Tomorrow marks the opening night of the 44th annual New York Film Festival up at Lincoln Center. Unlike its downtown cousin the Tribeca Film Festival, which over the past few years has spread like a mushroom cloud over Manhattan, hell bent on dominating the public’s consciousness every May, the NYFF remains small and manageable, presenting a mere 28 features (Tribeca had over 250 this year). This year features an especially New York touch to the overly European artsiness of the fest: Lincoln Center is being ripped up for impending construction and looks like garbage, so all those stereotypical snooty French cinephiles will have to navigate through a construction yard to get to the venues.

As the snobbiest film festival on the East Coast (if not the Western Hemisphere) you may think the lineup has nothing to offer those of you who spent this past Friday sneaking flasks full of bourbon into Jackass: Number Two. Not so. This year’s edition of the fest features the first US showings of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (Oct. 13-14), with Kirsten Dunst as the doomed queen and Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI frollicking around Versailles in 1780 to the sounds of Gang of Four, New Order, and The Strokes. Bow Wow Wow is used not once, not twice, but three times. And I could’ve sworn that was Phoenix in the background as the royal violin quartet.

The closing night selection (Oct. 15) is Pan’s Labyrinth, the new horrorshow from Guillermo del Toro (Mimic, Blade II, Hellboy) and it’s the creepiest, most horrifically violent fairy tale I’ve ever seen. Picture some crazy-ass mix-up of Tim Burton, Harry Potter, and a bloody Spanish Civil War thriller. Fans of David Lynch will be happy to know that the maniac is back with another epic mind-fuck, The Inland Empire (Oct. 8-9). This one clocks in at just over three hours, and one story thread centers on a human family with oversized rabbit heads that act out sitcom scenarios on a stage set. What! Ah but the real treasure of the fest is a straight-up monster flick from South Korea: The Host (Oct. 7 & 9) is about a mutant fish that’s born when toxins from a U.S. army base flow into the Han River. An enormous pissed off guppy with teeth proceeds to terrorize the residents of Seoul, and I’m sure they all blame George Bush.

The 44th NYFF runs September 29- October 15 at Alice Tully Hall and Walter Reade Theater. Check the full schedule. Over the next two weeks, Razor Apple will give you the low down on the films screening.