PARK CITY, Utah — Which two or three films will define Sundance 2010?
Here are some prospects generating the most advance buzz:
“Buried” — A selection of the Midnight program that launched “The Blair Witch Project,” this creepy-sounding thriller is a one-man show featuring 90 minutes of Ryan Reynolds in a coffin, buried alive somewhere beneath Iraq.
“The Company Men” — A comeback effort for Ben Affleck and Kevin Costner, this is a drama directed by “ER” chief John Wells that looks at a corporation’s fall.
“happythankyoumoreplease” and “The Romantics” — Seriocomic ensembles about twentysomethings on the verge of adulthood. Malin Akerman is in both; Katie Holmes and Josh Duhamel are in the latter.
“Holy Rollers” — Based on a true story about Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn smuggling ecstasy in the 1990s. With Jesse Eisenberg (“Zombieland”).
“Jack Goes Boating” — In Philip Seymour Hoffman’s directorial debut, he stars in a New York yarn of love and betrayal.
“The Killer Inside Me” — Casey Affleck, so disturbing in “The Assassination of Jesse James,” stars in a noir about a small-town sheriff.
“Nowhere Boy” — Biopic about John Lennon as a Liverpool teen caught between his Auntie Mimi (who raised him) and his mom, Julia.
“The Runaways” and “Welcome to the Rileys” — “Twilight” star Kristen Stewart tries to break out as an actress with, respectively, a movie costarring Dakota Fanning about Joan Jett’s early days in LA punk and a family drama in which patriarch James Gandolfini struggles with his grief.