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This year, A-list actors (Jake Gyllenhaal! Reese Witherspoon! Benedict Cumberbatch! Kristen Stewart!) remarkably reinvented themselves in movies that were not quite as fantastic.

Winner: Nightcrawler

Chuck Zlotnick / Open Road Films

This year, the Toronto International Film Festival showcased fabulous actors at the top of their game, but in movies that were merely good, ones with solid construction and thoughtful direction, but had little by way of the artistic daring or cinematic spark that TIFF 2013 had in ample supply.

One film that stood out as an exception this year, however, was the electrifying psychological thriller Nightcrawler, which is also an acidic media satire that is also a showcase for arguably Jake Gyllenhaal's most fully realized performance to date. He plays Lou Bloom, a relentlessly ambitious and upbeat bottom feeder who discovers a passion (and talent) for capturing the kind of lurid crime scene footage that is the stock-in-trade for local TV news. Writer-director Dan Gilroy dares us to connect with Lou even as we're horrified by his actions. His camera is always alive, even when it's simply watching Lou wear down the defenses of his self-possessed (and morally empty) producer, played perfectly by Rene Russo. This is a dark, biting movie, and it was one of the best things we saw at TIFF this year.

Distribution: Opening on Oct. 31, from Open Road Films. —Adam B. Vary