Redacted - Brian De Palma swings and misses with this poorly executed, poorly acted, and poorly imagined excuse for an anti-war film shot to look like the home movies of a film school wannabe serving in Samarra.  We meet the other soldiers in his company and watch their various frustrations manifest themselves in ways that are meant to shock but instead only bore.  I don't have a problem with the message, just in its deliriously bad execution.  This is a definite Festival low-point.

Just Like Home - Lone Scherfig, the award-winning Danish writer/director behind films like Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself and Italian for Beginners returns with another winning dramedy about quirky yet believable characters.  The setting is a small town full of people with very strong beliefs . . . which are brought into question one particular evening when a resident sees a streaker.  When word of the incident gets out, it does not go over well, and the town descends into near chaos.  Secret societies are formed, and many characters find themselves acting in very surprising ways.  Darkly funny stuff, as one might expect from Scherfig, and another reason to love Danish cinema.  And regular Danish, as well.

Persepolis - A Jury Prize winner from Cannes, this slickly (but not slick) animated flick tells the real-life story Marjane Satrapi's adventures in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, and subsequent coming-of-age attending school in Europe.  The Islamic Revolution is hardly the stuff of hearty comedy, but Satrapi and co-director Vincent Paronnaud, who mine material from Satrapi's autobiographical comic books, are able to keep the mood incredibly and, yes, shockingly light.  The animation will remind some of Emily Strange, and the voices are provided by the likes of Catherine Deneuve, Simon Abkarian and Danielle Darrieux.  It always seems like there's one very strong, very different animated film that gives the mundane, computer-generated 'toons about wacky animals banding together a run for their money come Oscar time, and Persepolis is almost certainly going to be this year's version of The Triplets of Belleville.

It's a Free World . . .  - Ken Loach, hot off winning 2006's Golden Palm for The Wind That Shakes the Barley returns with -- surprise! -- a story about the plight of immigrant workers from Eastern European countries looking for work in the UK.  We're introduced to the story through Angie (the impressive Kierston Wareing), who works for a large employment agency that hires workers from Poland.  She's fired after dismissing the advances of her handsy boss, and cooks up an idea to start up her own agency in London with pal Rose (Juliet Ellis).  They vow to hire only people with valid immigration paperwork, and to sock enough money away to pay the piper when the government comes calling looking to tax the unregistered new business.  But Angie finds it easy to bend her own rules, which of course begins her frightening and dangerous downward spiral.  Wareing stands out among the slate of typically Loachian/genuine performances, managing to be both unlikable and empathetic at the same time.

In the Valley of Elah - Is it unusual that the best moments in the insanely overrated Crash and the brand new Elah both involve an adult telling a small child a bedtime fairytale, which somehow serves as a metaphor for the film's "big picture"?  I don't care what you think -- it totally is.  Elah is about a retired military man named Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones) whose son goes AWOL upon his return to the United States after serving in Iraq.  When Hank drives from his Tennessee home to his son's base in New Mexico, viewers might get the impression Elah will follow a similar trajectory as The Limey.  But when the decapitated, burned remains of his son are discovered, the story takes more of a turn into something more akin to a "very special" episode of CSI: Red State when Hank hooks up with a bottom-rung police detective played by Charlize Theron and takes the investigation on himself.  Jones takes another huge step to distance himself from the utter bullshit films he made in the 13 years after winning an Oscar for The Fugitive, and Elah is a nice-looking picture, thanks to photography from Roger Deakins, who also shot the Festival's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and No Country for Old Men, the latter of which also starred Jones, Josh Brolin, and Barry Corbin.  Hollywood: It's a small world, after all.