The 49th edition of the New York Film Festival kicks off tonight with a gala screening of the Oscar hopeful Carnage, directed by Roman Polanski and starring a powerhouse cast that includes three Academy Award winners (Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster and Christoph Waltz) and one nominee and respected character actor (John C. Reilly). Although it comes at the tail end of the festival season, following the higher-profile Toronto and Venice media circuses, the NYFF has its fair share of big premieres and A-list attendees jostling for awards attention. Here are the five biggest stories to keep an eye on during this year's festival, which runs from September 30 to October 6.

Writer/director Jeff Nichols' first feature, Shotgun Stories, ranks as one of the finest filmmaking debuts of the past decade. Now, following an acclaimed run on the festival circuit, his second effort Take Shelter blows into theaters and instantly jumps to the top of the list of 2011's very best films. A family drama, a psychological horror story and a rich character study all rolled into one, Take Shelter is a beautifully assured work of art that doubles as an up-to-the-minute portrait of the country's mood. When future generations study this specific period in American history, this film will function as an evocative look at the Way We Lived Then.

After a nearly six-year stint in the editing room, Kenneth Lonergan's long-delayed sophomore feature Margaret finally arrives in theaters still feeling somewhat unfinished. The version of the film that opens in (extremely) limited release today is rife with jarring tonal shifts, clunky dialogue, overly mannered performances and least a half-dozen subplots that lead nowhere. And yet despite -- or maybe, because of -- the movie's free-form messiness, it possesses a vitality that more carefully manicured studio movies, even one like last week's exceptionally well-crafted Moneyball, sometimes lack. Margaret is a movie that demands the viewer's attention and engagement throughout its sprawling two-and-a-half hour runtime, as Lonergan spins his tale without directing us as to how we should react to or feel about what's unfolding onscreen. It's only in the film's moving, but perhaps too-literal, final scene that his intentions become clear. Margaret is a music-less opera, complete with screaming matches that resemble arias and plenty of heightened emotion and melodrama played against the beautiful backdrop that is New York City.

Oh, Anna Faris. I think she's great, I really do. I root for her, so I hoped that What's Your Number? was going to be a fun combination of her raunchy humor mixed with silly rom-com clichés that I may or may not secretly enjoy when I do not have to critique it in a public forum. Unfortunately -- and I really use that word strongly -- this movie was pretty terrible. An identity crisis of a movie, What's Your Number? was so sloppy and relied so heavily on archetypes, it felt like watching an infomercial -- you know the extended one for The Magic Bullet, where there's the one cranky guy who hates broccoli and then the crazy old lady smoking the cigarette? Clearly, those writers have made it to the silver screen. There were so many problems with this film, in fact, I think it'd be fun to celebrate the premise and give you a seven-item list of what went wrong.

Back in the early '00s, Will Reiser was a twentysomething associate producer on the much buzzed-about HBO series Da Ali G Show, where he met and befriended then-newcomers Seth Rogen and his writing partner, Evan Goldberg. It was the beginning of one of those classic "rise up the Hollywood food chain" stories, until Reiser's momentum was derailed by an unexpected cancer diagnosis. To complicate matters further, the affected tumor was located on his spine and the risky surgical procedure that was required to remove it would be followed by a lengthy (and painful) recovery period. Reiser went through the diagnosis, the surgery and the recovery and now he's turned his cancer story into a semi-autobiographical feature film, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing his onscreen alter ego and Rogen as a character that's a thinly-veiled version of... Seth Rogen.

In the fall of 2005, celebrated writer/director Kenneth Lonergan started shooting his sophomore feature Margaret, a drama about the aftermath of a tragic bus accident featuring a cast that included Anna Paquin, Matt Damon and Mark Ruffalo. Six years later, the movie is finally being released in theaters. What exactly took so long? Well, it depends on who you ask. One version of events paints Lonergan as an indecisive perfectionist that was unable to deliver a cut he was satisfied with. Another version points the finger at one of the producers, claiming he attempted to encroach on the director's contractual "final cut" provision and didn't pay his share of the movie's budget. Either way, Margaret remained trapped in limbo until Lonergan finally came up with a cut that he and the studio were ready to release. The only question now is will it be worth the protracted wait? We'll have to see come Friday, but in the meantime, here's a scorecard of some of the other recent movies that have suffered similarly long delays before hitting U.S. screens.

Although he's only wielded James Bond's license to kill in two movies -- with a third on the way sometime next year -- Daniel Craig is wasting little time preparing for life after 007. Since the release of Quantum of Solace in 2008, the British actor has shot five non-Bond features, including this summer's Cowboys & Aliens and two highly-anticipated fall films, Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn and David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. He's also headlining the new horror movie Dream House, which isn't being screened for critics in advance of its opening this Friday... a move that doesn't inspire much confidence in its quality. Still, you can't blame Craig for booking so many gigs in between Bond movies; he's undoubtedly noticed how his predecessors in the role of the world's most famous secret agent have occasionally struggled to move on once their days ordering shaken, not stirred martinis are done. Here's a look back at how the other Men That Have Been Bond have fared once the mantle was passed to someone else.

Can't those Autobots and Decepticons all just get along?

Filmed before his starring role in Captain America: The First Avenger, but getting a belated theatrical release after that summer blockbuster raised his profile, the legal drama Puncture gives Chris Evans a chance to prove he can play more than just 'roided-up action heroes or the dreamy guy in rom-coms like The Nanny Diaries and next week's What's Your Number. For his part, Evans seizes the opportunity and runs with it, making the most of the role of flamboyant lawyer, Mike Weiss, whose brilliance in court is matched only by his bad behavior outside of it. Never one to turn down a line of cocaine or casual sex with random strangers (a hobby that costs him his marriage), Mike is a walking disaster area, but the chaos that is his personal life only serves to fuel his sharp legal mind. That's really the only reason his friend and business partner Paul Danziger (Mark Kassen, who also co-directed the film with his brother, Adam Kassen) hasn't dropped him from their struggling firm -- he may be a deeply flawed human being, but Mike is simply too good a lawyer to kick to curb.

Like most movie critics, I've been looking forward to this fall's onslaught of prestige pictures after the summer blockbuster season. From Moneyball and The Ides of March to Melancholia and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the next three months are packed with hugely promising, very serious titles from directors, writers and actors I respect a great deal. But amidst all the high drama, there's always room for a 'splodey, ass-kicking action picture, which is why I've been anticipating Killer Elite since I first caught wind of it in late July.