The final delectation in my smorgasboard of filmy delights was Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn, and it was a confronting epic of survival in the jungle which involved eating live snakes! And maggotty rice! And helicopters, and waterfalls, and madness. Lots of madness. I would have liked a little more political engagement - it was set during the American bombings of Laos in the leadup to the Vietnam War, and while there are lots of interesting stories to tell about that time, they are about the Laotian communities not the US forces. Herzog's apoliticism in this context feels dishonest. There's a quote I can't find by (Sir) Salman Rushdie, talking about books set in British India that focus on English people's experiences, that says to tell only those stories is so far from an accurate portrayal that it becomes a lie.

Anyway, that concludes my festival wrapup! I'm off to Thailand tonight for three weeks or so, and this dreary, drizzly, morose city can kiss my plane's shiny metal ass.

dir Sarah Polley

Away From Her is a beautiful, beautiful film that had me weeping by the time the credits rolled. I mean, a Neil Young soundtrack is poignant enough on its own, but match it with a crystalline, snow-covered setting in Canada, a careful, tender portrait of a marriage, the heart-rending effects of Alzheimers, Julie Christie's elegance, and poetry, and I'm totally lost. Helpless, helpless, helpless. This is Sarah Polley's first feature film as director, and its based on an Alice Munro short story, and it's brilliant. It eclipses Hallam Foe to become second best of the fest for me.

One of the motifs that resurfaces throughout Away From Her is a travel book by Auden and MacNiece called Letters From Iceland, which the husband reads to his ever more vague and unresponsive wife . I went and borrowed Letters From Iceland this week from the library, and it's just the most amazing book. Clay hates being read aloud to, but I couldn't help myself - particularly when I got to the Icelandic proverbs ("Pissng in his shoe won't keep a man warm for long"), the fairy tale, the photos of the whaling station, and of course the beautiful poem that rang out so clearly in the film:

Isn't it true however far we've wandered
Into our provinces of persecution
Where our regrets accuse, we keep returning
Back to the common faith from which we've all dissented,
Back to the hands, the feet, the faces?

dir Daniel Krige

West is the only Australian film I saw during the film festival, and the screening I attended was the Sydney premiere - Lyn and I were sitting amongst crew members including the costume designer. The atmosphere was right, I was enthused, but the film was terrible.

It wasn't the actors' fault - Nathan Phillips, Khan Chittenden and Gillian Alexy put in nuanced and attractive performances as marginalised slackers from Sydney's western suburbs. It wasn't the cinematographer's fault either - the shots of concrete underpasses and train stations were far more beautiful than they had any right to be. No, the blame can be laid pretty squarely at the feet of the script, which was melodramatic without providing real emotional climaxes and which flattened out the complexity of the film's characters and issues. Your girlfriend is pregnant to your criminal best friend, so you confess to the murder he committed and then jump under a train? Sure. Fine. Whatever.

dir Mahamat-Saleh Haroun

I was a little skeptical about this one - a film set in Chad and based on the themes of Mozart's last opera - but boy was I wrong. Dry Season draws a subtle and surprising picture of the relationship between a war criminal and the boy who seeks revenge against him, encompassing themes of love, maturity, family and resolution. And baking. The ending is intensely powerful and the two lead actors have the most beautiful, expressive gestures. You can check out the trailer.

dir David MacKenzie

When this film gets its mainstream release, as it undoubtedly will, you should go and see it. A coming-of-age story featuring Billy Elliot (real name, Jamie Bell), Hallam Foe offers a totally convincing portrait of grief with a healthy dose of bizarre humour. Here's a skeleton scenario that gives away as little as possible: Hallam lives in a castle by a lake, wears a skunk hat and likes watching people. He moves to London and begins an unusual relationship with a young woman who resembles his dead mother. The whole thing rings true, emotionally, while staying fresh and surprising in every scene. Good music, too. Second best film of the festival!

dir Andre Techine

The Witnesses (Les Temoins) is set at a really fascinating moment in history: the mid-80s, when AIDS first broke in the West. The pathos, fear and confusion of this time isn't the focus of the film, however: instead, each of the four main characters offers a typically brusque, French, "fuck you" to the issue, the viewers and each other. They're so unlikeable! It was kind of brilliant, in a way. But also uninvolving and tedious.

dir Paul Schrader

This is it, people. My hands down, number one favourite film of the festival (so far). The Walker is a darkly seductive and caustically funny murder mystery set amongst Washington's elite. The film tracks the vulnerability of its main character, Carter Page III (Woody Harrelson in a mesmerisingly dissonant performance, complete with wig and false teeth), a gay man with father issues who escorts the wealthy wives of others to cultural events. The character of Page is based on Nancy Reagan's walker, and his fragile place in society is powerfully evoked. The trio of women he orbits is played with equal parts of brutality and charm by Kristin Scott Thomas, Lauren Bacall and Lily Tomlin. I totally adored the music, particularly the haunting synth-pop of Byran Ferry's "Which Way to Turn".

So, producer Deepak Nayar spoke at the screening and said that The Walker hasn't found a distributor in Australia. If you're reading this now, wield influence in the film industry, and love richly nuanced films like Donnie Darko and Mulholland Drive, then it's time for action! Get your people to call someone else's people, or whatever it is you people do.

dir John Carney

Tell me what's not to love: a genial, bushy-haired busker plays his guitar on Dublin streets by day, working in his Da's hoover repair shop by night. He meets a young Czech girl who sells flowers, sings and plays piano. Together, they make beautiful Irish indie music.

There were only two small flaws that stopped me raving as much about this film as I will for the next one. First, there really is no getting around the fact that Once is a musical, starring real life musicians Glen Hansard (of The Frames) and Marketa Irglova. Instead of a plot, it offers a series of loosely strung together, film-clip style musical sequences. "Oh look, a room with a piano in it." "Why don't you play me one of your songs?" "OK". I know other people like musicals, but I can't stand them (except Les Mis), and even the very lovely aforementioned Irish indie pop and charmingly ambiguous characterisations can't save the format. The second flaw is a hint of what I hate in The Kite Runner: the film builds in its own ideal reception. The characters chime in, "Did you really write that? It's amazing", "You're incredibly talented", "Fucken brilliant, son." It doesn't really leave much space for your own reactions.

Still, Once is beguiling, adorable cinema.

dir Lee Yoon-ki

A kind but enigmatic young girl leaves Seoul to impersonate the daughter of a dying man in a Korean village. Maybe she is actually his daughter. The village elders bicker. During a long, silent scene in which the lead actress washes her elbow, Beth dozes off. She wakes up briefly to witness a long, silent scene in which the lead actress stares at her feet. Then picks a book up and puts it down. Then stares at her feet some more. Beth stretches her own feet into the aisle and falls back asleep.

The deadly combination of a crawling pace, subtitles, a late screening time and a cultural context I didn't fully grasp conspired against Ad Lib Night, but you know, if you're the sort of person who likes slow, dreamy Asian cinema then this is the sort of film you'll like.

dir Louise Osmond, Jerry Rothwell

This documentary tracked the mesmerising story of Donald Crowhurst, a young engineer who left his wife and four young children to participate in the 1968 race to become the first person to sail solo around the world. The story had the contours and the pathos of a classic Greek tragedy, with brutal corporate sponsors, failing equipment and the indifferent violence of the sea playing the role of fate while Don's own poor decisions and moral weaknesses ticked the box of hubris.

Despite a paucity of material that left the doco feeling rather stretched, I loved watching it because of all the big, abstract issues it brings into play. The conclusion is stunning, inevitable.

It's time to get cinematic. I have a 5 day window in Sydney and my Mission Enjoyable is to fit in as many films as I can physically manage while still leaving a respectable amount of time for shopping, Balmain cafes and ferry rides. If Lyn ends up reviewing films at lynscreens.blogspot.com you should definitely check in, but I'll also be posting reviews here.

The latest HBO drama to be imported here was shoved so far back in Channel 9's programming that it dropped into SBS, at an actually quite reasonable time. I'm always up for a bit of Sunday 8.30pm action - even if I feel nothing will ever come close to the spinechilling Bleak House adaptation of 2006.

Be that as it may! BigLove has considerable charm, following the intrafamilial tensions of a polygamous American family. I think the clearest strength is the actors who play the wives: each is powerful, complex and mesmerising. If Jeanne Tripplehorn was the elder matriarch in my unconventional family arrangement, I know I'd do whatever she said. I also really love the way it teases out issues of religion and belief - these always make for crackerjack serious television.

Unfortunately, Bill Paxton as the harried husband is flat and a vacuum of personality. To be honest, I'm not even sure what his character's name is. Al? Phil? Bill? It doesn't seem to matter. Who knows, though, later weeks may allow him to develop.