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By the time you read this, I will likely be en route to Park City, Utah to cover my fifth Sundance Film Festival. As you may have read, the annual indie film clusterfuck on ice is going through a period of transition. I have a story in this week's LA Weekly on how micro-budget films have, for better or for worse, been folded into this era of change. That said, as of this writing, I've seen less than a dozen of the 100+ movies set to unspool over the next ten days; after the jump you'll find a list of five films I'm excited to catch up with once I get up to the snow.

That January is a cold, long, barren slog of a month when it comes to film releases is nothing new. But it does seem worth noting that, along with a movie about a buff tooth fairy starring The Rock, Denzel Washington is being dumped into the muck. Washington's The Book of Eli opened today, and next up is Harrison Ford's Extraordinary Measures, which opens January 22. Mel Gibson (Edge of Darkness, Jan. 29) should probably get used to the weather. Xenu knows John Travolta has--his From Paris with Love leads off the second worst month of the year, February. Tom Hanks, you are next.