For people afraid of being nabbed in a federal gambling sting for participating in an office NCAA Basketball Tournament pool, the Cleveland International Film Festival offered delightful sanctuary. Sure, there are still tiny slips of paper being exchanged in a dark room with a sticky floor, but instead of markers and bookies, these multi-colored notes are used for festival viewers to rate features in competition for the Roxanne T. Mueller Audience Award (which went to a film I didn’t see).

Here's a rundown of the feature-length films I saw in Cleveland. I won't get into any shorts (including the very funny Alan Ball-penned The M Word), stuff I’ve already reviewed (Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself) or the ridiculously entertaining World's Best Commercials program (which included offerings from Wes Anderson, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, the Hughes brothers and Lance Accord):

1: The subject of this documentary is the football program at De La Salle High School in Concord, California. DLS, you see, carries a 125-game winning streak when 1 opens (and in case you think the streak is a fluke, they won 44 in a row before that one loss 11 years ago). I don't want to ruin the film for you, but they don't lose at any point during the 89-minute running time. They haven't lost since, either. So you're probably wondering, "Where's the conflict?" Well, there really isn't any. We see DLS steamroll through their 2002 season, including wins at a prestigious Hawaiian tournament and an all-Cali battle against the second-ranked Long Beach Poly, a school that has placed more graduates in the NFL than any other. And that's where you learn the cool thing about DLS (and, to a lesser extent, 1): Their program emphasizes the team over individual efforts, which explains why you don't see any interviews with DLS alum-turned-NFL stars. A must-see for football fans, and a lukewarm recommendation for everyone else.

4th Floor: The last place I expect to find a lot of laughs are movies about cancer patients.  But Antonio Mercero's latest offering provided the most consistent level of laughs this side of the much broader Kops (see below). The titular 4th floor is the "traumatology" unit of a hospital that serves as a temporary home to kids who are initially admitted with bone fractures but find much darker things lurking in their marrow.  The three main characters – or "baldies," as the staff calls them – are all confined to post-amputee wheelchairs, which you think would limit the amount of mischief they'd be able to create.  It does not, which makes Floor less about an attempt to create a sympathetic bond with the audience and more of a film about regular kids with some slightly irregular problems (hospital food, circle jerks, finding a center for their wheelchair basketball tournament).  Yeah, it's kind of light, but if you're looking for a heavy flick about cancer patients, then you're one sick ticket.

The Big Empty: There are certain things you expect from a movie like Empty, the debut from writer-director (and Rochester native!) Steve Anderson. They 're the same things you'd expect from, say, U-Turn or Red Rock West: An innocent white dude stuck in a dusty hick town that contains little other than a diner and a bar, great jukebox music, and a completely psychotic redneck local who thinks the aforementioned white dude is "making eyes" at his girl. You get it all in Empty, along with an ending that nobody in their right mind should see coming. The white dude is Jon Favreau, a struggling actor who unwisely accepts a job delivering a mysterious suitcase to The Middle of Nowhere for enough money to wipe out his credit card debt (he's also haunted, a la Swingers' Mike Peters, by his lack of answering machine messages). The typical assortment of odd characters he encounters include Daryl Hannah, Rachael Leigh Cook, Bud Cort and Adam Beach. Nice first film, with a really impressive cast, but full of that "been there, done that" feeling. Until the bizarre finale, anyway.

Book of Love: The Book of Love (the figurative one) says three things: Guys love Frances O'Connor; girls love guys with a swimmer's body; and guys love girls who wear Catholic school uniforms. At least two of those rules come into play in this odd drama that either didn't have a point or just did a miserable job trying to get that point across to me. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy it, though. Love is upsetting and bleak; a meditative exercise in ice cream, marital infidelity, DisneyWorld, statutory rape, and the Khmer Rouge. That's a lot to swallow, especially for something on the screen for less than an hour and a half. Simon Baker plays a history teacher at an all-girl Catholic school. His wife, Elaine (O'Connor), is an ex-singer who works out of their home as an event planner. Gregory Smith is the 15-year-old swimmer who serves them ice cream, and then a whole lot more. This time, his character's sexual stamina is much stronger than it was on Everwood, and that's good. Not so good, however, is Baker's underwear, which might be the worst in the history of cinema.

Buddy: Kristoffer (Nicolia Cleve Broch) videotapes every crazy thing he and his two pals – Geir (Aksel Hennie) and Stig Inge (Anders Baasmo Kristiansen) – do. When their latest stunt almost gets them nicked by the authorities, Kristoffer accidentally drops a couple of his tapes as he cheeses it. The tapes make their way to Norway's TV2, and before you know it, Kristoffer and his friends have their own "Jackass with a heart" reality show. But with great popularity comes great responsibility. Kristoffer is able to woo his ex-girlfriend (Janne Formoe) back but has growing feelings for his new roommate Henriette (Pia Tjelta). He also starts to alienate his friends, but you all know he'll come around in the last reel. I'm amazed at how sympathetic Kristoffer remained despite earning mad money, popularity and his pick of two really pretty women. It's practically enough to offset the rest of Buddy's clichés. Light entertainment, and a runner-up for the festival’s Audience Award.

Cuba Libre: Remember Harvey Keitel's accent in The Last Temptation of Christ?  Where he was all, like, "Yo, Jesus"?  You'll get more of the same grand inflection in Libre, where Keitel plays the well-connected Cuban grandfather to the film's protagonist - an eight-year-old kid referred to in the credits as "the Boy."  The Boy (Andhy Méndez) is presumably a fill-in for writer-director Juan Gerard in the true story about the effect that the one-year, pre-Cuban revolution blackout had on his family.  I guess you can't pick apart a story that actually happened, but this sure reminded me a lot of Cinema Paradiso...only much blander.  Libre, which shouldn't at all be confused with a screen adaptation of Elmore Leonard's book, does offer a refreshing change in the form of a Spiritual Cracker (Iben Hjejle) who changes the lives of people around her...you know, instead of the Mystical Negro we've been getting over the last few years.

Dandelion: The festival's big opening night film, fresh from a successful trip to Sundance, is worth catching just for the sun-drenched photography from American Cinematographer of the Moment Tim Orr (All the Real Girls), who thrives on shooting golden wheat fields, rusted-out cars and dusty, unpaved roads. But the story ain't bad, either. Idaho teen Mason Mullich (Vincent Kartheiser) has friends into drugs and petty crime (Blake Heron and Shawn Reeves) and incommunicative parents who give "dysfunctional" a whole new meaning (Arliss Howard and Mare Winningham). But when Mason meets The New Girl in Town-slash-Wounded Bird (Taryn Manning), things start taking some unusual turns. Strong debut from writer-director Mark Milgard, who is aided by co-writer Robb Williamson's surreal score (and brilliant use of Sparklehorse's "It's a Wonderful Life"). I was, however, mildly distracted during intimate scenes between the pretty Kartheiser and the mannish Manning. It was hard to tell who the girl was.

Deep Breath: The major draw of this Iranian offering from Parviz Shabazi is actor Said Amini, who resembles a less mole-like but much more handsome Tom Cruise.  Amini plays Kamran, one of two university students who decide to go on a crime spree which involves knocking sideview mirrors off of parked cars, smoking on buses, and all sorts of other anti-social behavior (hey, it's Tehran – give 'em a break).  But Breath starts with a pair of bodies being pulled out of the water, which means things ain't going to go well for Kamran and his pal Mansur (Mansur Shabazi).  We just don't know how they're going to end up in the drink.  And after a while, we won't even be sure it's them that fill the watery grave.  Interesting tale that was probably supposed to have a much more profound meaning than what I culled from it. Maybe it's some kind of rant against Iranian politics.  I dunno.

Dirty Work: Taking a page (okay, maybe several dozen pages) from Errol Morris's Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, this winning but nauseatingly upsetting documentary follows three people whose hands you would never, ever want to shake. One collects bull semen. Another pumps and cleans septic systems. The third is an undertaker/restorative artist. Each tell fun, disgusting stories about their job, with the septic guy taking the grand prize for his ability to track the history of modern sexuality based on the number of used condoms he sucks into the back of his truck (not to mention his startling revelation that diet pills don't dissolve). Without Morris's eye and Robert Richardson's photography, Work simply pales in comparison to Control, though. Not for the faint of heart.

Distant Lights: German filmmaker Hans-Christian Schmid makes like old-school Altman with this interweaving but chronological story involving about two dozen characters in the Polish border town of Slubice, which is one short trip over the Oder River to Germany.  Lights' five stories are all deeply rooted in the desire for money, even though they might not seem so on the surface.  One involves a truckload of Ukrainian immigrants who have been promised safe passage to Frankfurt but have instead been duped and dumped in Slubice.  A perpetually sweaty mattress salesman busts his hump but can't manage to keep himself out of the red.  A family of cigarette smugglers is more concerned with income than they are blood relations.  A destitute cab driver tries his hand in the smuggling business to buy a communion dress for his daughter.  And a young architect meets an ex-lover during the pitch for his first big project, only to be surprised by the trajectory of her career.  I'm still baffled as to how Schmid managed to cram this all into 105 minutes, let alone do it as well as he did.  Really good stuff.

Farmingville: The Special Jury Prize winner from Sundance pits Latin American illegals against the residents of Farmingville, Long Island. The results, as you might expect, are fairly explosive, including but not limited to race-motivated attacks, arson, gunfire and tortillas made out of shit (no joke). The film focuses mostly on the controversy surrounding the attempts to build a "hiring site" – with taxpayer money, of course – that will centralize the day laborers and the people who hire them for ridiculously low wages. It's a blast to watch the increasingly delusional loudmouth hausfraus wrap themselves in a big pre-9/11 flag while they complain about being unable to let their kids play outside. Why can't they go outside? Who frigging knows. I know I already made the comparison to the Harold Moss-animated segment from Bowling for Columbine in my Dogville review, but the comparison fits here, too: Us crackers are a bunch of stupid 'fraidy cats.

Goldfish Memory: I'm all for movies about young, outrageously attractive Dubliners (like Fiona O'Shaughnessy) having sex with each other, but Memory left me feeling as empty as a typical episode of High School Reunion. What is supposed to make Memory special, I guess, is the partner-swapping often involves "less traditional" pairings (boy-boy and girl-girl). And I've got no problem with that. What bugs me, however, is a movie that is steeped in the act of sex yet shows less skin than the 2004 Taliban Fashion Show. The LA Outfest Audience Award winner plays like an unwanted sibling to the far more entertaining (and skin-laden) The Other Side of the Bed. The voiceover in Memory's first scene explains the title, which theorizes that goldfish have only a three-second memory. I was going to make a joke here, but I can't remember what I was talking about.

In the Realms of the Unreal: If you were intrigued by Hal Hartley's Henry Fool and its idea that an introverted garbageman could become one of the world's most celebrated writers, you'll get a big kick out of Jessica Yu's documentary about Henry Darger. A quiet Catholic school janitor with no close friends, Darger died in 1973 only to leave behind an astounding collection of creativity, including his own autobiography, a 150,000-page Lord of the Rings-ish fantasy epic, and spine-tingling art painted on butcher paper. Sure, some of Darger's stuff is a little creepy, like his little girl infatuation, but Yu – best known for joking that her dress cost more than her film did when she accepted the 1997 Oscar for Best Documentary Short – deconstructs Darger's life with an amazing aptitude that doesn't come close to overstaying its welcome. The Sundance entry is co-narrated by Dakota Fanning (Darger's novel) and Larry Pine (Darger's autobiography), and animators bring some of the artist's watercolors to life, as well.

Justice: Comic book writer Drew (Erik Palladino) is still grieving after the 9/11 attacks took the life of one of his closest friends. When he pitches an idea for a superhero based on a regular working stiff (like the cops and firefighters who died in that tragic event), his boss and co-workers practically laugh him into New Jersey. Drew is eventually given a week to come up with the first issue, and he scrambles to find someone worthy of honoring in his new book. He settles on a black substitute teacher from Cleveland (Michael Jai White), and that becomes one arm of a triptych of stories that reminded me a little of The Station Agent, but only because one of them involves a guy operating a sandwich cart. I dig comic books, so Justice was probably embraced more closely by me than a typical viewer. That said, its sound was awful, shuffling between being overly ambient and flat-out non-existent. I did, however, really like Catherine Kellner as a Village Voice reporter who conjured up memories of a younger, blonder Holly Hunter.

Kops: Josef Fares is the brains behind one of the 2002 festival's brightest pictures – the criminally underseen Lukas Moodysson-produced but vaguely Jim Jarmusch-vibed Jalla! Jalla!.  Fares's latest is the much broader and much sillier Kops, a comedy about a bumfuck backwoods Swedish police department that, upon learning they're about to be closed down because of inactivity, decides to create their own crime spree in an attempt to justify their existence.  The two main characters are the same leads from Jalla! – one is the writer-director's older brother (Fares Fares – their dad, Jan, also appears in both flicks), and the other (Torkel Petersson) looks so much like my cousin's fiancé, it almost became a distraction.  Petersson is hysterical as the cop obsessed with American crime films...and knitting. Kops occasionally strays into areas we've seen covered in Supertroopers (it's especially noticeable because The Blonde Love Interest in each picture look really similar), but it's a far better and much more consistently funny film. A runner-up for the Audience Award.

Learning to Lie: X-Filme, The German production house that brought us Tom Tykwer and Goodbye, Lenin!, is back with a rambly tale, based on Frank Goosen's novel, about how the demolition of the Berlin Wall affected the life of the commitmentphobic protagonist, Helmut (Fabian Busch). Lie is one of those films that starts at the end and then shows us the entire story in one big flashback before returning to the first scene for the big finale. In between, we see Helmut age from 16 to 32 and grow from a sheltered kid with overly strict parents to a poon-obsessed schmo who never shows emotion and lives by the motto, "Fuck, live and lie." So you've got a problem in an unlikable lead, right off the bat. Luckily, director Hendrik Handloegten (who penned Lenin!) keeps things interesting enough to prevent viewers from heading for zee hills. It also helps that Busch adds charisma to a role that doesn't really require much. Call this one spotty.

Madness and Genius: Ryan Eslinger spent $20,000 to make this debut, in which he writes, directs, edits, scores and provides the sound for a painfully cold but utterly enjoyable black-and-white trip into the underbelly of college politics. Jordan (David James Hayward) is a student with a photographic memory who can remember everything he's been taught but lacks the knowledge to actually apply it. He pays Nigel (David Williams), a classmate with health problems, to do his homework and tries to elicit help from a potentially senile physics professor (a very good Tom Noonan) who long ago created a device that could eradicate the world of all illness but is too scared of its consequences. Genius is a dark film, though I'm not sure it was supposed to be as dark as it was when I screened it (it appeared to be a projection of a videotape – not film). Eslinger's music ranged from cool, NIN-sounding stuff to serious melodrama. His writing and his direction, on the other hand, left me eagerly waiting to see what he'll be able to do with a bigger budget.

Mango Kiss: The cleverest thing about Sascha Rice's Kiss are the chapter introductions, which are displayed via tattoos on curvy body parts.  The rest, on the other hand, I could have done without.  Kiss is about a pair of platonic friends who decide to move in together and, eventually, form a strange role-playing relationship in which Lou (Michelle Wolff) becomes "the daddy" and Sassafras (Danièle Ferraro) becomes "the princess." Smooth sailing ahead, until Daddy decides to let Princess "have a son" in the form of punk bassist named Mickey (Shannon Rossiter).  Then the jealousy starts. Whooda thunkit?  Light, silly and not worth the time.

My Baby: Ricardo (Nuno Melo) is the creative force behind the hit Portuguese reality-based television show called Playing With Fire.  Shortly after leaving the stage to accept a People's Choice-type award, he gets a message from his daughter Leonor stating that he'll never see her again if Ricardo doesn't immediately come home for her birthday.  But he doesn't, opting instead to bed a hot reporter.  When Ricardo does make it home, Leonor is gone.  Ricardo panics and when the story hits the media, the opportunistic granddaughter of Ricardo's housekeeper decides to pretend to be Leonor.  I mean, since Ricardo never spent much time at home, he shouldn't be able to recognize his own kid, right?  Whatever.  Silly premise that looked like it was going into a darker direction, but then pulled itself back and became a time-waster.  Also, worst subtitles ever.

One Point O: If Philip K. Dick was reading Kafka, got freaked out and wrote The Matrix, which was then directed by Stanley Kubrick, you might end up with something like this Sundance drama in which an agoraphobic computer programmer named Simon (co-producer Jeremy Sisto) drinks a lot of milk and starts to go slightly mad when he receives a series of carefully wrapped but ultimately empty boxes delivered to his grimy, poorly lit apartment building. Hey, you'd go off your nut if your only human contact was with a string of wacky neighbors, including the always frightening Udo Kier, whose character has both a hi-tech, self-cleaning couch, and a "son" that isn't anything more than a talking, robotic mannequin's head. Good, fun, dark, Midnight Movie-type fun from first-timers Jeff Renfroe and Marteinne Thorsson.

The Opposite Sex: Jamie's Story: Fans of Extreme Makeover, listen up!  Sound and Fury director Josh Aronson is back with a pair of incredibly enlightening and touching Showtime-produced documentaries about two transgendered subjects.  The first – Jamie's Story – is about the male-to-female transition of a Grand Rapids house framer who went from being a burly good ol' boy with a moustache to injecting Internet estrogen to taking a trip to California for "snip time" with a doctor whose last name is Alter (no kidding).  Aronson slowly reveals important facts that make Jamie's decision seem even more surprising...like the fact that he's still married...and has a pre-teen daughter...and hasn't really figured out what to do with either of them once the surgery is completed.  I bought it all, and that was before the haunting shot of Jamie looking at himself in the mirror the night before the operation, as if he was saying goodbye to his entire identity.  Wow.

The Opposite Sex: Rene's Story: The second half of Josh Aronson's impressive Showtime-produced series focuses on Rene, a deeply religious Anaheim truck driver with a wife, two kids, a voice like Ross Perot...and indoor plumbing. Unlike Jamie's story, which was about a man becoming a woman, Rene's has been living as a man since high school and has managed to fool everyone, including wife Wuna, who didn't know her husband was penis-less until two years into their marriage (via something he calls "dildo deception"). Shortly after Aronson's cameras arrive, Rene and Wuna are kicked out of their church once they catch wind of his upcoming surgery.  It isn't until then that the shell-shocked Wuna really starts to wonder what she's gotten herself into (honestly, Wuna's Story would have been an even better doc) as Rene plows forward regardless of her feelings.  His operating room options include a clitoral enlargement that would give him a Hedwig-sized erection; or a much bigger slab of ugly man-gristle that only works with a pump (a/k/a Frankencock).  Rene's Story is the stronger of Aronson's two docs because it offers way more drama, but also way more heartbreak once he told the festival audience what happened after his crew packed up and left. A runner-up for the Audience Award.

Parental Instinct: In just 74 minutes, you get to watch the entire process involved in having a baby. But this isn't like that movie they make you watch in fifth-grade sex education. The parents here are two men who, after deciding to take the plunge, pick a surrogate mother to father two children – one from each of their sperm. The mom, a witch from Maine, treks down to New York with young son in tow for a fairly intimate insemination procedure (they may as well just have done the deed), and, many months later, we see the finished product introduced into the world via an inflatable swimming pool in the middle of the living room. Since Instinct ends up being mostly about the surrogate's conception troubles, there isn't really anything that separates it from a story about a straight couple trying to have a kid. Still interesting to watch, especially if you're unfamiliar with the whole surrogacy process and question whether or not these babies are conceived out of love, or love of money. A runner-up for the Audience Award.

Perfect Strangers: Did you hear the one about the woman who walks into the bar and gets so drunk, she winds up going home with a complete stranger? That's the initial premise for this Australian drama-turned-thriller-turned-who knows what.  Rachael Blake plays a restaurant chef who goes out looking for man-meat after work. Maybe she gets a little hammered.  Maybe she meets a guy played by Sam Neill.  Maybe he lures her into his boat, where he takes her to a secluded island to make her his bride.  Maybe she gets pissed and stabs him in the chest.  Maybe Strangers is like a cross between Cast Away and Swept Away, carefully flitting between the quality and pretentiousness of them both as it constantly reinvents itself.  Or maybe that was acid cream cheese on my bagel, because I thought this movie was going to be about Balki Bartokomous.

Red Light Go: I always wanted to be a bike messenger but now know I don't have the balls for it. That revelation came fairly quickly into screening this documentary about the bike messenger community in New York City. Sure, their jobs are dangerously harrowing, but it's what the bikers do in their off-hours that makes them borderline sociopaths. Instead of icing their wounds, or silently rocking back and forth in the corner (which is what I'd be doing), they compete in alleycat races in and around Manhattan on certain New York holidays, like Independence Day and Hitler's birthday. The races are the main focus of Go, culminating in the big Halloween race – designed by an imprisoned messenger – which takes riders on a pentagram-shaped course through the busiest parts of the city...during rush hour. Lots of fun, unless you're one of those bike-hating cab drivers.

Sexual Dependency: Half-Bolivian/half-American filmmaker Rodrigo Bellott splits his screen in half to peel back the skin of sexual aggression. Bellott and co-writer Lenelle N. Moise tell five somewhat related stories that play out over two continents, beginning with the date rape of peasant virgin Jessica in Santa Cruz (Bolivia).  Then the Chaos Theory takes over, eventually resulting in those ever-present football player rapists we have here in the States taking somebody else's flower in the parking lot of a college campus.  Ambitious filmmaking, especially from a first-timer from a country that hasn't produced a movie since 1995.  I especially dug when the two screens meshed together to give one briefly whole image, as well as the unexpected twist in the last story.  Can't wait to see Bellott's next feature.

The Story of the Weeping Camel: The idea of a documentary about Gobi Desert farmers is probably the least interesting concept I could possibly dream up. I mean, it's in the middle of nowhere. It's not like Mongolians are known for their wicked senses of humor, or their ability to carry on interesting conversation, which means Weeping Camel is going to be a lot of sand blowing around all over the place. Right? Wrong! Weeping Camel probably affected me more than any other film I've seen in the last 12 months, possibly on account of how unmercilessly it caught me off my guard. It's about a family who owns a bunch of camels. One of the camels is pregnant. The first calf it delivers is perfectly normal. The second doesn't come out easily, and when it does, the mother won't have anything to do with it. The rest of the film is about the family's attempts to get the mother camel to accept her starving and obviously freaked-out baby. It really doesn't get any better than this.

The Stroll: You would have thought Dirty Work would have logged the most walkouts of the festival, but that honor (at least according to what I saw) goes to The Stroll, an enjoyable real-time Russian import that does to the exterior of The Hermitage what Russian Ark did to the interior. It's not all one shot, but until the last scene, you could probably count the number of edits without taking your socks off. The handheld DV photography is very shaky, which is what likely had people staggering to the door, but to me, that just made the proceedings more believable. The story is about Olya (Irina Pegova), a baby-faced beauty built like a brick shithouse who winds up on the receiving end of playful advances from Alyosha (Pavel Barshak). The two hit it off as they walk down crowded St. Petersburg sidewalks, with Alyosha eventually calling his pal Petya (Yevgeni Tsyganov) to meet the unbelievably charismatic Olya. Before long, the two men fight over her as they crash through throngs of people and nearly are hit by passing cars. Dazzling stuff, and the winner of the festival’s Central and Eastern European competition.