Not sure how many of these I'll be able to see, but a good number of the movies below will be the ones that have the critics moving into the Sundance screening rooms over the next week:

An American Crime - I mentioned this in the earlier post about movies I've seen, and I think a lot of people will be interested in this because it stars Catherine Keener as Gertrude Baniszewski, the woman at the center of a controversial child abuse/murder case in Indianopolis which has an odd resonance with some of the things that have been in the news in recent years. My review is coming soon...

Angel-A - French action filmmaker Luc Besson makes a more character-driven French romantic drama, in black and white no less! Has Besson finally embraced his French art film roots? (Since this will be opening soon, we'll probably be skipping this at the festival.)

Away From Her - Sarah Polley's drama isn't exactly a new movie, since it already played at the Toronto Film Festival in September, but as a member of the jury, Polley brought her directorial debut along as a special gift for anyone wise enough to check it out. (I wrote a bit about this in the "What I've Seen..." post and I hope to have a full review soon.)

Black Snake Moan - Of course, the new movie from Craig Brewer, director of 2005's big winner Hustle & Flow is going to have a lot of interest from the Park City residents, even if it's already scheduled to be released by Paramount Vantage next month. Unfortunately, I have a feeling I won't be able to see this one, unless I can somehow get into what is expected to be a packed first screening on the 24th.

Broken English - If you want to be an indepedendent filmmaker, you can't have a much better pedigree than to have John Cassavetes for a father and Gena Rowlands for a mother (not to mention brother Nick) so Zoe Cassavetes is in good shape with her debut feature, a romantic comedy starring Indie Goddess Parker Posey as Nora, a New York woman trying to find a relationship as ideal as her best friend's (played by "The Sopranos"' Drea de Matteo). Her first chance at real love comes in the form of a Frenchman played by Melvil Poupaud (who was amazing in Francois Ozon's Time to Leave!) Now, you can't go too wrong with Parker Posey starring in your film (The Oh in Ohio being an exception) but then Zoe got the always excellent Gena Rowlands (i.e. her own mother) to play Nora's mother , which makes this even more enticing.

Bugmaster - Legendary anime filmmaker Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira) makes his second foray into live action with this adaptation of a fantasy manga. That's about all I need to know to go see this.

Chapter 27 - There's been a lot of buzz for this drama about Mark David Chapman ever since the first still of an overweight Jared Leto was spotted in the news, and it's likely to be one of the most packed screenings, which I'm sadly going to be missing.

Chicago 10 - Brett (The Kid Stays in the Picture) Morgen is no stranger to Park City, and his intriguing new film is opening the festival, as he tries to redefine the docudrama genre with a movie about the trial of 8 protestors at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago... and it's partially animated!

Crossing the Line - I was a huge fan of Daniel Gordon's last documentary A State of Mind, and his third documentary set in North Korea will be in competition in the World Cinema doc category. This one is about Private James Dresnok, one of only four American defectors who crossed over into North Korea to desert his post with the U.S. Army. Once there, he ended up becoming one of the country's few Western film stars, by playing the "evil American" in the country's propaganda films. This should be another intense look at this fascinating country from Gordon.

Dedication - Actor Justin Theroux has been all over the place in the last few years, like in David Lynch's Inland Empire, but for this romantic comedy about a children's book author who gets inspiration for his next book from watching porn, he goes behind the camera to film the likes of Billy Crudup, Tom Wilkinson and Mandy Moore, who plays a ditzy young artist who Crudub has to collaborate with when his regular artists (Wilkinson) gets sick.

Delirious - Living in Oblivion may be one of the greatest films about the filmmaking process and Jim Jarmusch's cinematographer Tom DeCillo (who made that movie) reteams with Steve Buscemi for this movie about a paparazzo and a homeless kid (Michael Pitt) who tags along on his quest for celebrity photos, only to hook up with a sexy pop princess. This is DeCillo's first movie as a writer/director in five years.

And continuing the '90s indie flashback....

Fay Grim - Back in 1997, the profilic Hal Hartley made Henry Fool with Parker Posey and James Urbaniak, and nearly ten years later, they reunited for this follow-up, which focuses on Parker Posey's character. It played in Toronto, and it now gets its U.S. premiere at Sundance.

Fido - Canadian director Andrew Currie follows Shawn of the Dead into the world of the zombie comedy with his look at the relationship between a boy and his pet zombie. It played the midnight movie track at Toronto, and now it does the same at Sundance. It was going to be released by Lionsgate in a couple months, but they just moved it back to June. Definitely will try to see this one while here, as I've been interested since hearing about this at Comic-Con in '05.

Ghosts - This year's Sundance is all about documentary directors making dramas and you don't get more documentary than Nick Broomfield (Kurt and Courtney, Biggie and Tupac). His narrative debut is about a young Chinese woman, smuggled into the UK to earn money to send to her family in China. It stars Ai Qin Lin, who took from her own illegal immigrant experience. I loved Stephen Frear's Dirty Pretty Things and living in Chinatown, I'm interested in the material.

The Good Night - Not to be outdone by Zoe Cassavetes, this drama from Jake Paltrow (son of the late Bruce and Blythe Danner and brother to Gwyneth) stars Martin Freeman ("The Office UK") as a down-on-his-luck musician who falls for the exotic Anna, who is played by Penelópe Cruz.

Grace is Gone - Another writer-turned-director, James Strouse (Lonesome Jim), tells this tale about the father of two girls, played by John Cusack, who learns that his wife has been killed while serving in Iraq, but instead of telling his daughters, he takes them on a road trip to a theme park in Florida with his liberal brother (Alessandro Nivola). (Hmm, coud be this year's Little Miss Sunshine...if it were a drama?)

Hounddog - You can't get much more advanced hype than this movie set in the '50s which features 13-year-old Dakota Fanning as a Southern Catholic girl obsessed with music, who does a striptease and then is raped by her Elvis-like idol. Tongues will be wagging about Deborah Kempmeier's debut, which is part of the festival's dramatic competition.

Interview - Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was murdered a few years back,but actor Steve Buscemi has taken up the reigns basing his third movie on Van Gogh's 2003 film of the same name about a cynical political journalist (Buscemi) assigned to interview a shallow actress, played by Sienna Miller. (Feel free to insert your own jokes in there.)

King of California - The film debut of Mike Cahill is produced by Alexander Payne and Michael London of Sideways fame, and it stars Michael Douglas as a man whose spent two years in a mental institution, who tries to reconnect with his teen daughter, played by Evan Rachel Wood. (I expect this one to get scooped up at the festival, too.)

The Legacy - Almost everyone who's seen Géla Babluani's debut 13 Tzameti has been impressed with his talent, and for his second movie, he worked with his legendary director father Temur Babluani, to tell a strange story involving three French friends taking a two-day journey to the Georgian castle they inherited, meeting all sorts of strange characters along the way. This is entered in the World Dramatic competition.

Life Support - Queen Latifah stars in the festival closer from Nelson George about a former drug addict who gets involved with an AIDS outreach program, causing turmoil within her own family.

Longford - The latest drama written by Peter Morgan (who just won a Golden Globe forThe Queen) stars Jim Broadbent as the British politician who got behind a notorious child murderer (played by Samantha Morton) in order to advocate prisoner rehabilitation. The HBO Film will screen at the festival before its debut on the cable channel next month.

Never Forever - Anyone who needs proof that Vera Farmiga is trying to usurp Parker Posey's Indie Queen crown look no further than this new film from Gina Kim (Invisible Light) about a woman married to an Asian-American who starts an affair with an illegal Korean immigrant. Farmiga stars in another movie at Sundance this year, as well.

The Night Buffalo - Another potentially Oscar-nominated writer also has a movie at Sundance, that being Babel's Guillermo Arriaga, who adapts his own novel about best friends Manuel (Y Tu Mama Tambien's Diego Luna) and Gregorio and the girl who comes between them, when Gregorio enters a psychiatric hospital for nightmares he's having and she ends up sleeping with Manuel. Yes, Diego Luna is in another movie about a love triangle, except this one is a drama that gets dark when something happens to Gregorio.

The Nines - John August wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the Charlie's Angels movies, and he's one of the many screenwriters presenting their directorial debuts at Sundance. This one has three actors (Ryan Reynolds, Hope Davis and Melissa McCarthy) in three separate scenarios that are only tangentially linked. Can't wait to see this.

Offsceeen - Danish filmmaker Christoffer Boe's latest seems like a strange film-within-a-film in which an actor friend of Boe's asks him to document the deteriorating relationship with his girlfriend.

The Pool - Chris Smith (American Movie) returns to Sundance competition with a drama set in India, working with Indian actors in hindi--and here we though Alejandro Iñárritu was ambitious!--this is the story of a "room boy" at a hotel who spots his own personal oasis on the other side of a wall. (This is another movie I expect to be scooped up pretty quickly.)

Red Road - Andrea Arnold's feature-length debut about a Glaswegian woman whose job monitoring CCTV cameras goes a bit far when she starts following an ex-convict whose just been released. Katie Dickie and Tony Curran are absolutely amazing in this, plus it's part of an interesting concept called Advance Party, which means there'll be two more movies with these two great characters/actors. Tartan will release this here in April after winning an award at Cannes and just about every award at the Scottish BAFTAs.

Resurrecting the Champ - Rod Lurie, director of The Contender, returns to film after five years with this story about a news reporter (Josh Hartnett) looking for a big story, and finding it in the form of a homeless man (Samuel L. Jackson) who used to a boxing great who everyone thought was dead. This will probably be released later this year by the Yari Film Group, maybe looking for a long-awaited award for Jackson?

Rocket Science - Another doc-turned-dramatic director, Jeffrey Blitz (Spellbound) turns his camera to a Jersey high school in this film in competition at the festival. It'll be released by Picturehouse over the summer.

The Savages - Video director Tamara Jenkins (Slums of Beverly Hills) shows up at Sundance with her second feature, which has already been scooped up by Fox Searchlight. It stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney as siblings, who have been separated for years, who reunite to care for their aging parent. Sounds like movie magic in the making if you ask me.

The Signal - Gotta love a good horror anthology, and this one, involving a transmission broadcast through every cel, radio and television that causes violent, uncontrollable chaos, needed three directors and three parts to tell it. Now, granted, Stephen King wrote a book with a similar premise and Eli Roth is supposed to be directing it, but this movie beats them to the punch. It'll debut at midnight, always a great time to see this kind of movie. (I still remember seeing "28 Days Later" and "The Eye" at midnight screenings in Tribeca and what an impact they had on me.)

Slipstream - Anthony Hopkins wrote and directed this stream-of-consciousness film about an actor/screenwriter (played by Hopkins, of course) who lives in reality and his own imagination, two worlds that suddenly clash when characters from his latest screenplay start appearing in his life and vice versa. (Maybe it should have been called Even Stranger Than Fiction?) Of course, there are hundreds of actors interested in working with Hopkins and he got a lot of them to be in his directorial debut, including Christian Slater, John Turturro and Jeffrey Tambor.

Smiley Face - The new movie from Greg Araki (Mysterious Skin) is playing the festival's midnight track, and it stars Anna Faris as a pothead who eats her roommate's cupcakes starting a day that quickly gets out of control.

Snow Angels - All the Real Girls director David Gordon Green's latest film is in competition this year as he heads north for a movie about three different interrelated couples, ranging from a high school guy named Arthur (Michael Angarano) in his first romance to his former babysitter and co-worker, played by Kate Beckinsale, whose marriage is falling apart, as is Arthur's parents. (This is the 2nd film at Sundance which stars Griffin "After Hours" Dunne, so this really is going to be a great festival!)

Son of Rambow - Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith, the men better known as Hammer & Tongs (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) take on a more personal story of a young boy, deprived of television, who's suddenly exposed to the world of film in the form of Sylvester Stallone's First Blood. I'll definitely be seeing this and hoping to talk to Garth and Nick sometime next week.

Summer Rain - Antonio Banderas directs his second film--the Sundance Guide wisely pretends that Crazy in Alabama never happened--this one about young men coming of age in '70s Spain. Maybe this will give us a chance to see if any of his Antonio's work with Pedro Almodóvar rubbed off on him.

Teeth - Also in competition is this strange thriller about a Christian teen saving herself for marriage when an ugly case of date rape brings out the worst in her. Put it this way... think about the title and of the myths of "vagina dentata" and you can imagine what horrors are in store for guys who see this movie. (Maybe this year's Hard Candy?)

The Ten - As a fan of The State, I will welcome any movie written, directed or starring any of its members (which are a lot) so I'm very excited about this new movie from David Wain, who directed Wet Hot American Summer. It's based on the Ten Commandments and stars the likes of Ken Marino, Adam Brody, Gretchen Mol, Liev Schreiber, Winona Ryder, Paul Rudd, and many more.

Trade - This Lionsgate thriller about a 13-year-old girl kidnapped by Russians and forced into the slave trade, stars Kevin Kline as the Texas cop who ends up trying to find the girl after his own loved one is abducted. The good news is that it's co-written by Jose Rivera of The Motorcycle Diaries, so I expect this to be at least two or three steps above that awful mini-series "Human Trafficking" in terms of its writing.

Waitress - New York actress Adrienne Shelley was brutally murdered before her movie would debut at the festival, but her story of a waitress (played by Keri "Felicity" Russell) in a bad marriage to Jeremy Sisto of "Six Feet Under" who gets pregnant is likely to have a lot of interested parties when it premieres on Sunday.

Year of the Dog - Most will know Mike White as the guy who wrote The Good Girl and School of Rock, but this year, he makes his directorial debut with this comedy about a woman (played by Molly Shannon) and her dog. It will be released by Paramount Vantage sometime later this year, one presumes.

Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait - Okay, I'll admit it. This is just a movie I want to see cause I'm such a huge football fan. I'll always make time to watch a movie about the sport, even if it's only about the only decent player on that lousy (and very lucky) French team.

Zoo - This is a poignant and arty documentary about a man who is terminally injured after having sex with a horse and filming it. No, I'm not making this up, nor will I be seeing it, even if it's not as graphic and lurid as it may sound. (And to avoid angry letters from the movie's distributor THINKFilm, I won't be referring to it as "the horse f**king movie" either.)