The Best Picture category isn't the only thing that bulked up.

What is it about the Academy Awards? Intellectually, it's hard to muster up that much enthusiasm about who "wore it best" (Ang Lee) or how modest Katniss will be in her acceptance speech, hopefully avoiding a First Wives' Club reference that sounded like she was hating on Meryl Streep this time. And yet ... we still feel compelled to watch. Maybe it's because secretly, deep down, we still find it fascinating that the guy who does the voice of Stewie looks like the host of a reality game show about finding true love by having a dance-off on a stripper pole.

Or maybe it's because we're just suckers, who deep down believe that Beasts of the Southern Wild might still possibly have a chance against Argo or Lincoln.

Come join us, will you, on this the most magical of evenings for producers, people who are married to movie stars, and dress designers? We'll be hosting a live chat below. Just click the big countdown button and you're all set. Got it?

Great.

This year we're making our predictions in order of the film and/or celebrity, not the award. That's because this time ... it's personal. No, seriously: between Kathryn Bigelow and Ben Affleck being iced out of Best Director, the Weinstein Bros. not having a snowball's chance in hell of scoring a big win and the fact that we're practically giving an award to Anne Hathaway just to make her stop sing-crying, there's going to be a lot of sore losers tonight. But don't worry; we're using a time-tested formula for predicting the bitter ceremonies, including taking all of the guesses on Twitter and averaging them against Nate Silver's predictions. Then we throw those out the window and  get ourselves angry over Lincoln’s inevitable windfall of awards that should be going to that movie that had all those great New Yorker articles written about it and stars a 9-year-old who wasn't even an actress when she started the film, which is about 50 percent more method than Daniel Day-Lewis's decision to become an Italian cobbler every time he's taking a hiatus from Hollywood.

So enjoy, and don't forget to tune into our live chat on the Oscars, starting at 7 p.m.!

2013 Golden Globes, Bill Murray

If you are too busy watching the Australian cycling thing and can't understand what the hell is going on with Twitter (honestly, we don't know who you follow, but no one on our feed actually bothers naming the winners of these things), here are the latest updates for the 2013 Golden Globe Awards.

Best Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER: Argo
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Best Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER: Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty

Best Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER:

Best Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Les Mis

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture- Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Hugh Jackman, Les Mis

Best TV Series, Comedy or Musical
WINNER: GIRLS

Best Director
WINNER: Ben Affleck, Argo

Cecil B. DeMille's Lifetime Achievement Award/Freestyle Portion of Evening
WINNER: Jodie Foster

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Lena Dunham, Girls

Best Animated Feature Film
WINNER: Brave

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama
WINNER: Claire Danes, Homeland

Best Foreign Film
WINNER: Amour

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Don Cheadle, House of Lies

Best Screenplay
WINNER: Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
WINNER: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

Best Performance by a Supporting Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Ed Harris, Game Change

Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Kevin Costner, Hatfields & McCoys
(RUNNER-UP: Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Julianne Moore - Game Change

Best Television Series - Drama
WINNER: Homeland

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
WINNER: Christoph Waltz - Django Unchained

Best Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Mini-Series
WINNER: Maggie Smith - Downton Abbey

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama
WINNER: Damien Lewis - Homeland

Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Game Change

Best Original Song
WINNER: "Skyfall," Adele

Best Original Score - Motion Picture
WINNER: Life of Pi

Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
WINNER: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Lining Playbook (Also, best speech? Y/N?)

Lincoln leads the pack for the Oscars with 12 nominations

There are a lot firsts in the nominations for the 85th annual Academy Award nominations. They include the youngest AND oldest Best Actress nominees (Emmanuelle Riva, 85, and Quvenzhané Wallis, 9), no trace of former dream team member Ben Affleck, and the first snub for Kathryn Bigelow.

On the other hand, there is no way Anne Hathaway is NOT singing this year, so get ready for some Franco-style flashbacks. And with 12 nominations for Lincoln, Daniel Day-Lewis will (unsurprisingly) definitely be going home with something gold this year.

A partial list below:

BEST PICTURE

Beasts of the Southern Wild
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty
Lincoln
Les Misérables
Life of Pi
Amour
Django Unchained
Argo

DIRECTOR

David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook
Ang Lee, Life of Pi
Steven Spielberg, Lincoln
Michael Haneke, Amour
Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild

ACTRESS

Naomi Watts, The Impossible
Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty
Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
Emmanuelle Riva, Amour
Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild

ACTOR

Daniel Day Lewis, Lincoln
Denzel Washington, Flight
Hugh Jackman, Les Misérables
Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook
Joaquin Phoenix, The Master

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Sally Field, Lincoln
Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables
Jacki Weaver, Silver Linings Playbook
Helen Hunt, The Sessions
Amy Adams, The Master

SUPPORTING ACTOR

Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained
Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master
Robert DeNiro, Silver Linings Playbook
Alan Arkin, Argo
Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Flight
Zero Dark Thirty
Django
Amour
Moonrise Kingdom

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Beasts of the Southern Wild
Argo
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Amour (Austria)
No (Chile)
Rebelle (War Witch) (Netherlands)
A Royal Affair (Denmark)
Kon-Tiki (Norway)

ANIMATED FEATURE

Frankenweenie
The Pirates! Band of Misfits
Wreck It Ralph
ParaNorman
Brave

ORIGINAL SONG

"Before My Time" - Chasing Ice
"Pi's Lullabye" - Life of Pi
"Suddenly" - Les Misérables
"Everybody Needs a Best Friend" - Ted
"Skyfall" - Skyfall

Golden Globe nom-toppers. (Various)

Not too many surprises this year in the nominations, announced today, for the 2013 Golden Globe Awards. This year, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler will be making history as the first female duo to host the ceremony, held on Jan. 13., but other than that, it's all Lincoln (seven nominations), Argo (five) and Django Unchained (ditto).

In television, we're looking at dramas like Game Change (five), Homeland (four, including one for "The Bear" Patinkin), Downton Abbey and, yikes ... how did The Newsroom (two) manage to get on there? That's more nominations than Mad Men (one) received! Comedies remained from last year: Girls, 30 Rock and Modern Family topped the chart. HBO shot to the top of the chart with 17 nominations total, and in a distant second place came Showtime, with seven.

Read the full list below:

Best Motion Picture, Drama

Argo
Django Unchained
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Zero Dark Thirty

Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Les Misérables
Moonrise Kingdom
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Silver Linings Playbook

Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama

Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
Richard Gere, Arbitrage
John Hawkes, The Sessions
Joaquin Phoenix, The Master
Denzel Washington, Flight

Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy

Jack Black, Bernie
Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook
Hugh Jackman, Les Misérables
Ewan McGregor, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Bill Murray, Hyde Park on the Hudson

Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama

Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty
Marion Cotillard, Rust and Bone
Helen Mirren, Hitchcock
Naomi Watts, The Impossible
Rachel Weisz, The Deep Blue Sea

Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy

Emily Blunt, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Judi Dench, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
Maggie Smith, Quartet
Meryl Streep, Hope Springs

Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture

Alan Arkin, Argo
Leonardo DiCaprio, Django Unchained
Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master
Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln
Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture

Amy Adams, The Master
Sally Field, Lincoln
Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables
Helen Hunt, The Sessions
Nicole Kidman, The Paperboy

Best Director

Ben Affleck, Argo
Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty
Ang Lee, Life of Pi
Steven Spielberg, Lincoln
Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained

Best Screenplay, Motion Picture

Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty
Tony Kushner, Lincoln
David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook
Quentin Taratino, Django Unchained
Chris Terrio, Argo

Find out which star's daughter is Miss Golden Globe

Best Foreign Language Film

Amour (Austria)
A Royal Affair (Denmark)
The Intouchables (France
Kon-Tiki (Norway)
Rust and Bone  (France)

Best Animated Feature Film

Brave
Frankenweenie
Hotel Transylvania
Rise of the Guardians
Wreck-It Ralph

Best Original Song, Motion Picture

"For You," Act of Valor, Monty Powell & Keith Urban
"Not Running Anymore," Stand Up Guys, Jon Bon Jovi
"Safe and Sound," The Hunger Games, Taylor Swift. John Paul White, Joy Williams & T Bone Burnett
"Skyfall," Skyfall, Adele & Paul Epworth
"Suddenly," Les Misérables, Claude-Michel Schonberg & Alain Boublil

Best Original Score, Motion Picture

Mychael Danna, Life of Pi
Alexandre Desplat, Argo
Dario Marianelli, Anna Karenina
Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil, Cloud Atlas
John Williams, Lincoln

Best TV Movie or Miniseries

Game Change
The Girl
Hatfields & McCoys
The Hour
Political Animals

Best TV Series, Drama

Boardwalk Empire
Breaking Bad
Downton Abbey
Homeland
The Newsroom

Best TV Series, Comedy

The Big Bang Theory
Episodes
Girls
Modern Family
Smash

Best Actor in a TV Series, Drama

Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire
Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad
Jeff Daniels, The Newsroom
Jon Hamm, Mad Men
Damian Lewis, Homeland

Best Actor, TV Series Comedy

Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock
Don Cheadle, House of Lies
Louis CK, Louie
Matt LeBlanc, Episodes
Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory

Best Actress in a TV Series, Drama

Connie Britton, Nashville
Glenn Close, Damages
Claire Danes, Homeland
Michelle Dockery, Downton Abbey
Julianna Marguiles, The Good Wife

Best Actress in a TV Series, Comedy

Zooey Deschanel, New Girl
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep
Lena Dunham, Girls
Tina Fey, 30 Rock
Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation

Best Actor in a Miniseries or TV Movie

Kevin Costner, Hatfields & McCoys
Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock
Woody Harrelson, Game Change
Toby Jones, The Girl
Clive Owen, Hemingway & Gellhorn

Best Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie

Julianne Moore, Game Change
Nicole Kidman, Hemingway & Gellhorn
Jessica Lange, American Horror Story: Asylum
Sienna Miller, The Girl
Sigourney Weaver, Political Animals

Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Mini-Series or TV Movie

Max Greenfield, New Girl
Ed Harris, Game Change
Danny Huston, Magic City
Mandy Patinkin, Homeland
Eric Stonestreet, Modern Family

Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or TV Movie

Hayden Panettiere, Nashville
Archie Panjabi, The Good Wife
Sarah Paulson, Game Change
Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey
Sofia Vergara, Modern Family

Cecile B. DeMille Award

Jodie Foster

Jennifer Garner in 'Butter'

The Master

Paul Thomas Anderson

Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams

September 14

This long-deferred movie actually couldn’t have been better timed. An apparent allegory for the creation of Scientology, The Master comes along just as public interest in the (alleged!) money-grubbing cult is at an all-time high, post-Tom/Katie divorce. In this telling, Philip Seymour Hoffman is the L. Ron Hubbard-like figure who snares untold numbers of believers into his thrall. Plot details, per Paul Thomas Anderson’s standard, are hazy, but the trailer reveals simply that Mr. Anderson has kept up his keen attention to aesthetic compostion--and that Amy Adams, playing a devoted cult wife, may be this film’s MVP. Can we arrange for Katie Holmes to present her the Oscar?

Killing Them Softly

Andrew Dominik

Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini, Sam Rockwell

September 21

Andrew Dominik’s follow-up to the much-loved, little-seen Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford jumps forward in time--it’s a modern-day store of mobland America, based on a pulp crime novel. The movie was a hit at Cannes, and may be yet another feather in the cap of good-looking weirdo character actor Brad Pitt, who plays a hitman’s assistant, or “point man.” The whole thing promises to be a real boys’ club, with costars like Richard Jenkins, James Gandolfini, and Ray Liotta, who knows a thing or two (actually, just one thing) about mob movies.

Butter

Jim Field Smith

Yara Shahidi, Jennifer Garner, Ty Burrell

October 5

Little is really known about this long-delayed satirical film. How long-delayed was it, you ask? The early buzz was that Jennifer Garner’s character, a housewife and competitive butter-sculptor, was based on Presidential front-runner Michele Bachmann. Director Jim Field Smith hails from the U.K. but takes on heartland rituals in this look at the dairy-art circuit, whose protagonist is an adopted orphan daring to take on the longtime champions (Ms. Garner and Mr. Burrell). Somehow, Hugh Jackman, Olivia Wilde, and Alicia Silverstone fit into this puzzle--no word on what Ms. Silverstone, noted vegan, did around the enormous blocks of milk product.

Argo

Ben Affleck

Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin

October 12

Ben Affleck, flamed-out Hollywood star, has had a successful second career as the director of Boston heist pictures, but his third directorial effort, Argo, finally takes him outside of the old neigborhood. Mr. Affleck stars as a CIA officer who comes up with a cunning plan to rescue escapees during the Iran hostage crisis--he fakes the production of a sci-fi movie (Iran makes a lovely moonscape, after all) and attempts to airlift out the Americans, pretending they’re crew members. Sounds fairly tidy, but we’re sure complications will ensue--and we haven’t even read the Wired article on which the whole thing’s based!

Cloud Atlas

Tom Twkyer, Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski

Tom Hanks, Hugo Weaving, Halle Berry

October 26

Everyone believed that the mammoth David Mitchell novel, encompassing millennia of human experience, was unfilmable. And maybe everyone was right! All we know right now is that the Wachowskis (of the Matrix films) and Tom Twkyer (of Run Lola Run) have turned all of their creative over-enthusiasm towards putting together the most rollicking movie ever to contain both a Martin Amis-style comedy of manners and a post-apocalyptic agrarian community on Hawaii. Somehow, major stars like Tom Hanks and Halle Berry fit into the equation. As you read this description, you’re already significantly behind; you’d better start reading Cloud Atlas this minute if you hope to have it finished and marginally comprehended by October!

Keira Knightley in 'Anna Karenina'

Skyfall

Sam Mendes

Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes

November 9

The next, and long-delayed, installment in the James Bond story comes with a schmancy pedigree--director Sam Mendes has experienced diminishing returns since the 1990s, but he still, you know, has an Oscar. So too does Javier Bardem, who promises to be the most menacing villain since Dr. No. Un-bedecked by golden trophies are new Bond girls Naomie Harris and Bérénice Marlohe, but that’s hardly the point, is it? About the plot, little is known, but for the promise of spy-queen M’s past coming back to haunt her. All the better: it’s about time Judi Dench got to stretch her acting muscles in the Bond movies.

Anna Karenina

Joe Wright

Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Aaron Taylor-Johnson

November 9

Joe Wright just can’t resist the charms of Keira Knightley--and he’s hardly alone! Mr. Wright made it cool to think Ms. Knightley was a good actress by directing her in well-received roles in Pride & Prejudice and Atonement--without his attentions, she’s languished a bit. But Ms. Knightley is back doing what she does best (aristocratic hauteur, wearing elaborate garments, telling off gentlemen), and this time, she’s got a complement of men to choose from. Though all of us English majors know how it ends, let’s form factions rooting for Jude Law’s Karenin or Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Vronsky--or, at least, let’s decide after the fact who had the most convincing Russian accent.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn--Part 2

Bill Condon

Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner

November 16

The series that launched a million magazine covers has finally ended (though the saga of its stars’ offscreen love will surely inflate the bottom line at many a media company for years to come). It’s the final installment of the Twilight series--or “Saga,” as the producers would Germanically have it--and if you waited a week to see any of the fine independent films released last week, get in line early for popcorn. Every tween and teen and regressing thirtysomething within a five-mile radius cannot wait to see just how the Bella-Edward vampire-mortal union ends--even though the book came out years ago! No matter. Fandom, like vampirism, is eternal.

Life of Pi

Ang Lee

Irrfan Khan, Gérard Depardieu

November 21, 2012

Another unfilmable novel adapted to the screen? It must be fall! Ang Lee attempts something of a comeback with his adaptation of Yann Martel’s Booker Prize-winning novel, wherein a boy and a tiger are trapped on a raft floating in uncharted waters. Mr. Lee has a lot to prove, having released a couple of films consecutively that couldn’t quite match Brokeback Mountain in terms of popular acclaim. Perhaps the transfer to a wholly new environment, with the challenge both of a dense, allusive text and of a, you know, tiger, will move him to new heights! If not, it’ll at least be the season’s most compelling misfire.

Les Misérables

Tom Hooper

Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway

December 14

Anne Hathaway has subjected you to her songs through lo these many Oscar ceremonies--and now she finally has the opportunity to belt it out on film! The world’s most energetic entertainer shifts down a gear to play doomed prostitute Fantine in the adaptation of the world-rattling Broadway show; her costars include Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe playing, respectively, the unfairly convicted Valjean and the doggedly devoted Javert. Other cast members in director Tom Hooper’s first post-Oscar flick include Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter as the garrulous-to-a-fault Thénardiers, but it’s Ms. Hathaway who’s likely dreaming a dream... of Oscar!

Affleck in Argo.

In a time of cultural anemia and economic crisis, everything else in the arts may be slowing down, but at the Toronto International Film Festival (a k a TIFF), it’s full-speed ahead. Cannes and Berlin have gone on a diet. Even Venice, the oldest film festival in the world, scaled back this year’s program dramatically, showing a total of 82 movies instead of last year’s 104—only 18 of them considered good enough to compete for prizes. But now, in its 37th year, TIFF is like a goose stuffed for foie gras until its insides explode, showing no sign of trimming the fat from its over-stuffed schedule. By stubbornly trying to be everything to everybody, TIFF has drawn sharp criticism from veteran journalists who accuse it of losing focus and prestige, but the excess rages on. This year, the Toronto programming committee, oblivious to the darts, brags about a bloated schedule of 372 films in 10 days—289 features and 83 shorts from 72 countries, 146 of them world premieres—undaunted in the festival’s power to lure stars, directors and films of dubious quality. “It’s too much!” is the constant cry from everyone suffering from bloodshot eyes, sudden strangers to nutrition and sleep, walking around in a daze with scorepads like spectators at a roulette wheel, living on pizza and NoDoz. 

Beginning at 8 a.m. and ending the next morning at 2, after the zombies, aliens and serial killers roll out in the late-night screamfest called “Midnight Madness,” the movies come at you in sections. You get the serious stuff that usually ends up at Lincoln Center, like the latest films from Marco Bellocchio, Bernardo Bertolucci and Spike Lee—all vying for attention between red-carpet arrivals of Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley and Ryan Gosling. Gebo and the Shadow is an overdose of tedium by Portugal’s Manoel de Oliveira, who has directed a new film at age 103 with Jeanne Moreau and Claudia Cardinale, and I walked out in the middle of a thing by South Korean Hong Sang-soo called In Another Country about three women in the seaside town of Mohang, all named Anne, and all played by Isabelle Huppert. The thing that makes TIFF so popular is the diverse menu that satisfies every palate—commercial narrative films for the black-tie galas, experimental works about digital technology, weightier subjects that run the gamut from pedophiles and incest to imprisoned Iranian filmmakers, global change and savage criminals littering the streets with corpses, and art-house puzzlements nobody will ever see again, even in an art house. Just when you think you can’t see one more decapitated head, viral epidemic or cancer patient dying of Alzheimer’s, help arrives in the guise of Tommy Lee Jones in the rousing war saga Emperor, playing granite-faced, pipe-smoking General Douglas MacArthur as he decides the fate of Japan’s Emperor Hirohito following his surrender to Allied forces in 1945, and, on a lighter note, Bill Murray doing an awesome impersonation of none other than—get ready—President Franklin D. Roosevelt when he hosted the King and Queen of England in 1939 on the first visit of a reigning British monarch to the U.S.A. The film is Roger Michell’s Hyde Park on Hudson, and it’s one of the don’t-miss events of the forthcoming movie season. Packed with details, insights and historical footnotes, including an amorous relationship at FDR’s upstate New York manor with his second cousin Daisy Suckley (Laura Linney), it’s a charming film of elegance and humor, but never played for obvious laughs. I enjoyed it immensely.

In the pile of pretentious, incomprehensible gibberish that keeps film festivals going and multiplex audiences heading for the exit doors, make a note to avoid Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder,a lethally boring 112-minute fiasco that is like watching milk curdle. As much as I hated last year’s Malick Muddle, The Tree of Life, this simpering dreck makes that one look like an action epic with Stallone and Schwartzenegger combined. Plotless and almost mute, it features Ben Affleck as a meandering misfit in Paris who meets a woman and returns with her to Oklahoma for the wedding, but the relationship peters out and he wafts into the arms of an old childhood sweetheart, played by gorgeous Rachel McAdams. No Tree of Life dinosaurs this time, but nothing else happens either, and you can count the lines of dialogue on one hand. It usually takes Mr. Malick an average of 10 years between films. In four decades, he’s only made four. This one he should have burned after four days. More cinematic novocaine arrives with The Master, the latest hyperthyroidal discharge from Paul Thomas Anderson, arguably the biggest phony working in films today. Except for his 1997 debut feature, Boogie Nights, I have loathed every loopy, sensationalistic thing he’s done. This one is no exception. It pretends to be about a violent, dimwitted, unfocused mental case (Joaquin Phoenix, in a projectile fit of hysterical overacting that is laughable) who falls into the clutches of a smarmy religious cult leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman does L. Ron Hubbard). The wags predict it will blow the lid off Scientology. But The Master is not really about anything. It opens next week at home, so the firing squad can wait. Another grueling fiasco auditioning for American apathy and empty box-office receipts is a three-hour ordeal called Cloud Atlas,co-directed by Germany’s Tom Tykwer and Lana and Andy Wachowski, the freaky team responsible for the forgettable trio of Matrix pictures. It’s based on a sprawling novel of time-traveling, mind-bending, millennia-hopping pretentious excess by David Mitchell that everybody called “unfilmable.” They were right. A ridiculously bewigged Tom Hanks, looking like Elton John with steel-framed specs and long blonde curls, heads a befuddled cast that includes Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant and Susan Sarandon—all playing five or six different roles of both genders in disconnected narratives set on 19th century slave ships, on the streets of modern crime-riddled California, on a doomed planet in a futuristic galaxy in outer space, in the music world of 1931 Belgium, in a retirement home near London and amid the rocky ruins of a post-apocalyptic country (Hawaii, anyone?) populated by tattooed natives babbling a language that has not been invented yet. You sit there, slack-jawed and worn out after three hours of zoned-out twaddle, waiting for something to make sense, but nothing ever does. “Ambitious” is the word they’ve been tossing around at TIFF, but the nouns that most accurately describe Cloud Atlas are too rude to use in public.

The best film I have seen is Argo, a brilliant and complex enactment of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, compellingly directed by and starring Ben Affleck as CIA “exfiltration” agent Tony Mendez, who rescued six members of the American Embassy in Tehran and sneaked them past the machine guns and out of the country by disguising them as a Hollywood film crew. A great film and a total triumph for Mr. Affleck, Argo is destined to be one of the year’s biggest hits. Close but no cigar, the vigorous, violent but ultimately disappointing cop-buddy drama End of Watch also opens this week at home. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena are officers Taylor and Zavala, two gung-ho ghetto cops patrolling the back alleys, train tracks and crack dens of South Central L.A., where the Latinos have moved in on the blacks, the fried chicken takeout joints have been replaced with taco stands, and everybody is killing everybody else in sight. The protagonists hate their perps, and they hate their fellow officers, but they love their jobs, relishing every opportunity to bash heads, spill blood and destroy as much property as the law allows. In fact they take their jobs so seriously that the Mexican drug cartel orders a contract on their lives, and the tragedy is inevitable. It ends with a hero’s funeral, but there’s a ritual for that, too. Meanwhile, the exploits are harrowing and never dull—endangered infants tied and locked in a closet by crack dealers, two kids trapped in a burning building, heads severed by vengeful thugs and dialogue so filthy it turns the air blue. There’s a pattern to the violence and a feeling of creepy authenticity as End of Watch keeps tabs on the ironic, irrevocable mix of danger and boredom in a cop’s day-to-day routine driving a squad car in a battle zone. But there’s nothing in it we haven’t seen in better, hard-assed cop movies like Woody Harrelson’s Rampart and the partnership of veteran renegade Denzel Washington and rookie Ethan Hawke in the gritty Training Day. This is probably as it should be, since the movie marks the directorial debut of David Ayer, who wrote Training Day. The brutality is intense, but it’s ugly to look at, seen in dizzy hand-held camera angles and close-ups of profiles shot through windows and windshields with camera lenses mounted on car hoods. There isn’t much trajectory or plot, and despite the obvious thrills, End of Watch doesn’t stretch far. The acting is first-rate, but is there any reason why Jake Gyllenhaal has to be bald?

Redford in The Company You Keep.

Of course it doesn’t matter how much movies change. For better or worse, there will always be directors and writers obsessed with the classics. So we have new takes on Great Expectations—starring Ralph Fiennes as the terrifying convict Magwitch, the too-handsome-to-live Jeremy Irvine (War Horse) asPip, Helena Bonham-Carter as a demented Miss Havisham replete with creeped-out cobwebs in her hair—and Anna Karenina, in a lavish production that teams director Joe Wright for the third time with his muse, Keira Knightley. The former gets a brand new ending. Director Mike Newell explains: “Well, Dickens has two, and I didn’t like either one.” But purists will be happy to know that despite Ms. Knightley’s beauty, Tolstoy’s Anna still ends up on the same railroad tracks. One of my favorite books-on-film at TIFF transports the dysfunctional characters in Henry James’ What Maisie Knew to contemporary Manhattan with wrenching success. In the story of a little girl 6 years old trapped between two sets of parents separated by divorce, Julianne Moore weaves an indelible tapestry of motherhood in peril as a pop singer too self-absorbed to take care of the child who loves her, but it is really Alexander Skarsgard, as the new husband she selfishly marries to be a babysitter, and incandescent newcomer Joanna Vanderham, as the child’s new stepmother, who become surrogate parents and steal the movie in the process. I also loved actor-director Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep—a galvanizing dossier on what happened to the radical terrorists on the FBI’s Most Wanted List known as “Weathermen” who have spent the last 30 years in hiding after they killed American citizens in the 1960s to protest the war in Vietnam. In his best role in years, Mr. Redford plays a former nonviolent member of the Weather Underground, now an Albany lawyer and single dad whose orderly world is turned upside down when he is exposed by an ambitious reporter (Shia LaBeouf), falsely accused of robbery and the murder of a bank guard, and judged guilty by association. To clear his name, he is forced to root out the friends in the underground movement from his past who are all fugitives. His cross-country search grows from one phone call into a mystery of epic twists and relentless thrills. Proving again that good movies can offer extensive entertainment value and say something valid about history at the same time, Mr. Redford directs a sprawling canvas of diverse characters and heads a cast that includes Julie Christie, Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte, Chris Cooper, Sam Elliott, Brendan Gleeson and Stanley Tucci.

Toronto wouldn’t be the same without the kink factor. Yesterday I saw a man on roller skates in a vampire costume, passing out leaflets for an animated cartoon featuring the voice of Adam  Sandler as Dracula, and after dinner with the fabulous Marion  Cotillard, who plays a double amputee in love with an illegal bare-knuckle fighter in a new film about sex and the disabled called Rust and Bone, I dropped in at a party plugging a grim horror about a heroin dealer, where Jell-O shots were served in hypodermic needles. Sometimes you avoid a potential disaster like an outbreak of mad cow disease just by reading the synopsis. Example: something Canadian (always a risky sign) called Tower. “34-year-old Derek, who lives at home with his parents, is single and without a career. Although he aspires to be a graphic animator, he works part-time at his uncle’s construction company. He wanders the street alone and frequents nightclubs in search of companionship. When a neighborhood raccoon becomes a constant nuisance by tearing up his family’s garbage, Derek sets out to catch it. It will change his life forever.” They stayed away in droves.

But long lines persist for 29 documentaries, about everything from political prisoner Angela Davis on the 40th anniversary of her acquittal as a terrorist, to Marilyn Monroe and Snoop Dogg. There’s Caught in the Web by Kaige Chen (Farewell, My Concubine),about China in the Internet age, and Storm Surfers in 3-D,which captures the breathtaking adventures of the surfing cultists who risk their lives riding the waves during hurricanes and other disasters at sea. One of the best is Barry Avrich’s long-awaited Show Stopper, a fascinating chronicle of the rise and fall of disgraced Canadian producer Garth Drabinsky, who masterminded Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals, entertained glamorous friendships with Diahann Carroll, Elaine Stritch and Chita Rivera, and landed in prison for what the court called “avant-garde bookkeeping.” Penetrating stuff, as is Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out, about one of the longest running sagas in  the history of the California criminal justice system—the never-ending legal battle to lure a once-great director out of exile and back to the U.S. after 30 years. The case just drags on and on, altering the lives of both Polanski and Samantha Geimer, the underage girl he is accused of raping, who just prays for peace and wishes it would all go away, like a bad movie. Or a bad cocktail—every year there’s a new one. This year, Bruce Willis, Jennifer Lawrence, Viggo Mortensen, Hugh Grant, Mark Ruffalo and Bradley Cooper are scarfing down a concoction named after Gwyneth Paltrow—Tromba tequila, cassis and ginger beer with blackberries and a splash of Tabasco for 20 bucks a belt.

Then you stagger past the big stone church on the corner of Bloor and Avenue Road where every year the pastor posts a talisman to live by. This year, in big letters: “The world is bad enough. Let’s make it better. Think simplicity.” Whoever wrote that has never been to the Toronto Film Festival.

rreed@observer.com