TIFF movies that shone the brightest

A Royal Affair shows how it all goes wrong in the Danish court. (TIFF)

Well it's a couple days after the fact, but chalk up the delay to sorely needed recovery time. TIFF burned brightly for 11 days and now the clamour is but a faded blur.

To make some sense of the 39 films I consumed in this carnival of cinematic gluttony, here's my tops of TIFF. A free association romp through the big screen moments that shone brightest.

• Anna Karenina

  Russian epic transformed into a pop-up piece of theatre with dizzying exuberance.

• Antiviral

  Achoo! Our celebrity sickness taken to the logical (and Cronenbergian) extreme).

• A Royal Affair

  Absolute power corrupts quietly in this chamber piece set in Denmark.

  The surviving Pythons salute Graham Chapman with a fictonal life story in A Liar's Autobiography. (TIFF)

• A Liar's Autobiography

  Graham Chapman sits on your face (animated in 3D!) while spinning wild and ribald tales of life before during and after the Pythons. Lively storytelling from someone dead for decades.

• BAD 25

  Shamon. A requiem for the Michael, the musician, phenom and artist. Must see for MJ fans.

• ILL Manors

  An epic hip-hop opera cast with pimps and pushers. Robert Altman meets Guy Ritchie without the ironic detachment.

• Kinshasa Kids

  Boom Boom Chaka. Street kids form a band and make a Tom Waits-worthy howl in this cinema verité look at life in the Congo.

• The Master

  Follow the leader. A riddle of a film, fall into the sad dark eyes of Freddie, the lost soul searching, searching never finding.

• On the Road

  Sal and Dean. Pavement, yellow lines and a bevvy of broads discarded like empty bottles. The Master, part two, but high on absinthe.

• Leviathan

  Slippery fishheads skidding lazily across the gore-filled deck. You many never eat sushi again. An abstract POV adventure into oceanic outer space.

• Rebelle

  A ghost with empty eyes directs our gaze to life of one child solider raised in the jungle of Congo, starving for kindness and affection.

  Matthias Schoenaerts and Marion Cotillard in Rust and Bone. (TIFF)

• Rust and Bone

  Street fighters, killer whales and Marion Cotillard. What more do you want?

• The Sapphires

  An Irishman and four Aussie aboriginals prove black, brown or pale, funk conquers all.

• Stories We Tell

  Rashomon of home movies performed as a high-wire act of storytelling. Shouldn't work. Does.