The Toronto Film Festival is the critic's reward for making it through the madness of summer movie season and Comic Con, a chance to sit down and watch movies that their makers actually cared about, movies with a coherent plot and very few corporate tie-ins. Exhausted critics, turn your eyes to the north and toward September, where in Toronto, you shall be free.

The festival's programmers announced today a handful of the films that will be screening up there, including the festival opener, Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly's Charles Darwin biopic Creation. As reported in Variety, TIFF director and CEO Piers Handling said "We are pleased to open the Festival with such an impassioned look at Charles Darwin, especially on the year marking the 200th anniversary of his birth."

Other films include some Cannes standouts (Jane Campion's Bright Star, Lee Daniels' Precious), some acting greats making splashy returns (Kristin Scott Thomas in Partir, Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Bill Murray) and maybe just one movie with an exclamation mark in the title, Steven Soerbergh's The Informant!. Of course, this is all just part of the galas and the special presentations, which means there will be lots, lots more films to look forward to. As expected, though, Toronto is already getting off to a strong start.