On Movies: Will Toronto deliver another bumper crop?

Last year's Toronto International Film Festival launched more than a few exceptionally good, and, as things turned out, Oscar-contending titles:

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

,

Eastern Promises

,

Juno, Michael Clayton

,

No Country For Old Men

, and

Persepolis

among them. Not bad.

This year's festival, which will begin Thursday and run through Sept. 13 in the movie-crazed Canadian town, boasts 249 features from 64 countries. To quote the Toronto-based singer-songwriter

Ron Sexsmith

, there's gold in them hills. And probably more than a few 2009 Academy Award nominees-to-be in the mix.

At the same time, there are several "difficult" projects that hope to use North America's most important film festival to gain acclaim, attention, and good box office numbers down the line:

The Lucky Ones

, from

Neil Burger

, director of

The Illusionist,

is a road movie looking to shrug off the Iraq war-movie curse (as in nobody's bothered to see any of those pics). It stars

Rachel McAdams

,

Michael Peña

and

Tim Robbins

as three returning veterans on a wild cross-country drive.

Synecdoche, New York

, which had its premiere at Cannes in May, marks screenwriter

Charlie Kaufman's

directing debut. The

Being John Malkovich

/

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

surrealist has assembled a crack cast -

Philip Seymour Hoffman

,

Catherine Keener

,

Samantha Morton

and

Michelle Williams

- for the dark tale of a hypochondriacal theater director and the women, and worry, in his life. Sony Pictures Classics will roll the movie into art houses starting in October - hoping for a bounce from Toronto.

And

Steven Soderbergh's

two-part

Ché

- with

Benicio Del Toro

as the revolutionist and T-shirt icon

Ché Guevara

- is another high-profile pic that's counting on emerging from TIFF with a formidable buzz.

There should be smoother sailing for some studio and specialty division releases boasting big stars and top directors:

Anne Hathaway

is the lead in

Jonathan Demme's

Rachel Getting Married

, a family comedy that's alreading generating strong word of mouth, and is slated to start its theatrical run in early October.

Miracle at St. Anna

, from

Spike Lee

, offers the inspired-by-history drama of four black American soldiers trapped in an Italian hill town during World War II. It will open Sept. 26.

Appaloosa

is an old-school Western directed by and starring

Ed Harris

, with

Viggo Mortensen

,

Jeremy Irons

and

Renée Zellweger

along for the ride. And

The Duchess

boasts the cheekbones and beaming smile of

Keira Knightley

, in the role of 18th-century noblewoman

Georgiana

,

Duchess of Devonshire

.

Ralph Fiennes

and

Hayley Atwell

costar, and Atwell, at least, makes it sound pretty provocative.

"My character is this lover and confidante of the duchess," she said in an interview in Philadelphia last month, when she was plugging

Brideshead Revisited

. "But she also ends up being the lover and confidante of the duke. And they live together as a menage a trois for 25 years, and I found that concept fascinating."

Fascinating!

The Duchess

will open Sept. 26.

The

Coen Brothers

, multiple Oscar winners for

No Country for Old Men

, will return to Toronto this year with lighter, loopier fare:

Burn After Reading

is a screwball spy caper with

Brad Pitt

and

Frances McDormand

as Washington fitness instructors who try to extort the CIA, and get in way, way over their heads.

George Clooney

,

Richard Jenkins

,

John Malkovich

and

Tilda Swinton

are caught up in the huggermugger, too.

Burn After Reading

, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival this week, will open Sept. 12.

Among the many, many titles going into Toronto looking for distribution deals are

Darren Aronofsky's

The Wrestler

, with

Mickey Rourke

as a retired pro on the comeback trail;

Richard Linklater's

Me and Orson Welles

, with

Ben Chaplin

,

Claire Danes

and

Zac Efron

;

Management

, with

Jennifer Aniston

,

Woody Harrelson

and

Steve Zahn

;

Gigantic

, with

Jane Alexander

,

Paul Dano

,

Zooey Deschanel

and

John Goodman

; and

John Stockwell's

Middle of Nowhere

, a teen romance with

Eva Amurri

,

Anton Yelchin

and

Susan Sarandon

.

Alternative programming.

The summer of 2008 has had more than its share of mega-blockbusters -

The Dark Knight

,

Iron Man

,

Hancock

,

Wall*E

,

Kung Fu Panda

- and a mess of other hits have crossed the $100 million mark. (A few more will do so by the close of this Labor Day weekend.) So, tons of people have seen tons of Hollywood fare: action, comic-book adaptations, suspensers,

Judd Apatow

comedies, stoner farces, teen romps, the lot.

Which means that your time should be freed up to check out some smaller, but no less rewarding, movies. And in many cases,

more

rewarding movies.

Five titles currently on the marquees of various Ritzes and outlying Philadelphia-area art-house venues are absolute must-seers:

The Edge of Heaven

, a multifaceted missing-persons drama set in Germany and Istanbul, from the great German-Turkish director

Fatih Akin

.

Frozen River

, with

Melissa Leo

as a desperate single mother involved in smuggling illegals across the New York-Canadian border.

Man on Wire

, a documentary about

Philippe Petit

, the French daredevil who, in 1974, walked a steel cable between the tops of the World Trade Center's twin towers.

Tell No One

, a taut, terrific French thriller, adapted from a

Harlan Coben

best-seller.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

, with

Javier Bardem

,

Penelope Cruz

,

Rebecca Hall

and

Scarlet Johansson

in a quadrangle of love and longing, set in sun-splashed Spain, from a top-of-his-game

Woody Allen

.