10 films to watch: Which will be Sundance fest's breakout?

Posted by blah | Posted in , , | Posted on 03:20

Little Miss Sunshine, Napoleon Dynamite, Once, Precious and ___ .

Time to fill in the blank.

Hollywood is heading to the Sundance Film Festival in search of the next big art-house movie, hoping to find something as popular as those films that premiered at the annual movie showcase in Park City, Utah.

The 10-day gathering opens today as 113 films try to make the same mark as such classics as Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Kevin Smith's Clerks and Steven Soderbergh's sex, lies and videotape. Here are 10 movies generating early interest.

Howl

Allen Ginsberg's Howl begins: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked ...." This is the story of how the poem defined the Beat Generation and led to an obscenity trial in 1957. "I think a lot of young men from my generation are drawn to the Beats, and that has to do with their search for something new ... breaking the rules, and also breaking out of rigid strictures," says James Franco, who plays Ginsberg as a brilliant but troubled student who unleashed his frustrations through his most famous work. "If you know the events of his life ... you can see them in the poem."

The Runaways

Twilight's Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning play 1970s rocker girls Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, who became punk sensations before they could legally drive. "They were so young," Stewart says. "They were 15, all of the girls, and they were hanging out in Hollywood at all the famous clubs that are infamous now." But Stewart says the film is also about the risks of growing up too fast. "It put (Jett) in a place where she could go further," Stewart says. "But she thought the band could have been bigger and was disappointed about how it turned out. It's something really close to her. She was so young."

Welcome to the Rileys

Kristen Stewart's other starring role at the festival. James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo (Oscar nominee for Frozen River) play a grieving couple, pushed apart by the death of their daughter. During a business trip to New Orleans, Gandolfini encounters Stewart while searching for some easy passion. "He meets this girl, this runaway, street kid, stripper who is prostituting herself and squatting in an abandoned, devastated Katrina house," Stewart says. Gandolfini tries to become her protector, saving someone else's daughter, if not his own. But the girl doesn't want a savior. "She tells him, 'You can't just come in and fix everything.' "
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