Treading water in Toronto - Part one

If you've ever been weighted down and thrown into a pool, then you have a pretty good idea what it's like to attend a major film festival at more than a casual level. Things you ordinarily wouldn't dream of living without (food, sleep, proper hygiene) are cast aside without a second thought, just so you can catch that Croatian picture your sister's boyfriend's neighbor said he heard was good.

Instead of making you wonder, "Which movies do I want to see?" the 26th Toronto International Film Festival (with, literally, hundreds of feature-length films and shorts) will instead force you to decide, "Which movies can't I afford to miss?" This year, we're breaking up its coverage into two halves, which means that as you read this, there could still be time to cross the border and take in a film or two. For more information, check out the festival's site (www.bell.ca/filmfest).

Day one (Ethan Hawke day)

Ethan was in two films today --- the big-budget, action-heavy Training Day (opens 9/21) with Denzel Washington, and the decidedly lower-profile Tape (11/2, limited), which pitted the star in an all-talk, no-action battle with his real-life wife (Uma Thurman), his Dead Poet's Society co-star (Robert Sean Leonard) and his Before Sunrise director (Richard Linklater). It's about a trio of 28-year-olds who get together to reminisce about the good old days of high school...like that time Amy (Thurman) dumped Vincent (Hawke) and then his best friend (Leonard) got her drunk and date-raped her (and all this time I've been avoiding my high school reunions). In Training Day, Hawke plays an eager cop with aspirations of running his own department within a few years. He jumps on what could likely be the fast track to that dream by landing a gig with one of the LAPD's best undercover units, which happens to be lead by a charismatic lunatic who believes himself to be above the law (Washington, in a juicy and extremely rare turn as a bad guy). Number(s) of the Day: 4 (the number of minutes into the festival's first film it took for a cell phone to ring and its owner to answer it without attempting to leave the theatre) and 3 (the number of times I kicked the back of his seat before he actually got up).

Day two (Fire and water day)

The hysterical Waterboys would probably be bigger than Billy Elliot was…if it wasn't for the fact it's in Japanese instead of English. The pupils at an all-boys prep school go gaga for a hot new swimming coach, so it's no surprise when there's a huge turnout for the first day of lessons. But when Coach Cutie informs the horny young men she's fielding a synchronized swimming team, all but the school's five biggest social rejects vanish in a cloud of cartoonish dust. Of course, they turn out to put on quite a good show in what most consider to be a girly event (just like Elliot's ballet dancing). Other films featuring precocious kids included Hearts In Atlantis (9/28), an adaptation of Stephen King's novel directed by the incredibly talented Scott Hicks (Shine, Snow Falling On Cedars).  Atlantis blends elements from King's The Green Mile and Stand By Me and focuses on the relationship between a boy (Anton Yelchin) and a man who may have the ability to predict the future (Anthony Hopkins). Also worth noting is Italian For Beginners (1/18, limited) a light romantic comedy filmed using the standards set by the Dogme 95 manifesto. In Beginners, a bunch of clueless people look for love (and the knowledge of a second language) in Copenhagen. NOTD: 27 (the number of minutes I got to see of The Business of Strangers (12/7, limited), a female twist on In the Company of Men, before a fire alarm went off and the theatre had to be evacuated).

Day three (Existentialism day)

Fate and the meaning of life were the stars of today's films, which included Richard Linklater's (yes, him again) stellar and cutting-edge Waking Life (10/19, limited), the first animated feature to be shot on digital video. First, Linklater filmed his story like any other movie, and then animators painstakingly painted (with the help of the computer) over each frame. The result looks like a paint-by-number nightmare come to life. With the dazzling animated visuals, it barely matters what the story is about here, but just in case you were wondering, it shows a college graduate searching for answers, and, in a series of vignettes that run from humorous to pretentious, everyone (and I mean everyone) tries to offer their own opinion on the subject. The afterlife is a major player in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse, a modern take on the ghost story that made my feet get cold and prickly a few times, even if it did seem a little too long. Jill Sprecher's Thirteen Conversations About One Thing covers similar ground as Magnolia, but manages to do it in about half the time. Sprecher tosses a fantastic cast (including Matthew McConaughey, Alan Arkin and John Turturro) into a tale where destiny causes their stories to collide with one another. And Mulholland Drive (10/12, limited) may have been about fate and/or the meaning of life, but I've yet to run into anyone who can explain what it was about. Oh, I should mention Drive was directed by David Lynch. NOTD: One (the number of people who fainted during Thirteen Conversations and were revived by McConaughey --- we're not joking around with the existential stuff here).

Day four (Women are crazy day)

Norwegian director Erik Skjoldbærg dazzled the Festival in 1997 with the gripping Insomnia (which is being remade by Memento's Christopher Nolan), but his latest is a real dud. Based on Elizabeth Wurtzel's best-selling memoir, Prozac Nation tells the story of a needy, whiny, self-centered Ivy League bitch (Christina Ricci) who turns everybody she knows into a miserable wreck like herself. And then she goes on Prozac and gets a book deal, so, like, who cares what anyone else thinks? The episode of The Simpsons where Bart gets hooked on Focusin was a more damning indictment of our nation's dependency on hastily prescribed drugs. Kira's Reason --- A Love Story, the Festival's second Dogme 95 entry from Denmark, is about a 30-year-old mother of two who is just flat-out mad (not angry, but kooky). Kira (Stine Stengrade) is beautiful, lives in a gorgeous house with her loving husband and two cute sons, but none of that matters much when you're several donuts short of a dozen. The film shows what Kira's life is like when she gets out of the nuthouse. As if that wasn't enough, there were films that showed women sleeping with their daughter's boyfriend (in Life as a House, 10/26, limited) and double-crossing their husband's gold heist (in, uh, David Mamet's Heist, 10/19).  NOTD: 8 (number of bowls of soup consumed to date).

Day five (Good and evil day)

Click here to read part two.