The bulk of the first 45 minutes continues in this POV fashion, with Bauby -- the editor of the French version of Elle -- learning to communicate by blinking his remaining eye as his therapist (Marie-Josée Croze) reads the alphabet to him.  Blink once when you hear the letter you need.  It's absolutely torturous, but makes the film's payoff that much more emotional.  Plus, I've always said I'd be happy to watch a film where a really cute girl stares into the camera and read a phone book for two hours.  Croze repeating the alphabet is probably as close as I'm going to get.  Haunting and gorgeous, and one of my favorites from this fest.

Sukiyaki Western Django - It's difficult not to be caught off-guard by the works of prolific Takashi Miike (40 films this decade alone), but with Django, the Japanese filmmaker surprises for all the wrong reasons.  For starters, the mashup of the Spaghetti Western and an Asian cast/ideals was recently seen in Kung Fu Hustle, where the mix of genres was leaner (by around 30 minutes) and worked better.  But cribbing the story of a stranger (Hideaki Ito) who strolls into a small Nevada town and plays two feuding gangs off each other to save the innocent citizens is clearly more than just a nod to Yojimbo, or its American remake, A Fistful of Dollars.  By the time you get around to Miike's head-scratching idea to have his 99% Asian cast speak English -- and very badly, at that -- you'll be heading for the exits before getting to the handful of enjoyable bits, like having characters named Matsui and Ichiro, or the scene-stealing actor who comprised the other 1% of the cast: Mr. Quentin Tarantino.

Mad Detective - The titular mad detective is Bun (Lau Ching-wan), who has some very unconventional means of solving some very big crimes.  His quirks are enough to earn the respect of rookie inspector Ho (Andy On), but when Bun cuts off his own ear as a gift for a retiring boss, the oddball is forced into early retirement.  Flash-forward five years, where Ho is now the top gun in the homicide department, and gets in touch with Bun to help him solve a case involving a missing cop and his gun, which has been used in a string of armed robberies.  Bun is nuttier than ever, professing to see both an invisible wife and the "inner personalities" of anyone he encounters.  Also, he looks like an Asian version of Kenny Hotz.  But is Bun crazy, or crazy like a fox?  Another very, very solid crime drama from Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai.

Cleaner - If it wasn't 90 minutes long (a walk in the park in the middle of a festival), Cleaner would be a no-brainer to skip and maybe attempt to eat a somewhat healthy meal, but I was curious to see if director Renny Harlin was keeping up his impressive streak of making nothing but cinematic garbage.  Since lucking his way into the Die Hard franchise in 1990, the Fin has cranked out a string of punchlines (The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, Cutthroat Island) to films you didn't even know existed (The Covenant, Mindhunters).  This time, aided with a script from debut writer Matthew Aldrich, Harlin tackles the story of an ex-cop (Samuel L. Jackson) who now runs a business that cleans up bloody crime scenes so grieving families won't have to mop of the juices and brain fragments of their loved ones.  No chance anything could go wrong with that sort of thing, especially when we're told there's rampant corruption in the police department.  The "cleaning" thing was done and done better in Curdled (screened way back at my first Festival in 1996), and in terms of a crime drama, Cleaner just doesn't measure up.

Déficit - Gael García Bernal has worked with some of the planet's greatest directors (Michel Gondry, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Alfonso Cuarón) so it comes as no surprise that the actor's directorial debut is an accomplished, thoughtful and entertaining nod to Gosford Park.  In Déficit, Bernal plays Cristobal, a spoiled kid throwing an all-day barbeque party for his friends in a gorgeous home owned by his at-large parents, who are clearly involved in some sort of legal/money troubles.  This doesn't seem to hinder Cristobal or his sister (Camila Sodi), who invites all of her stoner friends over for the weekend, as well.  The house's staff hasn't been paid in quite some time, and there's a palpable chill in the air when they're asked to do something trivial, but Cristobal is much more interested in delaying the arrival of his directionally-challenged girlfried so he can seal the deal with an Argentine beauty (Luz Cipriota) brought by one of his friends.  Bernal doesn't try to stretch the skimpy story out, clocking in with a running time of just over an hour, and for that, my rump is thankful.

Sleuth - Kenneth Branagh's remake of the 1972 thriller takes an old guy/young guy casting cue from The Color of Money by using Michael Caine in the role once played by Laurence Olivier, and Jude Law in the part that belonged to Caine (I won't get into the bit where Law already replaced Caine in the remake of Alfie).  Fans of the original, or even people who saw the original and said, "Meh," will likely be angered by this update -- especially the end, or more directly, the lack thereof.  Caine is hella-popular mystery writer Andrew Wyke, whose wife has been having an affair with Law's put-of-work actor Milo Tindle.  When Milo turns up on Andrew's doorstep, politely requesting the author sign divorce papers, an intricate game of cat-and-mouse is launched.  If you've not seen the original, you might enjoy this, but it's nothing but style over substance, with a pair of decent performances.