reelance office truant officers love September in Toronto. The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is back and, magically, the incidents of fake family members dying and sudden limited-time flues explode. Countless celebrities, auteurs, and hangers-on invade the big smoke for the annual celluloid love-in. With a factory-lunch-order long list of screenings, from horse and sword epics to playfully didactic documentaries, talking-head think pieces to corset-heavy melodramas, going to TIFF can prove an exigent endeavour. As always, Martiniboys.com is here to sort through the fluff and superfluousness to find the films that are truly worth your ripped-ticket dollar.


Adam Resurrected
Director: Paul Schrader
Paul Schrader is certainly no stranger to controversy. After all, this is the guy who broke into Hollywood with a movie that inspired the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan (Taxi Driver) and bitched and moaned about his Exorcist prequel not being released until he got it on DVD and everyone discovered how awful it was. This time he's decided to give us his take on the Holocaust by adapting a screenplay about an ex-circus performer who becomes a ring-leader at an asylum for Holocaust survivors following World War II. The movie will star Jeff Goldblum and Willem Dafoe and will hopefully help resurrect the career of a director who sadly hasn't been able bring his A game in years. I believe in ya Schrader, you can do it. -P.B.



Appaloosa
Director: Ed Harris
When popular actors direct a film, they surround themselves with big name talent. Ed Harris has not stepped behind the camera since killing with 2000's biopic Pollock. Here, he returns with a six-shooter, a drawl, and Viggo Mortensen. The premise is familiar: Jackson and Aragorn show up in a lawless town to battle the resident psychopath (Jeremy Irons) and return order. Renee Zellweger plays the girl and Mortensen's facial hair plays the machismo. Look for whiskey shots, sun-drenched vistas, dust, and bloodshed. -S.T.



Ashes in Time Redux
Director: Wong Kar Wai
Yes, you were more than disappointed with My Blueberry Nights, but a revisit to a masterful epic from the man behind In the Mood for Love, 2046, and Chungking Express will remind you why you fell for him in the first place. This re-cut of the 1994 film follows swordsman politics in ancient China. It's Wong Kar Wai so you know tonality will be an extra character, but the cast is baby-down-a-well deep, the action is eloquent, and the story has surprising depth. -S.T.



Blindness
Director: Fernando Meirelles
There is an inherent irony to taking sight away from players in a visual medium and it is heightened by the fact that actors can not see you anyway. The conceit is intellectually intriguing. However, making it cinematically interesting can prove problematic. Blindness has a fantastic pedigree: José Saramago wrote the book, the fantastic Don McKellar (if you have not seen Last Night, stop reading and go rent it) scripted, and it stars the divine Julianne Moore, the charismatic Mark Ruffalo (see You Can Count on Me), and the prettier-than-thou Gael García Bernal (The Motorcycle Diaries). Following a sudden and unexplained outbreak of blindness in an urban centre, Moore is the only one left sighted and must navigate the impending atrocities and Lord of the Flys-style societal breakdown that engulfs her. Despite the tantalizing creative team, the film took a critical bashing after debuting at Cannes. Regardless of its slightness, any film by Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardener) will have a visual panache, even if it is ironic. -S.T.



Burn After Reading
Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen
After the painfully mediocre The Ladykillers the Coens had lost a little luster. Then a bobbed killer, a bleak desert landscape, and a Cormac McCarthy tome catapulted them to stratospheric cinematic heights. Here, the follow-up returns them to playful territory. Hopefully more Raising Arizona than Intolerable Cruelty, Burn After Reading stars Brad Pitt and Coen muse, Frances McDormand, as a pair of hapless yet serendipitous laymen that discover sensitive materials and attempt to parlay the find into profit. The supporting cast is naturally stellar, with George Clooney and Tilda Swinton playing lovers - a tension capitalization and conversion from Michael Clayton - John Malkovich wielding a hatchet, and the underrated J.K. Simmons as a middle manager. -S.T.



Che
Director: Steven Soderbergh
A four-and-a-half-hour long biopic of Che Guevara might not sounds like a good time for most people, but for movie geeks this is one of the most highly anticipated events of the year. After a lukewarm response in Cannes, the epic movie has been split into two parts (as was always intended) to make the viewing experience a little less butt-numbingly long. With Benicio Del Toro starring as the influential revolutionary and versatile auteur Steven Soderbergh behind the camera, it's hard to imagine this movie being anything less than spectacular. And the best part? After this movie comes out you'll finally know who that guy is on your t-shirt. Won't that be exciting?—PB



Un Conte de Noël
Director: Arnaud Desplechin
Nothing stokes the fire of familial ire like a martyr holiday. Christmas stories are rife with battling families (see The Family Stone and Home for the Holidays) and with good reason (stuffing and wrapping paper are contentious entities). Here, a family of disparate personalities reunite to break bread, battle with ghosts (the figurative kind), and hazard revelations. Co-writer and director, Arnaud Desplechin, helmed Mathieu Amalric's coming out party, Rois et reine. Since then, Amalric has gone on to a number of hugely lauded starring turns, notably in Le Caphandre et le Papillon (the Diving Bell and the Butterfly). Now the two re-team along with the always fantastic Catherine Deneuve as a possibly doomed matriarch. The beautiful Anne Consigny (Le Caphandre et le Papillon) also features. -S.T.