This particular Lola won't squeeze you tight until she nearly breaks your spine: as played by Sabrina Grdevich, late of A.I. Artificial Intelligence, she's more like a sparrow, a delicate nuisance. Carl Bessai's Lola is about this person--who leaves a psychiatrist's office in the opening scene because she doesn't feel she has any problems worth mentioning--becoming another person, the pansexual Sandra (Joanna Going), whose life she saved once but couldn't a second time. Donning Sandra's platinum wig, she walks out on ultra-condescending boyfriend Mike (a stilted Colm Feore) and makes a pilgrimage to the hometown of her assumed identity, befriending soulful men along the way. Two films with the same basic paradigm already came out this year (The Princess and the Warrior and Beyond Suspicion), and while they're both funkier than Bessai's, Lola is advantaged by a deus ex machina that's actually believable, and an ingratiating lead; I liked that Lola doesn't completely subvert her old, willowy self in the transformation process. But I fear looking back on Lola and remembering only what bothered me about it: a vérité aesthetic with just one performance to match, that of rough-hewn Ian Tracey. Portraying an unashamed career plumber, Tracey exits stage left far too soon after his introduction. ** (out of four) | PROGRAM: Perspective Canada | SHOWTIMES: Saturday, September 8, 6:30 PM: ISABEL BADER THEATRE; Wednesday, September 12, 12:00 PM: UPTOWN 3

Going into Training Day, I wasn't expecting to see a film so literally titled: its events really are confined to a 24-hour period, and while I'm tempted to joke that too bad the running time wasn't also, Training Day's got a compelling mean streak. Ethan Hawke plays a wet-behind-the-ears cop auditioning for Denzel Washington's Det. Alonzo Harris to become a narc, and he's humiliated every step of the way in the self-serving detective's game of Simon Says. The film piles on the plot twists (courtesy of U-571 scribe David Ayer) and gives Washington his most theatrical role since that of Malcolm X, but it's Hawke's resilient solemnity that gets us from A to B without giving up. Director Antoine Fuqua has made something meatier here than both his previous The Replacement Killers and Bait, though the occasional homage to Seven is shameless, and Training Day is too long and too hostile to recommend. ** (out of four) | PROGRAM: Viacom Galas | SHOWTIMES: Friday, September 7, 9:30 PM: ROY THOMSON HALL; Saturday, September 8, 12:00 PM: UPTOWN 2

The resplendently shot Rain is this year's George Washington: a discreet tone poem set in a tight-knit rural community that is dying from summertime routine; let's hope that the New Zealand film's Nabokovian bent doesn't brand it. Alicia Fulford-Wierzbecki stars--in a performance that deserves two Oscars to Anna Paquin's one for The Piano (which also came out of the Kiwi country)--as Janey, a thirteen-year-old who sees her mother (Sarah Pierse) swinging away from her father in the direction of a hunky touring photographer named Cady (the Russell Crowe-ish Martin Csokas) and wants to swing that way, too. She incorporates into her daily routine of walking adorable brother Jim (Aaron Murphy) around the coastline a stop at Cady's and practices flirtation techniques with a nervous neighbourhood lad. Not that Rain is a pat coming-of-age crush movie: Janey's behaviour has roots in trying to understand why her mother is sad, alcoholic, and ruining a peaceful marriage. Although the outcome borders on preachy, damn if it doesn't nail the reign of hormonal terror that is puberty. *** (out of four) | PROGRAM: Contemporary World Cinema | SHOWTIMES: Saturday, September 8, 12:00 PM: VARSITY 1; Sunday, September 9, 4:15 PM: UPTOWN 1

God forbid we're confronted with something we haven't already seen a thousand times--I couldn't count the number of walkouts at my press screening of David Lynch's Mulholland Drive on both hands. (The Ontario jokes were well received, at least.) Ironically, Lynch is retelling an old tale: small town blonde (Naomi Watts) moves to Hollywood with a modicum of acting talent and is gradually led into temptation. A laughing love letter to reason and studio politics (you know what a love letter is, don't you? ref. Blue Velvet), it's incomparable to very much at all (except perhaps Hellraiser in its insane final third), even though Lynch draws upon such previous motifs as curtains and little people (in more ways than one). Mulholland Drive is probably his least fluid film, in no small part because it started out as a pilot and retained, in its expansion, the vignette structure of episodic TV, but a handful of said vignettes are among the finest short subjects Lynch has ever made, and the Watts character is warm, sympathetic, tragic, and beautiful. I love this movie, and can't wait to have epiphanies about it. ***1/2 (out of four) | PROGRAM: Masters | SHOWTIMES: Saturday, September 8, 9:30 PM: VISA SCREENING ROOM (ELGIN); Monday, September 10, 3:00 PM: UPTOWN 1

Two sub-genres are familiarly combined in The Safety of Objects, the proto-Altman ensemble piece and the suburban satire, but the results are not quite as poignant as Happiness or even Magnolia. A unified adaptation of the same-named anthology by A.M. Homes (whose middle initial could stand for "mean" if this interview is indicative), the project is an unanticipated departure for director Rose Troche from the gay themes of her previous films Go Fish and Bedrooms & Hallways: it's picket-fenced and awfully straight, though not devoid of kink, as with the little boy and his sexualization of a Barbie-like doll. The Safety of Objects depicts a cross-section of suburbanites--from the morose teenage girl (Jessica Campbell) to a lawyer in pre-emptive mid-life crisis (Dermot Mulroney)--bonded by the secrets and lies surrounding a year-old traffic accident that left local musician Paul (Joshua Jackson) in a paralytic coma. There's lousy storytelling all through The Safety of Objects that many will allow as ambiguity (one boy character--not the dolly fetishist--is often referred to in the female person, without explanation), and the film is so energetic (a plus) that its body is often ahead of its brain. Still, the movie isn't so sappy that we're forced to resist it, and Glenn Close is very good as the matriarch of a tragic family. Between Close's killer monologues, Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive, Alicia Fulford-Wierzbicki from Rain, and the estrogen-stoked leads of On Their Knees (see below), whoever says there are no great parts for women anymore isn't attending the T.I.F.F.. **1/2 (out of four) | PROGRAM: Special Presentation | SHOWTIMES: Friday, September 7, 6:30 PM: UPTOWN 1; Sunday, September 9, 12:00 PM: VARSITY 8

Anaïs Granofsky is a filmmaker, and she played one on TV. As "Degrassi"'s Lucy, Granofsky was inextricably linked to a video camera, and my favourite episode of that stupid show involved Lucy premiering her longest effort yet (a giallo, no less!) to ruthless classmates. Granofsky's real-life directorial debut shows much more promise, but not every note is in tune. On Their Knees is the story of black and white half-sisters Mo (Ingrid Veninger) and Willie (Granofsky) transporting the stolen corpse of their grandmother back east, where her estranged family lives. There is some body bag humour and a broad Maury Chaykin cameo in the early going that establishes a crass tone the film thankfully abandons; later attempts at comedy really work, such as Mo's merciful robbery of a vacuum cleaner salesman. Don't get the wrong idea: On Their Knees isn't all quirk; it's a smart first feature, as it neither overcompensates on style nor, more specifically, resorts to mixed-race buddy clichés. And at a scant 80 minutes, On Their Knees, like its heroines, seems intent on being as unobtrusive as possible with a dead body in the truck. *** (out of four) | PROGRAM: Perspective Canada | SHOWTIMES: Tuesday, September 11, 7:30 PM: ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM; Thursday, September 13, 11:15 AM: ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM

The Grey Zone is a bit like watching David Mamet do The Holocaust. I ran into Roger Ebert on the way out of the screening, whose reaction was that he needed to see it again; I admired the film enough to someday soon give it a second chance, too. Directed, produced, edited, and adapted from his own play by Tim Blake Nelson, The Grey Zone tells of the twelfth Sonderkommando, the penultimate group of Jewish prisoners who escorted their fellow interned into the gas chambers and swept up the incinerated remains in exchange for four months of immunities. "The Grey Zone" in question has multiple meanings: it is a literal camp area that prohibits trespassing; it is the moral dilemma of the main characters, elucidated by perhaps the most unsettlingly logical Nazi ever committed to celluloid (Harvey Keitel); it is the catch-22 of indie movies, as The Grey Zone is stocked with famous faces--this surely helped it get backing but leads to a stop-and-go first third as we overcome appearances from David Arquette, an unfortunately Mr. Pink-ish Steve Buscemi, and still others. (Aside: Mira Sorvino is unrecognizable.) The mannered yet raw dialogue required an ensemble with experience, but that doesn't dull the taste of a Mamet star piece, and Nelson's visual sense is more efficient than potent. Great, harrowing scenes abound, though, and Arquette, for the first time in a long time, is affecting. *** (out of four) | PROGRAM: Contemporary World Cinema | SHOWTIMES: Tuesday, September 11, 8:45 PM: UPTOWN 1; Thursday, September 13, 9:00 AM: VARSITY 8

When Cory McAbee's The American Astronaut began, with its Rod Serling-on-Quaaludes introduction giving way to a cowboy dancing in James Bond silhouette, I worried I was in for a subterranean Rocky Horror Picture Show. But then a funny thing happened: it got hilarious; and yet, even in this ironic age, I might be the only one laughing. Telling others about The American Astronaut has been as trying as conveying a dream--I suspect that mainstream audiences will/would reject The American Astronaut based on the genre familiarity and absurd patience (not to mention patience for the absurd) that it requires. There is a joke in the first act told by a frail stand-up comic that lasts at least five minutes, and its audacious length is the payoff. McAbee wrote, directed, and stars as the titular sideburned spaceman whose mission is to deposit a strapping young man (Gregory Russell Cook), one of the few in the universe to have "excavated a woman's breast," on Venus--a planet that is imagined as a Seurat painting full of Victorian females--before the women there learn to think for themselves. All the while a professor (Rocco Sisto) hell-bent on revenge for a forgotten birthday pursues them. Shot in gritty black-and-white for that serial feel, The American Astronaut is gleefully, wittily juvenile, with clever, catchy songs to match. Sometimes, you think they made the movie just for you; I feel protective towards the heavy drama Jude, and now, on the comedic end of the spectrum, The American Astronaut. I'm just wired to adore these two offbeat films. ***1/2 (out of four) | PROGRAM: Midnight Madness | SHOWTIMES: Wednesday, September 12, 12:00 AM: UPTOWN 2; Friday, September 14, 12:30 PM: VARSITY 1 & 6

Sweet, ludicrous, and foul-mouthed, Danny Boyle's Strumpet is the director's first feature effort away from producer Andrew Macdonald and screenwriter John Hodge. The 'film' was shot on Digital Betacam, and while it looks junky, at least it doesn't feel over-planned like Boyle's previous work--shots happen in a way that isn't amateurish, but invigorated. Strumpet begins with an extended, profane poetry reading by Christopher Eccleston, portraying a "Stray Man" with worse manners and hygiene than Johnny from Mike Leigh's Naked. (It could certainly be argued that Boyle is parodying Leigh's masterpiece in the comically grimy first act.) Into his filthy, verse-strewn void enters Strumpet (Jenna G), a quiet young black woman whom Stray Man rescued from a pushy trucker's advances, and can she play guitar! (So long as she is in a state of undress.) Between his mad lyrics and her memorable strumming, they score a record deal; but do they allow wild animals inside the "Top of the Pops" studio? As genuine as Strumpet comes off, it's missing scenes: key relationship developments are often exchanged for limp satire of the music industry. (One unsympathetic character is named Colonel Parker.) Too, the movie's manipulative climax just sits there unchallenged. Strumpet seems to think that small-scale ambitions excuse great contrivances. On a double-bill with Boyle's Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise, though I only viewed Strumpet. **1/2 (out of four) | PROGRAM: Contemporary World Cinema | SHOWTIMES: Friday, September 14, 6:00 PM: VARSITY 8; Saturday, September 15, 5:55 PM: VARSITY 8

Steeped in pop cinema to the point where it may be about movie-watchers more than anything else, Fulltime Killer features a character who says he wishes more people felt, "Not the best movie, but I like the style" about Hong Kong actioners, but there's a fine line between exculpating and being ironic. This HK film reminded me of Boiler Room, of all things, in that it tries to justify the unoriginal parts by citing their sources: the heroine (Kelly Lin) is said to be like "Emu from Crying Freeman"; later she is tutored in sniper shooting, and the precarious situation reminds her explicitly of Luc Besson's Leon. (Talk about ending the conversation.) Perhaps so much of this would taste better had Fulltime Killer any voice of its own: even that snazzy "style" we're supposed to embrace over content is a Tsui Hark imitation (and sort of a bad one, considering the film's lack of suspense). Fulltime Killer is another open-ended two killers/one girl tale I can take or leave, mostly because I've seen it to death. ** (out of four) | PROGRAM: Midnight Madness | SHOWTIMES: Saturday, September 8, 12:00 AM: UPTOWN 1; Monday, September 10, 3:15 PM: CUMBERLAND 3

I keep resorting to describing a Festival entry by comparing it to another film, but not to lament any lack of originality: when writing capsules, shorthand helps--thus Birthday Girl is like Original Sin with intentional laughs, and by the end you'll expect to see Sister Carol rapping in front of a brick wall as she did during Something Wild's closing credits. Ben Chaplin plays a British bank twerp who orders a bride from Russia (a white-hot Nicole Kidman); when Nadia arrives, he contemplates sending her back for her lack of English-speaking skills, but because she shows an inclination towards bondage, he decides to roll with the punches. Then, on the occasion of Nadia's birthday, two of her countrymen arrive to celebrate, and the plot thickens. At this juncture in pop culture, the twist-prone movie has a genre unto itself--a genre so heavily revisited in the last few years that none of Birthday Girl's calculated events take us by surprise, although Chaplin's character remaining an anchor without a secret agenda inspires a sigh of relief. I can't tell if the Miramax brass took their scissors to the Jez Butterworth film (its release has been delayed for some months), but it looks as though something edgier is dying to get out: even with scenes of violence against women, Birthday Girl will be remembered as innocuous. **1/2 (out of four) | PROGRAM: Contemporary World Cinema | SHOWTIMES: Friday, September 14, 6:30 PM: UPTOWN 1; Saturday, September 15 12:00 PM: VARSITY 8

As soon as I saw Chicken Rice War, I knew that it would win the Volkswagen Discovery Award at the T.I.F.F.: its director has a cute, memorable name (he calls himself CheeK); it's got subtitles (even though the characters speak English, or "Singlish"); and it leaves purpose to other movies. CheeK should be making Legally Blonde 2 in no time. Chicken Rice War bills itself as a riff on "Romeo and Juliet"--as in the Baz Luhrmann version of the Shakespeare play: the first ten minutes of the film, which is set at competing chicken rice stalls in Singapore, is littered with whip pans and freeze frames superimposed with the names and motivations of characters. Hoping to play Romeo in an experimental theatre production, Chicken Rice War's Fenson Wong (Pierre Png) is judged "no Leonardo DiCaprio." This film's Romeo and Juliet also have their first lovestruck moment on opposite sides of glass. And so on. Chicken Rice War is an obnoxious, hip copycat that coaxed a few laughs from me, I'll admit, and I admired CheeK's cheek in thumbing his nose at the tragic ending for the couple we know too well by now. I just wish he'd ditched the concept altogether: there are weird subplots that would've made for far fresher movies had they taken centre stage. Shakespeare isn't rolling in his grave, he's shouting, "Move on, people!" ** (out of four) | PROGRAM: Discovery | SHOWTIMES: Friday, September 14, 7:30 PM: VARSITY 2; Saturday, September 15 9:00 PM: UPTOWN 2