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By films "to watch," I mean that I'll be watching them: here's a list of ten films that I haven't seen, but am excited to check out over the next week and a half at the Toronto Film Festival. Notably not on this list: the opening night film, Score: A Hockey Musical; TIFF entries I have seen and can recommend (and will likely review later), such as Kelly Reichart's Meek's Cutoff and Stone, already infamous for its trailer's glimpse at Edward Norton in dreadlocks; and films I've seen and cannot recommend, including...uh, well, we'll get to that soon enough. For now, let's stick to the realm of high hopes. The following films are listed in alphabetical order, appended with the time and date that I'm currently scheduled to see them. For immediate reactions after the screenings, you can follow me on Twitter. Expect longer considerations of what I've seen in this space roughly once every 24 hours.
Armadillo (4:30pm, 9/10)

The rare documentary to debut in a competitive slot at Cannes, this chronicle of a Danish platoon in Afghanistan by director Janus Metz, won the Critic's Week's prize at May's festival. The Danes are on fire when it comes to nonfiction filmmaking--see: Burma VJ, Into Eternity, the insane Sundance sensation The Red Chapel, and Matz's own mail order bride doc Love on Delivery, which felt so intimate it pulled off the feat of making the camera seem invisible.

Beginners (9pm, 9/11)

Mike Mills --artist/filmmaker/husband of Miranda July-- based this feature on his own experience with his father, who came out of the closet late in life. Christopher Plummer plays the dad, Ewan Macgregor plays the son, and Inglorious Basterds' Melanie Laurent is the beautiful French lady who "motivate(s) him to surpass his self-prescribed limitations." It sounds insufferable. I've heard good things!

Black Swan (9am, 9/10)

Darren Aronofsky's follow-up to The Wrestler premiered last week at the Venice Film Festival where, according to our own J. Hoberman, it was both "warmly received and borderline risible." Sounds about par for the course for Aronofsky, whose films can usually only be taken seriously to the extent that their performances are undeniable. My fingers remain warily crossed that, uh, Golden Globe winner Natalie Portman will deliver.

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams (9:45 PM, 9/13)
Werner Herzog, in the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc cave, with a 3D camera and "lights that emit no heat." It almost sounds like a filmmaking challenge out of The Five Obstructions (speaking of which, see the 7th film on this list).

Cold Fish (12:15 pm, 9/15)
After Sion Sono's last film, the incredible four hour teen romance/upskirt-centric porn culture satire/theological inquiry Love Exposure, I will watch anything thing with the director's name on it. That Fish reportedly tells the story of "the Japanese equivalent of Sweeney Todd" is just gravy.

The Conspirator (11:30 AM, 9/12)
Directed by Robert Redford, starring Robin Wright Penn as the sole woman charged in relation to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and James Macavoy as the young Civil War soldier tasked to defend her. The TIFF catalogue bills it as "Redford's return to his independent filmmaking roots." So should we consider it an admirable or suspicious show of restraint that Redford didn't just premiere this at his own major film festival, Sundance?

Erotic Man (9:45 am, 9/11)
Another Dane, another documentary. Sort of. Directed by Jorgen Leth, this essay film has the filmmaker traveling the world, visiting Haiti, Panama, Brazil and elsewhere, to repeatedly cast and film scenes of naked women in hotel rooms. The TIFF synopsis drops the names of Keats and Resnais to put the project in context, though I'm skeptical that Leth (Lars Von Trier's partner in The Five Obstructions) could have his hand in anything as dry as all that makes it sound.

Oki's Movie (9:15 am 9/16)
Hong Sang-Soo's second movie to hit the festival circuit this year, after Ha Ha Ha, which won the Cannes Un Certain Regard prize but as of yet has no U.S. distribution. Expect neurotic, bespectacled barely-veiled alter egos for the filmmaker, overlapping barely-there romances, and lots and lots of soju.

Promises Written In Water (4pm, 9/14)
A new directorial effort from Vincent Gallo is news. A film that Gallo was meant to simply star in, until he allegedly hijacked the production, is, uh, bigger news. A film that Gallo himself describes as his attempt to "make choices as if this was the first movie ever made and not to buy into the story of what cinema should be"? That's an event.

The Trip (2pm, 9/12)
Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, in character as a food critic and sidekick, improvise their way through a culinary road trip. Presented as a six-episode TV series in Britain, it's the latest from highly prolific filmmaker Michael Winterbottom, who already has two Stateside releases under his belt for 2010, The Killer Inside Me and The Shock Doctrine.