The Good

The Brown Bunny – Vincent Gallo’s notorious road-trip flick, which was booed out of Cannes this past May (it was an unfinished print that ran 30 minutes longer than the final version screened here), is a hypnotic story about a motorcycle racer who has thing for women named after flowers. It’s full of dreamy, reflective moments with carefully chosen music and, as advertised, it ends with Gallo (Buffalo ’66) getting an actual blow job from Chloë Sevigny. The thing is, if Bunny was an Abbas Kiarostami film about a dusty Iranian traveling thousands of miles, people would be falling all over themselves to praise it. But that still doesn’t explain the hummer.

interMission – It isn’t often you get to see films that open with a huge movie star (the omnipresent Colin Farrell, in this case) flirting with a girl and then punching her in the face so he can rob her. But that sets the tone for John Crowley’s directorial debut Intermission, which will take you on a journey involving a dozen Irish characters and their various tales of adultery, Cleveland Steamers, stolen steak sauce, impossibly evil bosses and, of course, an attempted bank robbery. A lot of fun, especially the cast, which includes Colm Meaney, Shirley Henderson, 28 Days Later’s Cillian Murphy and cutie-pie Kelly Macdonald.

Nathalie… – Fanny Ardant plays a gynecologist who thinks her husband (Gérard Depardieu) is having an affair. So, like any suspicious wife, she hires Nathalie, a high-end call girl (Emmanuelle Béart), to see how fast and how far her husband will stray. What follows is Nathalie telling Catherine – in full Penthouse Forum style – the details of her numerous encounters with Bernard. I don't know a thing about French law, but tempting a guy with the ridiculously slinky Béart sounds like entrapment to me. A decent import with a nice ending – and you couldn't ask for better acting talent.

Osama – If you’re into watching films that will make you want to go home and kill yourself (and who isn’t, really?), you won’t want to miss this tragic picture, the first to be made in post-Taliban Afghanistan. The story, very similar to the Afghans-working-in-Iran film Baran, is about a young girl who is forced to chop off her hair, ditch her burqa and pretend she’s a boy in order to earn money to feed her family (her male relatives are all dead from the various wars). The girl, who takes on the name Osama, is adorable and was found begging on the street when writer-director Siddiq Barmak cast his film. See it at the High Falls Film Festival this November.

Shattered Glass – What’s this? A biopic that’s actually compelling? Billy Ray’s directorial debut tells the real-life story of Stephen Glass, the young reporter from The New Republic who was caught making up stories in 1998 (way before Jayson Blair made it fashionable again). Hayden Christensen plays the ass-kissing, self-effacing Glass, but the film is stolen by the understated performance of Peter Sarsgaard, who plays the editor that slowly uncovers the clues. Hank Azaria turns up as Glass’s original editor, Michael Kelly, who later died covering Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The Triggerstreet.com Project – Though it's not nearly as well known as Project Greenlight, TriggerStreet.com serves a similar purpose: Giving aspiring filmmakers a chance to show off their talent online in hopes of impressing the right people in Hollywood. Co-founded by two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey, this Project featured the 10 best short films from the over 100,000 uploaded to the potentially groundbreaking site. Some very funny stuff from some very promising minds.

Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself – Italian for Beginners writer-director Lone Scherfig returns to Toronto with this non-Dogme offering (though it was co-written by Dogme mastermind Anders Thomas Jensen) which, despite its title, is a very effective romantic comedy of sorts. The titular Wilbur (Jamie Sives) is perhaps the world's worst nursery school employee and - yes - he has a penchant for attempting suicide at every given opportunity. But Wilbur has undergone a lot of recent changes in his life, including the death of his father, the inheritance of a used bookshop and the beginnings of a crush on his devoted brother's new wife (Shirley Henderson). Only begins to falter at the end, but still one of my top five festival picks.

Zatoichi – Just before this festival started, writer-director-editor-star Takeshi Kitano (inadvertently best known in this country for hosting the hysterically dubbed Spike TV show Most Extreme Elimination Challenge) took home Best Director honors from the Venice fest for his take on the legendary Japanese character Zatoichi, and in Toronto he added the People's Choice Award. Unless you watch the Independent Film Channel on Saturday mornings, you may not be familiar with Zatoichi, a blind, gambling swordsman-slash-masseur who promises to be a hundred times more entertaining than that midget Tom Cruise and his samurai character due in theatres later this year. Kitano's version is more like a Three Stooges feature, only with cross-dressing and a high blood budget.

The Bad

Danny Deckchair – The closing-night gala is one of those broad comedies that plays really well among the tragedies and dramas of big festivals but then gets a tepid response in the harsh light of reality. It's about a directionless Aussie (Rhys Ifans) who ties a bunch of big helium-filled balloons to a deckchair and flies away from his attention-starved girlfriend (Justine Clarke). When he lands in a remote town and falls in love with its lovely meter maid (Miranda Otto), Danny refuses to go back. So light, it could take off on a deckchair of its own.

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead – The idea of re-teaming actor Clive Owen with his Croupier director Mike Hodges had people lined up around the block, but I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead (which is the perfect title for a film festival) is a super-slow revenge tale. I don’t ordinarily mind super-slow revenge tales, so long as the actual revenge part at the end makes up for it…and here it doesn't. Owen is a gangster-turned-mountain man who returns home to find his small-time drug-dealing brother (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) has been brutally raped by Malcolm McDowell. A little like The Limey, only not nearly as good.

The Mediocre

The Boys from County Clare – The Irish equivalent of Danny Deckchair – a slight, occasionally clunky crowd-pleaser about two estranged brothers (Bernard Hill and Colm Meaney) competing against each other in a Ceili band competition. The premise is straight out of Storytelling 101, complete with one member of Meaney's Liverpool crew (Shaun Evans) falling hopelessly and immediately in love with a fiddler from Hill's County Clare band (Andrea Corr). For some reason, however, the whole thing is made palatable thanks to that crazy Irish charm.

Cheeky – Actor David Thewlis’s first experience behind the camera is this unusual tale about an emotionless bookworm (Thewlis) who loses his wife in a fire. Her dying wish was for him to participate in a very weird but immensely popular game show called Cheeky, which combines general trivia knowledge with the ability to outrank your opponents in a showdown. Meanwhile, he’s also trying to re-connect with his son (Johnny Vegas) while simultaneously grieving for his dead wife and dealing with the advances of a Cheeky competitor (Trudie Styler). Entertaining, but ultimately a bit empty.

Grimm – Frenchman François Ozon’s Criminal Lovers was a violent take on Hansel & Gretel, while Dutch filmmaker Alex van Warmerdam’s Grimm opts to tell the beloved tale in a dark yet slapsticky vein. Jacob (Jacob Derwig) and sister Marie (Halina Reijn) are left in the woods by their parents and are forced to fend for themselves in a world of bear traps, evil surgeons and ghost towns. Before you know it, Jacob is covered in spoiled eggnog and windshield wiper fluid, which is actually pretty close to how most of my crazy adventures end, too. Definitely for the more adventurous viewers.

The Man of the Year – Sometimes it pays to do the wrong thing.  At least that’s what Maiquel (Murilo Benicio) learns when he kills a local bad-ass who makes fun of his freshly dyed hair (he lost a soccer bet) in a seedy tavern. Instead of being prosecuted, Maiquel is hailed as a local hero and starts getting women, gifts (including a cute little pig) and, eventually, more invitations to off area criminals. But that’s when his life starts going downhill, starting with the roasting of that cute little pig. A very colorful but very violent film…just how I like ‘em.

Nicotina – Remember that post-Pulp Fiction glut of ultra-violent dark comedies with a dozen characters and fractured storytelling? Well, that trend is still going strong in plenty of other countries. This Mexican entry from Alfonso Cuarón's former assistant director is about a nerdy hacker named Lolo (Y tu mamá también's Diego Luna) who is hired to provide a CD containing certain access information to two halfwit thieves. But Lolo is also obsessed with his pretty neighbor (Marta Beláustegui), who learns he's been recording her every movement via a pair of tiny hidden cameras stashed in her apartment. She freaks out and trashes Lolo's place, and he grabs the wrong CD to give the bumbling burglars. Hilarity ensues.

Prey for Rock & Roll – Gina Gershon is the 40-year-old leader of a punk band called Clamdandy, who play for peanuts in tiny LA clubs. She's thinking of calling it quits, as it appears her dreams of stardom will forever go unrealized. Will a potential gig opening for X make her stick around? Will she have to ditch her girlfriend to fulfill her lifelong goal? Will lingering memories of childhood abuse push her over the edge? Will she fall in love with her drummer's older brother (Marc Blucas) who was just released from prison? Prey loses its train of thought in its second act, but that's mostly for the better as the picture instead concentrates on being reflective and touching instead of formulaic. Drea de Matteo, Lori Petty and Gilmore Girls' Shelly Cole co-star as the bandmates of Gershon (who does all of her own singing).

PTU – Johnnie To's latest is set during one wacky Hong Kong evening in which a seedy cop named Lo (Lam Suet) loses his gun after a slipping on a banana peel in an alley. The rest of the film, which involves characters with names like Ponytail, Eye Ball and Bald Head, is all about Lo's underhanded attempts to recover his weapon before dawn. Chock full of truly awful music (think of a high school metal band circa 1986), PTU has a very promising start and a big, noisy shootout of a finale, but everything in between has been done before and better.

Veronica Guerin – Toronto premiered a film about the life of groundbreaking newspaper reporter Veronica Guerin a few years ago (When the Sky Falls with Joan Allen went straight to Showtime and didn’t use real names). In this slightly flashier and more manipulative take on the story, Cate Blanchett plays the titular Guerin, who risked life and limb to uncover the truths about the drug trade in mid ‘90s Ireland. Another ho-hum biopic and, sadly, one that gives away its ending in the trailer.

Wonderland – Another day, another lifeless biopic. This time, the subject is porn star Johnny “Wadd” Holmes and his involvement in the Wonderland murders of Los Angeles in 1981. Val Kilmer channels a coke-snorting Barry Gibb to play Holmes, an unlikable junkie who ditched his wife (Lisa Kudrow) for a career in porn and, eventually, an underage girlfriend (Kate Bosworth). Wonderland is basically a he said/she said account of the bloody LA massacre, which was either facilitated or carried out by Holmes, depending on whom you believe. But I stopped caring who really did it halfway through the film. Porn? Murder? Jailbait? How could this be so bland?

The Bizarre

Gozu – Takashi Miike has never been one to let down a Midnight Madness crowd in Toronto, and his latest is certainly no exception. Gozu is about a young gangster named Minami (Sho Aikawa) who is supposed to kill his mentally ailing boss, Ozaki (he spikes a "Yakuza attack Chihuahua" on the sidewalk in the opening scene). After Ozaki is dead, his body disappears, leaving Minami on a very bizarre search that involves soup ladles, a half-man/half-cow creature and, of course, lactation. Gozu is very slow in spots, with Miike saving it all up for his big finale, which I dare not speak of lest the nightmares return.

Undead – The festival's final screening – a cleverly fresh Australian film about brain-eating zombies from outer space – was much more about being the last-ever event at the legendary Uptown Theatre, which is going to be razed to make way for luxury condominiums. The Uptown was the biggest and best place I have ever watched a film, and I'm estimating I did so around 250 times over the last eight years. But at least the Spierig brothers (they wrote, directed, produced, edited and did the sound) took the grand venue out in style with a hilarious blend of slapstick comedy and horror gore featuring memorable characters like a former Miss Catch of the Day, an expletive-infatuated cop and a paranoid Red Green clone with John Woo's violent streak and Schwarzenegger's one-liners.