11:14 – If you liked Very Bad Things, you’ll love 11:14, a very dark comedy that is assembled in a manner reminiscent of both Go and Memento. It all starts with a tipsy driver (Henry Thomas) accidentally killing a man with his car at 11:14 at night, and it kind of ends there, too. In between, we learn about the events leading up to 11:14, including a very funny bit where executive producer Hilary Swank tries to get an ex-boyfriend (Shawn Hatosy) to shoot her in the arm to make a robbery attempt seem more legitimate. Very clever and perfectly executed, the debut from Greg Marks also features a severed penis and Rachael Leigh Cook in a very revealing outfit.

Casa de los Babys – Guess who’s back? If you picked anyone but John Sayles, who stunk up the joint with Sunshine State and Limbo, you are forgiven. Sayles’s storytelling skills are back in top form with this story of six very different women who have traveled to a nameless South American country to adopt babies. During their stay in a beach resort, they slowly realize they’re being duped by the system to spend as much money as humanly possible to get their kids and return to the US. A great cast, highlighted by fantastic turns from Maggie Gyllenhaal and Lili Taylor.

Coffee & Cigarettes – Not so much a film as a collection of shorts Jim Jarmusch started making back in 1986 (for Saturday Night Live, no less). Each features a few actors sitting around drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and getting into some mostly improvised dialogues at tables with checkerboard patterns. Some make sense (Iggy Pop vs. Tom Waits, and Meg White vs. Jack White), while others pair polar opposites (Roberto Benigni and Steven Wright) and other just make you want to pee your pants (RZA, GZA and Bill Murray). Full of great jukebox music, including a new Iggy Pop cover of "Louie, Louie."

Distant – Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan wrote, directed, photographed, produced, edited and designed the sets for this Odd Couple story about a big country Lenny (or Yusuf) coming to live in the thriving metropolis of Istanbul with his little cousin George (or Mahmut). Ceylan definitely has an eye similar to that of an Abbas Kiarostami, using plenty of loooong takes and perfectly composed static shots so beautiful, you'll almost be distracted from the lack of action. For his painstaking efforts, Ceylan took home the number two prize at Cannes, and his two principal stars shared the Best Actor award. Since then, tragically, the guy who played Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak) died in a car accident.

Dogville – Some people say Lars von Trier’s Dogville is way too anti-American. I say it’s way too long. But even at three hours, it’s a very impressive start to von Trier’s proposed USA: Land of Opportunities trilogy. Nicole Kidman plays Grace, a woman on the run from gangsters who eventually finds relative safety in a small Colorado town. But the residents of said town start treating Grace horribly and threatening to turn her over unless she complies with their every wish. Soon, she’s working twice as hard for half the money, getting raped by every man in town and…well, you can see where the anti-American stuff stems from. Von Trier films it all on a sparse soundstage with unflattering lighting, minimal props and buildings that are more like what you’d see playing The Sims than real life. A truly original cinematic experience, but it just didn’t have to be this long.

The Five Obstructions – See Lars von Trier, the Dogville writer-director and co-founder of the Dogme movement. See Jørgen Leth, an experimental filmmaker whose 1968 short The Perfect Human becomes the subject of this engrossing documentary. Von Trier, who considers himself to be a Leth expert, forces his game forefather to remake his short five times, each using restrictive rules that make the whole Dogme thing seem sane (one of the first constraints is Leth can’t use edits longer than 12 frames). The more Leth makes von Trier’s wackiness work, the angrier von Trier gets, and the crazier his rules become. Makes you wish he could do the same thing with Michael Mann.

The Fog of War – Documentary wizard Errol Morris can make any subject fascinating, whether its Stephen Hawking or those weird mole things from Fast, Cheap and Out of Control. Here, he tackles Robert S. McNamara, who lays it all on the line (well, most of it, anyway) about firebombing Tokyo in World War II, playing chicken with the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or trying to get LBJ to pull troops out of Vietnam. A very interesting look at an important (and still quite sharp at 85) historical figure.

How to Get The Man's Foot Outta Your Ass – Mario Van Peebles' adaptation of his father Melvin's book about the making of Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song smacks of an attempt to exorcise the demons of a wacky childhood. But if you can get past that, you'll be treated to a very interesting tale of Senior's troublesome attempts to independently finance the first-ever picture about a black man who doesn't do what Martin Lawrence makes millions for doing now (i.e., shuckin' and jivin'). Mario directs and plays Melvin, and Ossie Davis, David Alan Grier and Adam West (!) co-star.

Identity Kills – Brigitte Hobmeier (think a pointier Lauren Ambrose) plays Karen, a mentally troubled young woman who returns home from a post-suicide-attempt stint at the nuthouse to find her boyfriend has already taken a new partner. Then she does some really wacky stuff, like getting a job at a cutlery plant, learning Spanish and...what am I forgetting? Oh, psychotically adapting the personality of a chance acquaintance. It reminded me a bit of With a Friend Like Harry, and I know how much you all loved that.

Mayor of the Sunset Strip – The Man From Elysian Fields director George Hickenlooper's latest is a documentary about revered Rodney Bingenheimer, a short, odd-looking man with the world's worst haircut (at least since my mom stopped cutting mine) who became the first DJ to play bands like Blondie, The Sex Pistols, Nirvana, Oasis and Coldplay on American radio. Rodney has had his own highly influential show on LA's legendary KROQ but is slowly being phased out by the corporate monster radio has become. But here, you'll see his praises sung by David Bowie, Cher, Alice Cooper and many more (including The Runaways creator Kim Fowley, who totally should have Fred Willard play him in his biopic).

My Life Without Me – It takes something really special to make a film about dying worth recommending, and My Life Without Me manages to do just that (where, say, The Barbarian Invasions struggled). Sarah Polley plays Ann, a 23-year-old mother who learns she has cancer and just two months to live. Instead of turning the proceedings into a five-hanky weep-fest, writer-director Isabel Coixet keeps thing absorbing by having Ann keep her illness a secret from everyone. Instead of sitting around and feeling sorry for herself, Ann creates an ambitious To Do list, which includes finding a new woman for her husband (Scott Speedman) and recording future birthday greetings for her kids. Features the best kiss and supermarket dance sequence since Punch-Drunk Love.

Pieces of April – The premise sounds simple: Young independent woman invites her suburbanite family over to celebrate Thanksgiving at her dumpy Lower East Side apartment. But that's where the comparisons to Home for the Holidays end. April (Katie Holmes) plans to use the event to unveil her new black boyfriend (Derek Luke) to her family, which includes her dying mother (Patricia Clarkson), bitchy sister (Alison Pill), stoner brother (John Gallagher, Jr.) and beleaguered father (Oliver Platt). Oh, and her oven breaks, too. Remarkably emotional, April is the directorial debut from Peter Hedges, who you may remember as the screenwriter for About a Boy and What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

The Station Agent – It's been a while since I've seen a Three Loners Complete Each Other flick done this well. Peter Dinklage plays a dwarf who inherits an abandoned train depot in Newfoundland, New Jersey. Bobby Cannavale is a fun-loving loudmouth roped into manning his ailing father's sandwich truck. Patricia Clarkson is an accident-prone divorcee who recently lost her only child. Throw in Michelle Williams as a small-town librarian plus some really pretty photography, and it will be abundantly clear to you why this picture won awards at Sundance.

School of Rock – Don't be scared off by its looks – Rock isn't just another Jack Black fiasco. It's a real picture by a real director (Waking Life's Richard Linklater) and a real writer (Mike White, who penned The Good Girl and Chuck & Buck). It also has a tried-and-true story that's been rubbed into the ground yet somehow made fresh by White's writing and Black's wildly kinetic (and, frankly, a little exhausting) performance. Black plays wannabe rock star Dewey Finn, who poses as a substitute teacher at a posh private school hoping to get a paycheck while sleeping off his hangovers. But when the intellectually starved students exhibit their lack of Zeppelin knowledge, Finn gives them a crash course in Rock 101 and molds them into a band he can front.

The Story of the Weeping Camel – The title made me want to skip it, but I would have missed out on a chance to do a little weeping of my own. This documentary focuses on an extended family living in the Gobi Desert of Southern Mongolia. One of their many camels gives birth to a white calf but then refuses to care for it (can camels be racist?). Watch with shock as the shepherds resort to bizarre measures to keep the mama from biting the baby whenever it attempts to get a warm, nutritious drink. Surprisingly moving stuff.

21 Grams – The film I was most eager to see did not disappoint…at least after the first confusing 10 minutes. Alejandro González Iñarritu’s follow-up to the brilliant Amores Perros blends elements of that film (a horrible incident involving a car that affects three different threads of the story) with – and this may seem really hard to believe – Return to Me’s falling in love with the recipient of your dead spouse’s heart. To say more would betray the film, and make the opening much less confusing when you see it. And I’m really not here to make things easier for you. Stars Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro and the amazing Naomi Watts, who delivers this festival’s second-best shot at an acting Oscar.

Elephant – Gus Van Sant’s latest, which won the Golden Palm at Cannes, is just about as pointless as his shot-for-shot remake of Psycho. The 81-minute film, which is essentially his take on the Columbine massacre, isn’t even a tidy 81 minutes. If he took out all of the slow-motion walking, we’d be left with a 10-minute short. The actual footage of the high school shooting from Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine was much more compelling. Here, its only purpose is to get a rise from the audience…and, apparently, to win awards from the French, who will bestow honors on anything depicting Americans as stupid and violent (even though they’re kinda right).

A Problem With Fear – You know a film is bad when it’s Canadian and still gets slammed by the generous hometown press. Gary Burns, who showed so much promise with waydowntown and Kitchen Party, stinks up the joint with a story about a paranoid guy who realizes his worst fears (of elevators and escalators and the like) are literally killing strangers in Vancouver. The only redeeming quality is an interesting slant on the whole color-coded terror alert levels and insane media frenzy surrounding every perceived danger we have here in the States.

Rick – Occasionally clever, but not nearly enough so to make it worth your while, this directorial debut from Curtiss Clayton (who edited most of Gus Van Sant’s films) stars Bill Pullman as the number two man in a corporate boys’ club (literally). His boss (Aaron Stanford) is about half his age and has the hots for his daughter (Agnes Bruckner). So, like any good father and businessman, Rick hires a corporate killer (Dylan Baker) to do away with his Big Boss at the firm’s Christmas party.

S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine – Not so much bad as it is extremely difficult to recommend, this documentary lets survivors – both guards and prisoners – tell their brutal tales of what happened at Security Office 21 during the Cambodian genocide in the mid '70s. They read actual prison records out loud, matter-of-factly reenact some of the typical actions of the guards, and even give helpful hints about how to get used to the stench of rotting corpses. When the prisoners ask why they let the atrocities occur, the guards pretty much say, "We realized it was wrong afterwards." Could have been much shorter and much less repetitive.

The Barbarian Invasions – The good news: Writer-director Denys Arcand says his opening-night film isn't a sequel to The Decline of the American Empire, and that's a good thing because I never saw it. The bad news: Arcand is a filthy liar because Invasions features the same characters (only 17 years older) that populated Empire. Here, pussyhound professor Rémy (Rémy Girard) is dying of cancer and his wealthy, estranged son Sébastien (Stéphane Rousseau) is determined to make his dad as comfortable as possible. And if that means getting the junkie daughter (Cannes winner Marie-Josée Croze) from one of Rémy's many affairs to score street heroin, then so be it. Hope you love horrifyingly sad endings, sucker.

Cypher – Vincenzo Natali’s follow-up to 1997 festival hit Cube is set in a dark, futuristic world where two huge corporations will do anything possible to maintain data superiority over their rival. And if that means brainwashing one particular pawn (Jeremy Northam) to serve as a double (or is it triple?) agent, then so be it. Even though the ending is far too predictable, Cypher is still entertaining in a creepy Gattaca-like way. It’s kind of like a whole season of Alias – with two SD-6 agencies – boiled down to a 100-minute film. Co-stars Lucy Liu, the forgotten Angel.

The Event – It's one of those films that's so Canadian, they had to let it in the festival. Writer-director Thom Fitzgerald (The Hanging Garden) tells the story of a man (Don McKellar) who has died of AIDS and the mysterious and titular "event" that preceded his death. Was it a big blowout party-slash-gay variety show, a sad euthanasia ceremony, or maybe a little bit of both? An ADA (Parker Posey) is assigned to find out if anything illegal happened. Maybe you'll dig it, and you'll have your chance to weigh in when The Event screens at the ImageOut Festival next month.

Gun-shy – Lukas delivers meals to an odd assortment of invalids (including a hooker, an ex-sniper and a suicide victim). When super-attractive Isabella drops a "Help me" note in his lap one day on the trolley, Lukas gets swept up into a crazy world of suspicious cops, incest and crazy Kim Jong Il supporters. Full of absurd visual humor and an ending that made me jump out of my seat even though I could see it coming a mile away, Dito Tsintsadze’s feature is worth checking out just for its attractive leads (Fabian Hinrichs and the wonderfully freckled Lavinia Wilson).

The Human Stain – A stellar cast doing a superb job saves this adaptation of Philip Roth’s novel from being one of those Oscar-season duds. Anthony Hopkins plays Coleman Silk, a Massachusetts college professor driven out of his job on trumped-up charges of racism. The ordeal kills his wife, and he soon takes up with a girl from the wrong side of the tracks (Nicole Kidman) with a psychotic husband (Ed Harris) and a big secret…but ol’ Coleman has a dark little whopper of his own. Strung together like The English Patient and shot by the late cinematographer Jean Yves Escoffier, Stain is still solid, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome.

In the Cut – Meg Ryan’s big attempt at playing a gritty adult role (instead of that pixie bullshit she’s been pushing for the last decade-and-a-half) comes in this serial killer flick filtered through an arthouse lens. Jane Campion directs the story about a high school English teacher who falls in love with a swarthy cop (a beyond excellent Mark Ruffalo) and becomes embroiled in a jackpot involving a psycho who is beheading women in her neighborhood. A very beautiful, very well-directed picture with strong performances, but it’s still a whodunit, which means everything is telegraphed to the point where the ending is a letdown. And Meg fakes another orgasm, too!

The Singing Detective – Failed sobrietist Robert Downey, Jr. plays failed detective story author Dan Dark, who spends most of this film lying motionless in a hospital bed as he suffers from a bizarre skin disease that cover his entire body from head to toe in open sores. Dark refuses painkillers, which is probably the reason his life starts to resemble one of his novels, complete with kooky song-and-dance numbers from the ‘50s. Mel Gibson plays the shrink who tries to talk him down from the insanity, and he does it while wearing a nifty skullcap.

Valley of the Innocent – Two stories here: One is about a black 40-year-old homicide investigator trying to hunt down the parents who stuck her in a German orphanage right after she was born. The other, which is set approximately 40 years in the past, is about a university professor, his pretty wife and the handsome Kenyan student who spent the night at their house because of a huge storm. Already see where this one's going, eh?

Feathers in My Head – Don't look for much of a story in this tale of a Belgian mother who has a slow but complete breakdown after her only son drowned in a nearby lake while she was busy getting her shtup on. The attractions here are the stunning compositions which generally revolve around water imagery, like boots filling up with rainwater and the repeated use of birds dive-bombing into water to catch fish. There's also a Greek chorus, I think. Their songs weren't subtitled, so I'm just guessing here. Weird, but damn lovely.

Jesus, You Know – If you saw Ulrich Seidel’s Dog Days, you know he’s one twisted bastard. That just makes his latest even more unusual. Like Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Ki-duk Kim, Seidel takes a drastic change in theme and mood with this documentary that shows six different people as they pray to Jesus. And these folks talk and talk until poor Jesus’s ears are ready to bleed. Then, as if a sign from above, the film started to melt, so I’ll never know what happened to the young man whose mother yelled at him for going to service every day instead of cleaning his room.

Lost in Translation – Believe the hype: Sofia Coppola's follow-up to The Virgin Suicides is not only one of the year's best films and the first opportunity to hear new music from My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields for the first time in a dozen years, it also features a Bill Murray performance Oscar won't be able to ignore this time around. He plays an American actor in Tokyo to film spots for a Japanese whiskey, but he has a miserable time until he meets a lonely newlywed (Scarlett Johansson) whose husband (Giovanni Ribisi) is too busy working to pay attention to her. The two characters – each at an important crossroads in their lives – become two peas in a pod. A very precarious pod.

Read Part II of the Toronto coverage here.