With the annual Toronto Film Orgy now complete, life returns to some semblance of normalcy as those of us who have spent the last week and a half in a TIFF-induced haze start catching up on sleep and going back to our normal business. But before moving on a quick look back with what was meant to be a personal Top 5 list before it turned out I was just far too damn weak and indecisive to actually cut it down to the required number. So I've got six films in five slots and you can hit the links in the titles to find my full reviews of all of them.

5.  Last Ride by Glendyn Ivin / Accident by Soi Cheang (tie)
Yep, the conflict comes right at the beginning with a pair of unusual crime films tied for fifth place.

First, from Australia, is Gelndyn Ivin's debut film Last Ride.  The story of a man on the run from police with his young -- and mostly ignorant -- son in tow, Last Ride is a film less concerned with the actual crime itself and more with what happens afterwards. How do people get on with their lives, assuming they can at all? It's a tragic father-son road movie, an unusual coming-of-age tale where the move out of childhood comes with the realization that dad's a bad man. Ivin shoots absolutely gorgeous film, gets quite possibly a career best performance out of Hugo Weaving, and has discovered a legitimate child star in Tom Russell. It's the saddest, most emotionally draining film I saw in the festival, but beautifully so.

Also mining the crime vein is Soi Cheang's Hong Kong thriller Accident, the story of a group of killers who avoid police attention by staging all of their assassinations as elaborate accidents. And while this starts as a fairly standard caper -- albeit it one with an odd hook -- Cheang quickly turns it in to something else entirely, a precisely wrought study of one man's descent into paranoia and obsession. With the help of producer Johnnie To, Cheang has put together that masterwork of his career here and lifted himself into the very top ranks of Hong Kong directors.

4.  Symbol by Hitoshi Matsumoto
Hitoshi Matsumoto's Symbol is one of those films that is wildly resistant to any sort of casual, spoiler-free discussion but suffice it to say that it plays out something like a Franz Kafka short story, only with a MUCH better sense of humor. Matsumoto is a pop culture icon in his native Japan as one of the most popular comedians going, and here he delivers a deliciously absurd little story, one anchored by a remarkable physical performance from the writer-director-performer, and one that simply could not have come from anyone else anywhere in the world.

3.  Antichrist by Lars von Trier
How troubling is Lars von Trier's return to the horror genre? Troubling enough that it triggered a bout of public vomiting at one TIFF screening. The first 'traditional' film -- by which I mean non-Dogme style -- from von Trier in what seems like forever, the Danish master casts Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourgh in a tale of grief and guilt turned inwards in all sorts of unpleasant ways. Brutal, violent, occasionally breathtakingly beautiful to look at, and wildly transgressive Antichrist will, without a doubt, be one of the most controversial pictures of the year. Thankfully, it's also one of the best.

2.  Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans by Werner Herzog
Some genius producer thought it would be a good idea to slap the title of the Harvey Keitel-starring cult film on Werner Herzog's latest despite the two pictures having virtually nothing to do with one another but that one bad decision is pretty much the only wrong step this one takes. Herzog's tale of corrupt policing in post-Katrina New Orleans is a delirious subversion of the American action film -- a picture that delights in taking everything about the rogue hero image so embraced by so many, pushing it out to ludicrous extremes and then watching the whole thing spin. Nicolas Cage's unhinged performance is sheer brilliance, the best he's been since Adaptation and very nearly good enough to atone for all the years of horrible decisions Cage has made between that film and this. Plus it's got iguanas. The world needs more films with iguanas.

1.  Deliver Us From Evil by Ole Bornedal
My favorite film not just of the festival but of the entire year, Ole Bornedal's Deliver Us From Evil is a very nearly flawless piece of work, a beautifully constructed and brilliantly acted, shocking realistic descent into violence.  I don't want to just recap my review here - hit the link to get it - but I cannot recommend this one highly enough.