4; Sept. 13, 9:30 a.m., Scotiabank 3

Synecdoche, New York

Charlie Kaufman (USA)

Self-defeatingly clever, Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut takes its name from a kind of metaphor in which a part represents a whole, such as describing Kaufman as the "hand" behind such ingenious scripts as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In his screenplays, Kaufman has milked a lot of humour from the excesses of authorial indulgence. Like Adaptation, Synecdoche is the story of a man (Philip Seymour Hoffman) caught in the agonies of creation, his troubled relationships with women (Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams) and his confusion between reality and fantasy. A promising first half-hour sets up Hoffman as a death-obsessed theatre director in upstate New York, and his relationship with his four-year-old daughter and emotionally distant artist wife, Adele (Keener). Between visiting doctors to deal with an increasingly alarming series of physical ailments, Caden works on his masterpiece: a vast, multiyear project in which characters are directed to interact with each other's lives in a constructed city within a theatre. As the external reality disappears, so does the viewer's reason to care. L.L.

Sept. 9, 8:30 p.m., Winter Garden; Sept. 11, 12: 15 p.m., Scotiabank 1

Asbe Du-Pa (Two-Legged Horse)

Samira Makhmalbaf (Iran)

Not easy to watch, this seemingly simple film. The father of a legless, motherless boy hires an older imbecilic youth to carry his son to school and back. Thus begins a strange relationship, mostly abusive, but punctuated by moments of friendship. The inconsolable anger of the younger boy is channelled into ever greater degrees of humiliation of his two-legged horse. Two extraordinary performances from the principals. M. Posner

Sept. 6, 9:15 p.m., Scotiabank 2; Sept. 9, 12 p.m., Scotiabank 4

At the Edge of the World

Dan Stone (U.S.)

Armchair activists can take a virtual trip to the stunning, ice-bound South Sea as the crusty Canadian-born sea captain Paul Watson and a ragtag crew of volunteers with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society scour Antarctica for a Japanese whaling fleet. Their goal is to enforce — through harassment, obstruction and intervention — an international ban on whaling, which is supported in law but not in practice by governments around the world. In Stone's intermittently engaging David-and-Goliath documentary, speckled with gorgeous footage of ice-bound Antarctica, activism is like war: long stretches of boredom punctuated by bursts of frenzied chaos that can, with one wrong move, be fatal. S.H.

Sept. 8, 9 p.m., AMC 10; Sept. 12, 6 p.m., AMC 9; Sept. 13, 4:15 p.m., AMC 10

Burn After Reading

Joel and Ethan Coen (U.S.)

Coming off the sublime achievement of No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers get ridiculous again, with a screwball comedy set deep in the clotted heart of the Washington Beltway. Boosted by George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand and John Malkovich, the star power is mega-wattage, but they're all dimming and dumbing down to play variations on the same character — the narcissistic middle-aged loser. En route, there are plenty of laughs at the periphery (especially from Clooney), and if the centre of the tale doesn't hold, maybe that's deliberate — the point is the pointlessness of a befuddled bureaucracy. So expect opinion to be divided: Some will find this a quirky amusement that, like The Big Lebowski, is destined for cult status; others will just want to burn after watching. R.G.

Sept. 5, 9:30 p.m., Roy Thomson; Sept. 6, 11 a.m., Elgin

The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond

Jodie Markell (U.S.)

Period-drama Americana, with the plantation countryside surrounding Memphis, Tenn., replacing Edwardian England. Using a script by no less than Tennessee Williams, the film focuses on a smouldering, yet nicely paced and varied performance by actress Bryce Dallas Howard as Fisher Willow, a young debutante too wise in the ways of the world for the childish Southern society set around her. It's an effective telling of the story, evoking the insect sounds, haziness and social structure of the South. Yet as Willow's emotions and predicament swing like a pendulum, the film stands at a respectable distance. Go for Howard's performance, but don't expect a great deal more. G.D.

Sept. 12, 6:30 p.m., Roy Thomson; Sept. 13, 11 a.m., Elgin

Nothing But the Truth

Rod Lurie (U.S.)

An O. Henry-style trick ending severely mars an otherwise absorbing and thought-provoking film from the writer-director of The Contender and Resurrecting the Champ. Set in the near-future or a kind of parallel present, it stars Kate Beckinsale as an ace reporter for a Washington newspaper who blows the cover of a female CIA agent (Eve Farmiga) in the wake of a failed assassination attempt on the U.S. president, allegedly orchestrated by Venezuela. A special prosecutor (well-played by Matt Dillon) is brought in to get Beckinsale to reveal her primary source before a grand jury. She stays mum and, despite the best efforts of her lawyers (Alan Alda, Noah Wyle), is sent to prison for contempt of court. Critics will carp about Truth's adaptation/conflation of the Judith Miller/Valerie Plame sagas and the verbosity of Lurie's script, but there's no denying the film's seriousness and the relevance of its issues. And isn't it nice to see someone standing up for the Washington elite for once? J.A.

Sept. 12, 9 p.m., Elgin

Dean Spanley

Toa Fraser (New Zealand/U.K.)

Very rum film, Dean Spanley. Odd. Sam Neill plays a British cleric in 1904 England who, under the influence of Imperial Tokay, an expensive Hungarian vino, undergoes past-life regression. Odd because in the former life that he remembers, he was a dog. Jeremy Northam hosts the drinking sessions, Bryan Brown facilitates the wine and Peter O'Toole, his eyes as clear and blue as a baby doll's and his skin almost as porcelain, plays an emotionally repressed old codger. Well-acted, but definitely a stretch of the credibility muscle. M. Posner

Sept. 6, 1:30 p.m., Roy Thomson; Sept. 7, 12:30 p.m., Winter Garden

The Duchess

Saul Dibb (U.K.)

Oh, but the Brits do it so prettily, putting the costume in the drama and, in this case, Keira Knightley into the late 18th-century role of Georgiana Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire — fashion plate, renowned wit and (for those not up on the family tree) a distant relation of Princess Di. With revolution in the global air and freedom trying to reign, poor "G" struggles in the harness of her marriage to a duke locked into his own brutish notions of chauvinistic duty. Still, those bluebloods aren't exactly shrinking violets — cue the serial infidelities, the ménages à trois, the children born in and out of wedlock. The soap is definitely sudsy here, and the wigs piled high, but these liaisons lack danger and the school for scandal tends to the sophomoric. Really, it's just a bodice-snipper. R.G.

Sept. 7, 6:30 p.m., Roy Thomson; Sept. 8, 2:30 p.m., Elgin

Gomorrah

Matteo Garrone (Italy)

Propulsive, but a bit too busy to hold much emotional traction, Matteo Garrone's film is a fictionalized version of Roberto Saviano's exposé of the Naples-based criminal organization called Camorra, which makes even the Mafia look small-time. The film zips around five storylines showing how crime reaches into every aspect of life in the community. In intertwining vignettes, a boy seeks a grown-up job as a hood; an aging money man finds himself caught in a gang war; a young man apprentices in the waste-disposal business; two cocky teenagers follow their Scarface fantasies to the bitter end; and a fashion designer makes the mistake of selling his service to a knock-off Chinese factory. Garrone makes terrific use of the crumbling housing tenements in the suburbs of Scampia, as he combines a dispassionate, documentary shooting style with naturalistic performances. A heavy-handed text crawl at the end attempts to provide last-minute context to the film's endless parade of violence. L.L.

Sept. 7, 9 p.m., Scotiabank 2; Sept. 11, 9 a.m., Scotiabank 1

Passchendaele

Paul Gross (Canada)

Passchendaele meets passion-dale in this return to the muddy, bloody fields of the First World War. Under the generalship of Paul Gross (director, writer, co-producer and star), the picture follows a shell-shocked soldier home to Calgary, introduces a romance with a pretty nurse played out in prettier vistas, then packs them both back to Europe for the entrenched slaughter of the title battle. The manner is often weak — the plot occasionally creaks, the war footage lacks the kinetic charge of a Spielberg, and some of the acting runs the Dorothy Parker gamut from A to B — but there's definitely redemption in the message, especially at a time when the current Afghan conflict has sparked so much pro patria mori bluster. To his immense credit, Gross never stoops to that. Quite the opposite. His view of war is stark and unsentimental, owing far less to Remembrance Day piety than to Wilfred Owen poetry. R.G.

Sept. 5, 8:45 a.m., Ryerson

Pride and Glory

Gavin O'Connor (U.S.)

From Serpico through Prince of the City and beyond, we've seen this before: Dirty New York cops hunker down to protect themselves and their corrupt laundry, even as a lone crusader takes the high road to truth and justice. Oh, but the road is bumpy, the hand-held camera is jumpy, and at least one of the bad apples is almost risibly rotten — the movie tries to overcome a trite narrative by overheating the violence. What saves the thing from sinking under the weight of its own hyperbole is the quality of the cast — Ed Norton, Colin Farrell, Noah Emmerich and Jon Voight all do yeoman's work keeping a lumpy script afloat. Barely. R.G.

Sept. 9, 6:30 p.m., Roy Thomson; Sept. 12, 2:45 p.m., Ryerson

Restless

Amos Kollek (Israel/Canada/Germany/France/Belgium)

Flawed but always interesting, Restless focuses on Moshe (Moshe Ivgy), a fortysomething, perpetually unshaven hustler, drinking too much, and scratching out a living in Manhattan. Twenty years earlier, he left his wife and newborn son in Israel. Now, he peddles knock-off jewellery and forged autographs of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and occasionally recites poetry in an Israeli-owned nightclub. Meanwhile, his son (played by Israeli heartthrob Ram Danker), with whom he has no relationship, has become a crack sniper in the Israeli army. Kollek is the son of the late Teddy Kollek, a founder of the modern Israeli state and for years the mayor of Jerusalem. His strained relationship with his father is the autobiographical impetus for the film, which explores the difficult issues of identity and exile. M. Posner

Sept. 9, 5:15 p.m., AMC 7; Sept. 11, 6:15 p.m., Scotiabank 3; Sept. 13, 1:45 p.m., Cumberland 1

RocknRolla

Guy Ritchie (U.K.)

Okay, tough guy. Bring it on: the blistering bursts of rock music, the lad attitude, the sharp suits, cliché upon cliché about what makes a bloke a bloke, and all the trappings of the rich and dangerous in this tale of dubious London real-estate deals, gangland violence and cheeky humour. Most of us can take what has become your stock in trade, Ritchie, shake it off and come back for more. A filmic slap and tickle, innit? But does that mean you own us with all this style over real, compelling substance? Think again, mate. G.D.

Sept. 5, 11:45 a.m., Ryerson; Sept. 13, 2:45 p.m., Ryerson

Séraphine

Martin Provost (France/Belgium)

Director Martin Provost capably leads his audience through an engaging exploration of a painter's labyrinthine mind, allowing her legacy to take a back seat to her remarkable character. By far the strongest performance is Séraphine de Senlis (Yolande Moreau), an eccentric French servant who attains prominence as a painter in the "naive" or "modern primitive" school. Moreau deftly dances between Séraphine's pragmatic approach to her menial tasks and her wonderment at the natural beauty and divinity that inspires her. Provost cleverly crafts the Spartan, war-time setting that housed Séraphine's rise, but his exclusively provincial focus leaves the wider impact of her art obscure. The film's allure lies in its alternately charming and intense look at the fine line that sometimes separates creative genius and destructive madness, rather than the history of Séraphine herself. J.B.

Sept. 7, 8:45 p.m., Scotiabank 1; Sept. 8, 3:30 p.m., Scotiabank 1

Singh is Kinng

Anees Bazmee (India)

Every Bollywood producer prays for the audience to troop out of theatres uttering the mantra "paisa vasool" (money's worth). Producer Vipul Shah has hit the bull's eye with Singh is Kinng — a total paisa vasool for actor Akshay Kumar's fans, whose numbers outside India are large and growing. Perhaps that explains why Singh is Kinng has a gala slot. The film — an unapologetic no-brainer that has nonetheless found its audience — unabashedly showcases Kumar as a cross between Mr. Bean and Rambo. It's not just the Singhs (Sikhs in this context) who are spilling into theatres to watch Akshay as Happy Singh travel from his Punjab village to Australia to bring home a bunch of his Sikh brethren (who have coalesced into a mafia-type gang). Plot and storyline take a backseat as Happy sets about shepherding the wayward onto the reform path. But before he lands Down Under, he has to travel to Egypt (ostensibly due to a boarding pass mix-up), so he can meet the female lead, Katrina Kaif. As Happy accomplishes his task and wins over his love, he often makes an idiot of himself, but charms the audience completely. V.R.

Sept. 7, 1:30 p.m., Roy Thomson

A Year Ago in Winter

Caroline Link (Germany)

Link's last film, Nowhere in Africa, got the gala treatment at TIFF 2002 and went on to win the Oscar for best foreign film. Doubtless hopes are high for a repeat performance courtesy of Link's latest, an angsty family drama set in contemporary Germany for which Link also provided the screenplay. Certainly A Year Ago in Winter is beautiful to look at, its cast uniformly excellent and Link's dialogue pretty much pitch perfect. The film's focal point is Lilli (Karoline Herfurth), the 21-year-old dance-school daughter of a driven, highly successful Munich family trying to deal with the hurt, guilt and resentment resulting from her younger brother's suicide a year before. Unfortunately, there's nothing very new here — it's a Deutschland Ordinary People — and the ending, underpinned by Peter Gabriel's Signal to Noise, is too neat and tidy. J.A.

Sept. 9, 9:30 p.m., Roy Thomson; Sept. 10, 12 p.m., Ryerson

Who Do You Love

Jerry Zaks (U.S.)

Who do I love, you're asking me? I love David Oyelowo, the magnetic supporting actor who portrays the great Muddy Waters in Jerry Zaks's musical biopic of Chess Records honcho Leonard Chess, a driven promoter of Chicago blues in the 1950s, the era in which this film is set. I also have a cinema-crush on another supporter, Chi McBride, who's likable as the bass-playing big-man, Willie Dixon. The lead character of Chess (played intensely by Alessandro Nivola) is less interesting, which makes this story of the bluesy birth of rock 'n' roll only half-satisfying. B.W.

Sept. 11, 9:30 p.m., Roy Thomson; Sept. 12, 9 a.m., Scotiabank 4; Sept. 13, 11:45 a.m., Varsity 8

The Lucky Ones

Neil Burger (U.S.)

Nursing different wounds, three U.S. soldiers return from Iraq, hop aboard a rented minivan and hit the open highway, whereupon Coming Home turns into a rollicking road movie. A comedy? Maybe, but the laughs are typically forced. A drama? Perhaps, but the emotions are always contrived.

Understandably confused, the principal cast (Tim Robbins, Rachel McAdams, Michael Pena) don't know quite how to play it, and settle for getting bumped along by the plot's picaresque journey across the American heartland. En route, the clichés of the returning-vet genre — the spouses who leave, the civilians who misunderstand, the nightmares that haunt — get overlaid onto the parallel clichés of the road flick — bar brawls, wacky encounters, moments of epiphany. Then the whole thing gets worked for light whimsy and shallow laughs. If this is meant to look fresh, while still being sensitive, it doesn't and it isn't. R.G.

Sept. 10, 6:30 p.m., Roy Thomson; Sept. 11, 11 a.m., Elgin

Heaven on Earth

Deepa Mehta (Canada)

Deepa Mehta's drama is about an Indian bride, Chand (Preity Zinta), sent to Canada for an arranged marriage to an abusive mama's boy in an overcrowded house in Brampton, Ont. The first half is an intriguing depiction of transplanted immigrant culture. Then it takes an odd, awkward turn. In the laundry where Chand is sent to work, a Jamaican-Canadian woman takes an interest in her and provides her with a magical root that will purportedly make her abusive husband more loving. Instead, the introduction of magic turns the movie from a realistic drama into a disjointed fantasy, which hovers somewhere between magic realism and a portrait of mental illness. The film occasionally goes from colour to black and white, but there appears to be little logic, internal or external, to the sequence of events that unfolds. L.L.

Sept. 6, 6 p.m., Elgin; Sept. 8, 3 p.m., AMC 7

Edison & Leo

Neil Burns (Canada)

A chaotic tale made with stop-motion animation involving a pseudo-19th-century, megalomaniac inventor (with Wolverine hair and a hardy patter) who gets into all manner of self-made trouble. Stolen artifacts, bloody mutilation, coarse sexual inferences, a kind of stereotypical version of indigenous beliefs, lightning rods, an electrified boy: They all zip by in an unlovable frenzy. The film tries hard to aim for the high bar of Canadian animation inventiveness, and perhaps it serves as a step in that inventive process. But with its unrelenting darkness and unfunny violence, it's hard to know what kind of audience this film is aimed at. G.D.

Sept. 4, 7:45 p.m., Varsity 8; Sept. 6, 1:15 p.m., AMC 3.

Derrière moi (Behind Me)

Rafaël Ouellet (Canada)

Set mainly in a small lakeside town somewhere deep in Quebec, this second feature from director Rafaël Ouellet (Le Cèdre penché) painstakingly delineates the unlikely friendship between a 14-year-old innocent and an older party girl from Montreal. One seems ready to explore the adult world; the other is inexplicably looking for fun in this isolated place. With scant dialogue but oodles of atmosphere, the lethargically paced Derrière moi perfectly captures provincial teenage boredom before it suddenly replaces the intriguingly improbable with the downright sordid in an infuriating surprise ending. It features highly convincing performances from Charlotte Legault as the good girl and Carina Caputo as the bad one. K.T.

Sept. 5, 9 p.m., Varsity 3; Sept. 7, 12:30 p.m., AMC 4.

Eden Log

Franck Vestiel (France)

In this weird and ever-menacing French sci-fi flick, our hero awakes to find himself struggling in some dark, drippy and dirty subterranean place. The welcoming committee features video hostesses promising him entry to the earthly paradise he deserves, and unseen beasts snarling viciously around every corner. Apparently, he's lost his memory, so has no better idea than we do where he might be. Gradually, a metaphor emerges: This is the underground plant where workers produce, from the roots of a giant tree, the energy that allows the privileged to continue living at the surface, but both the drones and nature are in revolt. It's a clever concept, and first-time director Vestiel proves himself a master of atmosphere, but not of drama. It's hard to care what happens to characters when you can barely distinguish one from another in the gloom. K.T.

Sept. 11, 11:59 p.m., Ryerson; Sept. 13, 3:45 p.m., Varsity 3

Je veux voir (I Want to See)

Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige (France/Lebanon)

If celebrities are this era's royalty, perhaps it is only appropriate they be toured to war zones to bear witness and provide empathy. How else to explain this oddly unaffecting documentary that follows the French film star Catherine Deneuve as she spends a day driving from Beirut to southern Lebanon in the aftermath of the 2006 Israeli bombardment because she says "I want to see." Although her motivation is fabricated, some of the dialogue is scripted and her companion, identified only as Rabih, is the Lebanese actor Rabih Mroue, the film avoids all the trumped-up sentiment of the reality genre. It doesn't, however, offer much in its place. The largely unflappable and always gracious Deneuve experiences a moment of tension when Rabih unwittingly starts down a road the film crew believe may be mined, but mainly the film gives both her and its viewers a prolonged encounter with rubble in various forms without ever introducing them to any of the million people who were displaced from those bombed buildings. K.T.

Sept. 7, 6:45 p.m., AMC 3; Sept. 10, 6:45 p.m., Varsity 7; Sept. 11, 2 p.m., AMC 3.

One Week

Michael McGowan (Canada)

Diagnosed with aggressive cancer, Ben Tyler (Joshua Jackson) decides to leave his fiancée (Liane Balaban) for a cross-country motorcycle trip, as he visits kitsch landmarks between Ontario and British Columbia. Or, perhaps he was diagnosed with terminal cuteness. In Michael McGowan's alarmingly life-affirming road movie, Ben's journey is accompanied throughout by an omnipresent voice-over narration (Campbell Scott), who informs us of Ben's thoughts and occasionally digresses into accounts of the lives of the people Ben has touched. Pop songs and travelogue montages of Canadian scenery abound between Ben's cellphone dialogue with his exasperated fiancée. The performances from Jackson and Balaban are wry enough to keep the drama from becoming insufferable but it's touch and go. Unsurprisingly, terminal illness plus whimsy does not actually add up to insight. L.L.

Sept. 8, 9:30 p.m., Roy Thomson Hall; Sept. 10, 3:15 p.m., AMC 7.

Real Time

Randall Cole (Canada)

If you like claustrophobia, you may like this low-budget effort from director Randall Cole. Most of what passes for the action takes place inside a car, where a mob hit man (Randy Quaid) is giving a young, debt-stiffing, gambling layabout (Jay Baruchel) his last 90 minutes of life. The plot is forced, the dialogue not credible and the contrived ending telegraphed a few light-years in advance. Drearily reminiscent of bad Canadian films of three decades ago. M.P.

Sept. 7, 6:30 p.m., Scotiabank 3; Sept. 8, 12:45 p.m., Scotiabank 4.