TORONTO — Hottie Megan Fox as a man- eating (literally) de monically possessed cheerleader, or an arty psychological thriller that climaxes with genitals mutilated by a pair of pruning shears?
These were the choices as the Toronto International Film Festival began unreeling more than 200 features in a 10-day orgy of movies from around the world that will possibly yield this year’s “Slumdog Millionaire,” which went on to Oscar glory after premiering here a year ago.
Dead opposite each other as screenings began yesterday were “Jennifer’s Body,” a comic zombie movie written by Diablo Cody that will open in the US next week — and Danish director Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist,” which is showing here after scandalizing the Cannes Film Festival and will turn up shortly in the New York Film Festival and American theaters.
I’ll have a review of “Jennifer’s Body” — directed by Karyn Kusama (“Girlfight”) — next Friday. But rest assured it’s no squeaky-clean “Twilight.”
“Hell is a teenage girl” is the opening line, and there are asides like, “I’m not even a back-door virgin anymore.”
Screenwriter Cody is one of a quartet of “Juno” alumni in the TIFF lineup: That film’s director, Jason Reitman, has “Up in the Air” with George Clooney, screening today, and there are new features with Ellen Page (as a roller derby player in “Whip It,” Drew Barrymore’s directing debut) and Michael Cera (in the self-described “Youth in Revolt”).
In von Trier’s film, Willem Dafoe plays a psychotherapist who takes his wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) to a cabin in the woods to get over the death of their toddler.
The fest’s official opening-night gala was “Creation,” starring real-life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly as evolution theorist Charles Darwin and his religiously devout wife in the year before he provoked debate with the publication of “On the Origin of Species.”
Also making its bow was another Cannes premiere, Pedro Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces.”
Penelope Cruz plays a rich man’s mistress who talks him into bankrolling a movie whose director she falls in love with. Part noir, part melodrama, part film-
industry spoof, “Broken Embraces” is not a major Almodovar work, but it’s still a lot of fun.
More at nypost.com/blogs/ movies.