FESTIVALS 01/19-29: SUNDANCE International Film Festival (U.S)

Twelve-year-old Lonnie Sloan is a well-to-do New York rich kid and Karen Bruckner is the more ordinary, impoverished New York kid. They happen to meet one day on the street in their neighborhood and hit it off.

The owner of a seedy small-town Texas bar discovers that one of his employees is having an affair with his wife. A chaotic chain of misunderstandings, lies, and mischief ensues after he devises a plot to have them murdered.

A free-spirited 15-year-old girl flirts with a dangerous stranger in the Northern California suburbs and must prepare herself for the frightening and traumatic consequences.

Sundance prizewinner. Fictionalized portrait of one of history's great literary couples: Stein & Toklas. Summer 1930s France, Alice tends to ailing Gertrude; they visit Fernande Olivier, Guillaume Apollinaire, others; and Hemingway pops in.

Over 16 hours, in February, 1987, a man confronts jealously and rage as a love affair falters. Photojournalist Mel Hurley returns home to San Francisco on the eve of his birthday, expecting his lover, Carmen, to meet him at the airport and tell him if she will be exclusively his. She's not there, she wants more time. Almost 20 years ago, he'd photographed civil war in Biafra, wanting to tell a story that would save people. He now equates that war with his personal struggle: can his photographs save this relationship? He goes to Carmen to talk to her; first he acts the fool, then they seem to connect. But, can he control his jealousy and not force things with her?

Donna and Michael are getting married. But first, they have to plan the reception, get the tux, buy the rings, and cope with their own uncertainty about the decision. Michael fears commitment. Donna has her doubts about Michael's immaturity. Both are getting cold feet.

Detroiter William Douglas Street poses as a Harvard doctor, Time reporter, African exchange student.

A boy shoots his father and flies out the window. A man falls in love with a fellow inmate in prison. A doctor accidentally ingests his experimental sex serum, wreaking havoc on the community.

New Yorker Adolpho Rollo is your classic head-movie auteur. In his mind, he's creating deathless classics of the screen. Back in the real world, he can't pay the rent on the downtown flophouse he calls home.

A young woman struggles for independence and identity in a small Florida tourist town.

Jackie and Michael are coworkers at a large law firm, who decide to meet at Jackie's for dinner one night. As this 'first date' plays out, the audience is guided through a mental minefield of disappointment.

Three Irish Catholic brothers from Long Island struggle to deal with love, marriage, and infidelity.

An awkward seventh-grader struggles to cope with inattentive parents, snobbish class-mates, a smart older brother, an attractive younger sister and her own insecurities in suburban New Jersey.

This film concerns two mysterious characters who meet on a Sunday in Queens. Madeleine the most unsettling creature of that name since "Vertigo" is a middle-aged, moderately successful actress. Oliver/Matthew is either a homeless man or a famous film director or both. Madeleine hails him on the street as the latter, launching a bizarre chain of events that includes a conversation in a diner, a very unromantic sexual encounter, the arrival of Madeleine's odd husband and unsuspecting daughter, and a child's birthday party. The film also compassionately tracks the daily rounds of Oliver/Matthew's fellow denizens of the homeless shelter, some of whom will be recognizable to New York audiences.

Grand Jury Prize, 1998 Sundance Film Festival. A talented youth (Saul Williams) copes with urban crime and despair by competing in poetry slams. Sonja Sohn of "The Wire" costars.

Although the hearts and goals and desires are different for everyone in a culturally-shifting Ho Chi Minh City, the stories of four separate individuals paint a vivid picture of the past, present, and future of a city eking into a new era.

Diana, without her father knowing it, trains as a boxer and achieves impressive success, blazing new trails for female boxers.

A single mother's life is thrown into turmoil after her struggling, rarely seen younger brother returns to town.

A young Jewish man develops a fiercely anti-Semitic philosophy. Based on the factual story of a K.K.K. member in the 1960s who was revealed to be Jewish by a New York Times reporter.

Three women's escapes from their afflicted lives. Each struggles to flee from the men who confine their personal freedom.

An original mix of fiction and reality illuminates the life of comic book hero everyman Harvey Pekar.

Four friends/fledgling entrepreneurs, knowing that there's something bigger and more innovative than the different error-checking devices they've built, wrestle over their new invention.

A Russian woman living in Memphis with a much older rock-'n'-roll legend experiences a personal awakening when her husband's estranged son comes to visit.

As Magdalena's 15th birthday approaches, her simple, blissful life is complicated by the discovery that she's pregnant. Kicked out of her house, she finds a new family with her great-granduncle and gay cousin.

A Mexican boy smuggles himself to Brooklyn to meet his long-lost father - only to have his identity stolen upon arrival by an impostor who seeks to steal the fathers' fortune.