I've weighed in already on Soul Power and JCVD. Here's some others I saw over TIFF and my advice on whether you should see them too.
Here's the TIFF news release on the award winners.
The best:
Soul Power
From Thailand's Prachya Pinkaew, the director of Ong Bak, comes a new muy-thai-tacular. This one stars Jija Yanin as Zen, an autistic girl and martial arts savant whose former gangster-moll mother is ill with cancer. Zen goes around creatively kicking bad guy ass as she collects debts owed her mom.
This film features some dazzling, ferocious martial arts work and stunts. Panna Rittikrai choreographed the mayhem, and he did an outstanding job!
The Midnight Madness crowd loved Chocolate. If you like chop-sockey flicks (or pad-thai-sockey, if you will), you will too. If you don't, you might not.
A cartoonish story (hey, it's based on a manga comic) from director Toshio Lee about a shy, geeky country boy who goes to Tokyo to be a pop star and live the urban trendy life, but who finds himself trapped in the role of Sir Krauser, lead singer of Detroit Metal City, Japan's most notorious death metal band. And the prissy love of his life hates metal! Agghh!!
An energetic, goofily fun film that takes some good-natured pokes at a number of deserving targets. All that and Gene Simmons too!
Very good:
A fine horror-comedy from Spanish director Miguel Marti about a hot female serial killer and med student on a university campus. Raunch aplenty, as evidenced in this exchange:
Jealous girl: I hate her super-slut look! She's probably sucked more cock than both of us put together!
Not-so-jealous girl (with arched eyebrow): Speak for yourself.
Lots of very clever pop culture references worked in, including a send-up of the famous "You talkin' to me?" sequence from Taxi Driver.
This movie came close to joining the ranks of the best, and it is screamingly funny in places, but I found the energy level lagging a little bit in the later going.
A compelling but difficult look at a lower-class family of a middle-aged single mom and her three sons in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The movie's title loosely translates into English as "keep the ball in the air," referring to a group of soccer players kicking the ball in a circle and not letting it hit the ground (maybe the international title should be "hacky sack." :) )
All of the family members' lives are close to hitting the ground. During the Q-and-A, one person complained it was the bleakest, most depressing movie she'd ever seen.
Co-director Daniela Thomas told the crowd that they tried to keep the story as true to life as possible (one tidbit I picked up is that about 100,000 people applied for some city garbage-picking jobs in Sao Paulo, including people with college degrees). They largely used non-professional actors.
It's by no means light entertainment, but for those times you're ready for a serious film about difficult lives in a different culture, I'd strongly advise you to give this film a chance.
The other director on the project is Walter Salles (Central Station, The Motorcycle Diaries).
British director and Liverpudlian Terrence Davies looks back at the evolution of Liverpool over his lifetime in a highly personal film essay commissioned to help the northern port city mark its turn this year as the seat of European culture.
As with many cities, Liverpool has moved on from the Industrial Revolution, with factories converted into condos and churches into nightclubs. Davies takes us on a tour from his boyhood of more than a half-century ago up to the present day, magically weaving together a tapestry of archival and freshly-shot images, a perfect palette of songs and his own passionate and occasionally acerbic narration.
Slumdog Millionaire (winner, People's Choice award)
There's a reason this film won the People's Choice trophy -- director Danny Boyle (Lovleen Tandan co-directed in India) spared no effort in pushing every emotional hot-button possible in this feature about three children -- two brothers and an unrelated girl -- whose lives take them from Mumbai's slums to gangster life for two and a spectacular run for the third on the Indian equivalent of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
The pluses? Solid performances, great direction, editing and art direction. And it's set in a fascinating, rapidly-evolving country.
The minuses? I'm not big on melodramas, and I prefer some subtlety when a filmmaker is trying to manipulate my emotions.
Some Indian people in the screening loved it, particularly the scene where one boy is faking being a Taj Mahal tour guide and is scamming gullible white tourists. :)
Not bad
A work by Korean indie auteur Noh Young-seok, who basically did it all on a shoestring.
The storyline involves a morose post-college guy out boozing with his loutish buddies after a break-up when a road trip is proposed. Unfortunately for him, he's the only guy who actually goes.
A series of misadventures follows.
Decent and genuinely amusing in places, but a little low-key for my tastes. However, in Korea, it reportedly won the audience critics' award at the Jeonju International Film Festival. I presume that's a good thing.
Save your money
JCVD
Great art direction and atmosphere, but a muddled plot in this French sci-fi effort from director Franck Vestiel.
Ultimately, not a satisfying movie-going experience. People poured out of the theatre at the end, which tells me I'm not the only one who felt that way.
Jeff Goldblum stars as Adam Stein, once the most famous clown in Germany, but a psychiatric patient in a fictional psych hospital for Holocaust survivors.
Stein survived because the Nazi commandant (Willem Dafoe) made him his dog, and he helps a dog boy become human.
Scroll back above to Slumdog Millionaire if you forgot that I don't like transparently manipulative movies (for the record, I also had disdain for Life Is Beautiful, the Roberto Begnini Holocaust film that picked up an Oscar for best foreign film).
The performances didn't work for me, and I would point a finger at director Paul Schrader for this. He tried to create magic, and he made mush.
The watch-checks came fast and furious once Dog Boy came into the picture, as I knew immediately how this would end.
Some people love manipulative movies. If you're one, you may well be delighted with this flick.
Addenda
I had tickets for One Week and The Burrowers, but couldn't because of either changes in work scheduling or because a head cold had kicked my ass.