Here's how the Toronto International Film Festival makes me crazy:

Traffic problems keep me from getting here on the first day until late enough that I only have time for one film. I open my Press & Industry Screening Schedule (which, we are warned, should be guarded with our lives as they will not be replaced if lost) to see what's showing around 10 pm.

Here's what I had to choose from: Ang Lee's Lust, Caution; the Coen Brothers' No Country For Old Men, Canadian maverick Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg, Jodie Foster in Neil Jordan's The Brave One, the new Michael Moore documentary Captain Mike Across America, and George Clooney in Michael Clayton.

And to think that on the drive up I considered just going to see the show at Second City instead!

If you're going to fight a war you have to have a plan to get you through the hard decisions. I opt for the Michael Moore movie on the grounds that it's in the biggest theater and therefore least likely to be sold out. Bad choice. Comprised of footage from the college tour Moore did on the eve of the 2004 election, it's a disposable, self-glorifying oddity that will only give his critics ammunition.

Well, Day 1 is a wash - on to Day 2.

It takes a few days to get into the Toronto groove of running from my lodgings (where on the hottest day of the year the AC isn't working) to the press office to checking in with publicists. Not to mention trying to stay hydrated in weather that guarantees I'll arrive at every screening soaked in sweat.

Still, it's a relatively low-key day and I squeeze in four movies. Fugitive Pieces, which was the official opening night film. Hopes are high here for this adaptation of a highly respected Canadian novel about the lifelong obsession of a man with the loss of his family to the Nazis. It's directed by native son Jeremy Podeswa, who made the terrific feature The Five Senses in 1999 and has since become something of a house director at HBO. But while the film is respectfully crafted and sensitive as can be, it also seems more concerned with mood and content. I was left unmoved, unlike the woman at the screening who was sobbing loudly as the end credits ran.

My luck doesn't improve much as I check out some of the other high-profile films in preparation for the first round of interviews tomorrow. Ang Lee has only made one film that didn't thrill me, Ride with the Devil. But I have to add Lust, Caution to that category. The movie has been getting attention for the fact that the MPAA has rated it NC-17, a rating it deserves for a few borderline explicit sex scenes. Unfortunately, they take up only a few of the 157 minutes in this film about an assassination plot in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in 1942, a lot of which could have been left on the cutting room floor.

I'm also not as blown away as some I've spoken to about David Cronenberg's thriller Eastern Promises, about the Russian mafia in London. There are great set pieces, including a fight in a steam bath that you will be hearing about a lot, but it seems a bit anonymous, hardly the work of a director who practically invented the buzz word "transgressive."

I don't have such high expectations for Mother of Sighs, in which Italian horror meister Dario Argento finally gets round to the third witch story in a trilogy begun with his classic Suspiria and continued in the delirious but enjoyable Inferno. WIth minor digital effects and lots of cheesy gore, Mother of Sighs looks like it might have been made in the early 80s, the classic heyday of Eurotrash cinema. The audience is openly laughing at the terrible acting, random accents and gratuitous nudity, but it's affectionate laughter. It's been awhile since Argento's glory days, and while some of the lurid excess is fun, it's a shame to think that he's been reduced to parodying himself.