The Sundance Film Festival has announced its films in competition, and even though there are plenty of non-competition films to come, what's there already is definitely intriguing. Which 8 films are we most curious about? Read on to find out:
1) Howl
Directors: Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman
Since his fantastic 2008 double-header of Milk and Pineapple Express, James Franco's made more headlines for his TV tomfoolery and college course-taking. Howl (pictured above) returns Franco to his indie roots in this unconventional biopic of poet Allen Ginsberg that also stars David Strathairn, Jon Hamm, and Mary-Louise Parker. Co-director Rob Epstein is no stranger to Franco's work -- he directed the Oscar-winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, which heavily inspired Gus Van Sant's take on the slain politician.
2) Welcome to the Rileys
Director: Jake Scott
Ridley Scott's son Jake has been a sterling music video director (he helmed "Everybody Hurts" for R.E.M. and "Fake Plastic Trees" for Radiohead), but his only feature film credit is the misguided 1999 action comedy Plunkett and MacLeane. A decade later, Jake's giving it another go with Welcome to the Rileys, already notorious as the movie where Twilight's Kristen Stewart plays a troubled stripper. James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo costar as the couple who takes her in.
3) Hesher
Director: Spencer Susser
Another music video director hitting up Sundance this year is Spencer Susser, who made his name directing videos for...uh...Crazy Town and The Offspring. Well, we all gotta start somewhere! Presumably there's more to Susser than that, as he managed to lure a tatted-up Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Natalie Portman to star in the story of a 13-year-old boy who becomes entangled with an off-kilter mentor (Gordon-Levitt) and a grocery clerk (Portman).
4) Lucky
Director: Jeffrey Blitz
Jeffrey Blitz directed one of the most crowd-pleasing documentaries ever: Spellbound, the tale of precocious kids competing to become spelling bee champion. He mined a similar milieu for his narrative feature debut, Rocket Science, but he's returned to the doc world for Lucky, which follows the lives of ordinary people after they've hit the lottery jackpot.
5) Blue Valentine
Director: Derek Cianfrance
Ryan Gosling has made films since 2007's Lars and the Real Girl, but none have been seen yet (since the Weinsteins continue to delay the release of his Andrew Jarecki-directed thriller All Good Things). Blue Valentine, then, affords us the first opportunity to watch Gosling on screen in quite some time. It's the story of a married couple (Gosling and Michelle Williams) flashing back to better days, and if that sounds familiar, it's because (500) Days of Summer and Peter and Vandy used the same format at last year's Sundance. Let's hope for some original spark.
6) I'm Pat Fucking Tillman
Director: Amir Bar-Lev
The story of Pat Tillman was virtually crying out to be chronicled: Already an unconventional player in the NFL, he quit football and enlisted in the U.S. Army alongside his brother in the aftermath of 9/11. Less than two years later, he was killed in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan that the Army Special Operations Command covered up. Amir Bar-Lev, who investigated claims of fraud in the art world with My Kid Could Paint That, directs.
7) Winter's Bone
Director: Debra Granik
Debra Granik made quite the impact with her harrowing 2004 film Down to the Bone, which won the Dramatic Directing Award at Sundance that year and jolted a then-little-known Vera Farmiga into the spotlight. Can she work the same magic for 19-year-old actress Jennifer Lawrence, who plays an Ozark Mountain girl searching for her drug-dealing father?
8) Casino Jack & The United States of Money
Director: Alex Gibney
Guess he's keeping that title!