My Toronto schedule

Labor Day has come and gone, so in honor of last year’s best film at the Toronto International Film Festival (and the best film to be released commercially in the US this year) — it’s mother-tiffing time. The schedulers have made several changes since last year — all of them bad IMHO.

(1) basically all the Gala premieres are now special-ticket only and thus can’t be bought with passes, which means that with a lot of the Hollywood tentpole films, there’s only one chance (in a couple of cases, none) to see it; (2) they’ve extended the festival a day into a second Sunday, which I’m gonna take advantage of, but might make The Festival Wall even harder; (3) they’ve gutted the weekday morning programming (devoting fewer than half the number of screens as previous festivals) and backloaded the festival in terms of sheer numbers.

As I said on my Twitter feed @vjmfilms, where I’ll have an instant reax to every movie I see, there is exactly one (1) film shown to the general public before 3pm Friday that looks like a more attractive experience than having my balls chewed off, and it has two (2) of the five (5) public screening slots in those two half-days (frankly, if I had seen the schedule before booking my plane and hotel, I’d have delayed my trip a day).

But TIFF is still TIFF, and even when it looks like down, it’ll be awesome task to see 40+ films. There Joe and some other Cannes prize-winners, there’s Mike Leigh leading a flurry of promising looking British films, there are a bunch of mouth-watering documentaries by the genre’s masters, there are major sophomore efforts by Affleck (really), Chomet and Dolan, there are returns to roots (and maybe form) by Ozon and Tanovic, and a couple of new films from still-perfect-in-my-eyes Romania (a country that frankly TIFF has not led the way on).

After the jump is what I have tickets for and so expect to see, with the proviso that good buzz can add films and bad buzz and tiredness can take them away.

9 Sept
930pm THE LEGEND OF THE FIST (Andy Lau, Hong Kong) Elgin

10 Sept
400pm A MARRIED COUPLE (Allan King, Canada, 1969) AMC 2
600pm POETRY (Lee Chang-dong, South Korea) Scotiabank 2
1000pm I’M STILL HERE (Casey Affleck, USA) Varsity 8
midnight SUPER (James Gunn, USA) Ryerson

11 Sept
noon THE KING’S SPEECH (Tom Hooper, Britain) Ryerson
330pm BOXING GYM (Frederick Wiseman, USA) AMC 7
600pm THE STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA (Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal) AMC 4
800pm LOVE CRIME (Alain Corneau, France) Winter Garden

12 Sept
930am CIRKUS COLUMBIA (Danis Tanovic, Bosnia) AMC 6
noon THE CONSPIRATOR (Robert Redford, USA) Ryerson
230pm THE ILLUSIONIST (Sylvain Chomet, Britain/France) Elgin
630pm TABLOID (Errol Morris, USA) Lightbox 2
930pm NORWEGIAN WOOD (Tran Anh Hung, Japan) AMC 7

13 Sept
1230pm CLIENT 9: THE RISE AND FALL OF ELIOT SPITZER (Alex Gibney, USA) Winter Garden
330pm TAMARA DREWE (Stephen Frears, Britain) AMC 7
600pm ANOTHER YEAR (Mike Leigh, Britain) Elgin
900pm WAVELENGTHS 6: COMING ATTRACTIONS (anthology program; various) Jackman Hall
midnight THE WARD (John Carpenter, USA) Ryerson

14 Sept
1100am BLACK SWAN (Darren Aronofsky, USA) Elgin
230pm RABBIT HOLE (John Cameron Mitchell, USA) Elgin
645pm HEARTBEATS (Xavier Dolan, Canada) Varsity 8
900pm LEAP YEAR (Michael Rowe, Mexico) AMC 3

15 Sept
930am POTICHE (Francois Ozon, France) Varsity 8
1230pm BURIED (Rodrigo Cortes, Spain/USA) Varsity 8
300pm BRIGHTON ROCK (Rowan Joffe, Britain) AMC 6
500pm CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS (Werner Herzog, USA) AMC 7
915pm KABOOM! (Gregg Araki, USA) Ryerson
1045pm PROMISES WRITTEN IN WATER (Vincent Gallo, USA) Isabel Bader Theatre

16 Sept
noon BLUE VALENTINE (Derek Cianfrance, USA) Varsity 8
300pm MEEK’S CUTOFF (Kelly Reichardt, USA) Ryerson
530pm THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF NICOLAE CEAUSESCU (Andrei Ujica, Romania) AMC 10
1030pm UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (Apichatpong Weerasethakul aka “Joe,” Thailand) Isabel Bader Theatre

17 Sept
900am IT’S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY (Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, USA) Varsity 8
1230pm DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME (Tsui Hark, Hong Kong) Lightbox 2
300pm OF GODS AND MEN (Xavier Beauvois, France) Scotiabank 11
600pm AFTERSHOCK (Feng Xiaogang, China) Elgin
900pm RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE (Jalmari Helander, Finland) AMC 7

18 Sept
930am OUTBOUND (Bogdan George Apetri, Romania) Scotiabank 3
noon NEDS (Peter Mullan, Britain) Scotiabank3
230pm NEVER LET ME GO (Mark Romanek, Britain) Elgin
600pm 127 HOURS (Danny Boyle, Britain) Lightbox 1
900pm THE TOWN (Ben Affleck, USA) Elgin

19 Sept
915am OKI’S MOVIE (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea) Scotiabank 1
noon YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER (Woody Allen, Britain) AMC 6
300pm THE TRIP (Michael Winterbottom, Britain) Ryerson
600pm A SCREAMING MAN (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Chad) AMC 6