Blaze

Ethan Hawke directs a high-wire biopic, about the late country blues singer Blaze Foley, that’s such an ambling, laid-back piece of redneck verité that you feel you aren’t watching his life so much as eavesdropping on it. Blaze, played by Ben Dickey with a mumbled authenticity that’s downright daring, is as unlikely a central character as you’ve seen in a movie: an overgrown monosyllabic country boy given to drunken stupors, and a guy who would rather flame out than show up. Yet Blaze’s gift is the real thing, and his life, as played out in fragile but luminous vignettes, becomes a touching testament to what the beautiful pained soul of country music is really about. — Owen Gleiberman

Blindspotting

Rapid-delivery “Hamilton” star Daveed Diggs and fellow spoken-word savant Rafael Casal tapped their hip-hop experience to create a buddy movie unlike any other, launching into verse whenever the emotions get heated. The movie toys with the super-charged energy and hyper-articulate rhymes audiences expect from a musical without losing its grip on real life. As fresh a discovery as any film I’ve ever seen at Sundance, “Blindspotting” spans the last three days of the Diggs character’s parole, during which any run-in with law enforcement could send him back to prison for good. Then he witnesses a cop shoot a civilian, but unlike Sundance movie “Monsters and Men” (which focuses exclusively on the issue of police brutality), director Carlos López Estrada’s Oakland-set debut addresses so many other issues — from gentrification to gun violence — while keeping its characters front and center. — Peter Debruge

Colette

Remember “Big Eyes,” Tim Burton’s unconventional portrait of artist Margaret Keane, whose husband took credit for her paintings? Well, French novelist Colette had it far worse, as her celebrity spouse, “Willy,” published her books under his byline, claiming that French society wasn’t ready to embrace a female writer — except that the success of her Claudine series more than proved otherwise, paving the way for a battle for credit. Keira Knightly stars in this English-language retelling of Colette’s story, which feels perfectly timed to recent conversations about the need for female voices in film and all fields, and though the director in a man, Wash Westmoreland has already demonstrated his capacity to write incredible roles for women: His “Still Alice” earned Julianne Moore an Oscar, and Knightley could well be on the same track with this fempowerment performance. — PD

Come Sunday

As important as religion is to so many Americans, it has traditionally been a no-win topic at the movies, owing to the fact it’s virtually impossible to get devout believers to agree on anything. In a respectful way, that’s pretty much the point of this thoughtful Netflix drama, as director Joshua Marston (“Maria Full of Grace”) and screenwriter Marcus Hinchey examine an Evangelical Christian leader’s attempts to reconcile a new way of seeing things with what he has been preaching his entire life. Inspired by an NPR “This American Life” profile of bishop Carlton Pearson, the film succeeds largely thanks to a challenging performance from Chiwetel Ejiofor (of “12 Years a Slave”) — one that demands charisma from the pulpit and profound introspection in quiet moments — while sharing a Universalist message of inclusivity and acceptance. — PD

Eighth Grade

In this heartfelt dramedy from “Lady Bird” producer Scott Rudin, first-time director Bo Burnham goes back to middle school, delivering a keenly observed look at how 13-year-olds cope with that awkward age. While not quite as sassy as Diablo Cody (the “Juno” screenwriter returned to Sundance with “Tully,” another smart take on ready-or-not motherhood), Burnham demonstrates a strong, original voice of his own, while making the surprising decision to focus on a character of the opposite sex, played by wonderfully relatable newcomer Elsie Fisher (as opposed to simply over-sharing anecdotes from his own adolescence). Just as “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” did in its time, the movie serves as an eye-opener to parents, while demonstrating that — whatever you may think of growing up in the era of smartphones, social media, and school shootings — there’s still hope for the millennial generation. — PD

Hereditary

It’s a ghost story with séances and creepy sightings and decapitated bodies. Yet the scariest thing about Ari Aster’s elegantly disturbing spook show is how personal its demons are. Toni Collette, as a woman fighting off the destructive legacy of her late mother, gives a horror-film performance worthy of mid-period Ingmar Bergman, and Aster directs without the usual megaplex-horror razzmatazz. The tone is rapt and hypnotic, rooted not in the suddenness of shock but in a slowly accumulated dismay. The movie contains echoes of “The Shining,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” and “The Wicker Man,” and there are moments that give you a spectral shiver, but mostly there’s a family caught in the grip of emotional and psychological spirits that have been passed down as…well, spirits. — OG

Juliet, Naked

For a while, this adaptation of a Nick Hornby novel comes right out of his slightly precious indie-fanboy playbook. But then Ethan Hawke shows up as Tucker Crowe, a cult rocker from the early ’90s who vanished into obscurity, and now resurfaces to connect with the girlfriend (Rose Byrne) of his ultimate cult devotee (Chris O’Dowd). Hawke takes over the movie, creating a lived-in portrait of a rock ‘n’ roll vagabond who has never taken responsibility for who he is. The film turns into a romance, but it’s an older-and-wiser one rooted in the inexorable pull of family. Is it as good as “The Big Sick”? No, but it’s more resonant than “High Fidelity.” — OG

Our New President

Maxim Pozdorovkin’s sharply edited 77-minute documentary is both a raw-feed bulletin and a warning. It replays the 2016 American presidential election through the lens of Russian propaganda (or, as it’s called there, the nightly news), and the result is by turns funny and horrifying. Yet the movie is also something more: a vision of the systemic rise of fake news, not just in Vladimir Putin’s Russia but around the world. The breathless lies and infamy, most of it culled directly from Russian television (Donald Trump is a superman! Hillary Clinton is a murderer!), connect up to the distortions of our own tabloid-looking-glass news culture. Which is why, by the end, the laughter catches in your throat. — OG

Studio 54

From its parade of celebrity (Andy! Mick! Bianca! Truman!) to its status as a gay mecca to its ugly aristocratic door policy, the fabled New York disco of the late ’70s is now part of the mythology of our culture, and Matt Tyrnauer’s thrilling and definitive documentary takes you right inside. Drawing on a kaleidoscope of photographs and home movies, the movie evokes the hedonistic majesty of a club that became an elite paradise. But Tyrnauer also captures the nuts and bolts of how Studio 54 was built, how it operated, and how it was consumed by the flames of scandal. For the first time since its doors closed, the club’s co-founder, Ian Schrager, describes in candid detail how he and his partner, the late Steve Rubell, built their disco dream palace like a decadent castle in the air.

— OG

Minding the Gap

In retrospect, this year’s Sundance may well be defined by the host of innovative ways filmmakers found to tell personal stories, from Jennifer Fox’s much-discussed “The Tale” (an ambitious attempt to reexamine her own childhood sexual experience) to Lauren Greenfield’s “Generation Wealth” (in which the bling-obsessed photographer questions what her oeuvre says about herself). The most touching of these self-reflexive projects was Bing Liu’s intimate look at a pair of childhood friends he’s been filming for nearly a decade — two Illinois teens who turn to skateboarding to escape problems at home. Much of the early footage focuses on their best skate tricks, but Liu keeps the cameras rolling as they mature, delving into more sensitive subjects, most importantly the attitudes and scars that abusive behavior have left them with. — PD