Have seen Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox twice now, and am still in awe. The old-school stop-motion animation is dazzling, as are the puppets, the props, the production design…. But it’s Anderson’s and Noah Baumbach’s story, adapted from the Roald Dahl book about an unflappable fox exploring his true nature -- raiding the chicken coops and proving his love for wife (a landscape artist) and son (a slightly “different” sort of kid) against beagles, shotguns and cider floods – that really makes the film so charming, and, well, kind of profound. George Clooney, as the voice of “Foxie” (a newspaper man, by the way), brings the character to life doubly so. Fantastic Mr. Fox is beyond fantastic -- it's the best animated film of the year, and maybe the best cussin' film, period.

Lee Daniels is the West Philly filmmaker who got Halle Berry her Oscar (he produced Monster’s Ball), who talked Kevin Bacon into playing a Philadelphia pedophile (Daniels produced The Woodsman) and had Cuba Gooding Jr. and Helen Mirren entwined in each other’s nakedness on a grassy slope in Fairmount Park for the strange hitman romance, Shadowboxer (Daniels produced and directed).

And now, with Precious: Based on the Novel `Push’ by Sapphire, the fearless Daniels has brought the story of an obese, illiterate 16-year-old black girl who is pregnant by her father to the screen. And Oprah and Tyler, as well as audiences and critics, are talking Academy Award noms for the film and its stars. Whatever you think of the film's sometimes over-the-top depiction of abuse and domestic squalor, Precious, with the 350-lb Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe in the title role, represents another bold move for the 49-year-old filmmaker.

Surprising just about everyone with its strong opening weekend (#1 spot, $32.7 million), Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are is determinedly not your typical kid flick – a fact that director Jonze, his co-writer Dave Eggers and the book’s author/illustrator (and film’s producer) Maurice Sendak are rightfully pleased with themselves about.

Carol Altschuler, of Elkins Park, left a voicemail earlier this week: Based on a two sentence description she’d read in the Inquirer, she ventured into town over the weekend to catch Bird’s Eye View at the Roxy Theater.

This is part of her review, the message she left on the phone: “Unbelievable … The movie was a riot… The whole animal thing, the alien thing… I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a real find!”

Ah yes, the animal thing, the alien thing. Cybela Clare, the Rittenhouse Square writer/director/producer and star of Bird’s Eye View, communes with cockatoos. She has an ardent animal rights agenda that makes Brigitte Bardot look like Mademoiselle Milquetoast. And then there’s the alien stuff: a flashback to Clare’s character’s childhood, a little girl gone missing in a blast of light. There’s are testimonials from women who were abducted and impregnated by aliens. There’s even stuff about missing bovine body parts – cow organs taken into space on flying saucers.

A true indie, a piece of cinematic outsider art, Clare’s faux-doc thriller combines Dan Brown huggermugger with paranormal X-Files intrigue with dialogue that’ll make you laugh. But behind it all is a sentiment, and a sense of spiritual adventure, that defies ridicule. Bird’s Eye View is an odd and goofy enterprise, shot with the aesthetics of an infomercial, and boasting a plot that’s literally all over the map (the Mediterranean, South America, Central Park).

Altschuler says she’s urging her friends and family to check out Bird’s Eye View. I second that emotion. Really. It’s weird, wacky, kitschy, campy, and ultimately kind of sweet, too.

Playing at the Roxy Theater, 2023 Sansom Street, 215-923-6699. Click on the Bird’s Eye View website here.

Let’s see -- 271 movies in ten days, that’s 27.1 movies a day. Which means that most Toronto Film Festival-goers are going to have wildly divergent takes (and tickets) as they queue up with their circled and underlined schedules, waiting for whatever the next show is at the Varsity or the AMC plexes, the Elgin or the Cumberland, or the other venues spread around town. (A town celebrating its 175th year.)

And so far, my festival has been a grim one – thematically, that is. With the exception of the happily loopy, sort-of-true The Men Who Stare at Goats and its tale of secret paranormal military ops and New Age army dudes (including a Dude-like Jeff Bridges), I’ve seen nothing but doom, death and depression.

Sure, the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man – drawn from Joel and Ethan’s experiences growing up in 1960s suburban Minnesota -- is laced with typical Coensian irony and close-up absurdity. But the film’s protagonist, a physics professor played by Michael Stuhlbarg, has the luck of Job: his wife wants a divorce, his brother, a jobless social misfit, has moved into the family house, the tenure committee has been receiving unfavorable, anonymous letters, and a foreign student is threatening to sue. On top of that, the X-rays from this ill-fated father and husband’s most recent doctor’s visit seem ominous. Laff riot.