COUPLES RETREAT
The Story: Four couples venture to a idyllic island retreat where they are forced to confront what ails their troubled relationships.
The Pitch: He's Just Not Into You meets Wedding Crashers
Who It's For: Stagnating mid-life couples seeking 90 minutes of release from their private hell in mocking the private hells of other mid-life couples.
Cause for Hope: Actually a couple of mild laughs in the trailer; Veronica Mars has not quite worn out her welcome yet.
Cause for Concern: It will not end here. Vaughn has at least three other comedies already in development.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 3

AN EDUCATION
The Story: A teenage girl in Swinging 60's London falls for a debonair suitor (Peter Sarsgaard) twice her age.
The Pitch: Georgy Girl meets Manhattan
Who It's For: The Smart Set
Cause for Hope: No movie set London in the Swinging 60's has ever been there. (No, the Austin Powers films weren't actually set there, so they don't count.)
Cause for Concern: Early Oscar buzz is generally a harbinger of mind-numbing tedium ahead.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 8

GOOD HAIR
The Story: Chris Rock fronts a documentary exploring the complex world of African Americans' hair issues.
The Pitch: Fast Food Nation meets Beauty Parlor
Who It's For: Comedy enjoyers and documentary fans alike.
Cause for Hope: Fascinating, under-discussed topic; restores the hope for the comic documentary genre nearly bludgeoned to death by Michael Moore polemics.
Cause for Concern: If we wanted to learn, we'd go to school.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 8

THE DAMNED UNITED
The Story: A soccer coach (Michael Sheen) takes on the most successful team in the UK in the 1970's, and makes waves challenging their style of play.
The Pitch: Victory meets The Full Monty
Who It's For: Yobs and the yanks who love them.
Cause for Hope: From Peter Morgan, the screenwriter of The Queen and Frost/Nixon.
Cause for Concern: Soccer still just seems like a bunch of guys jogging around a big field and never scoring.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 7

BRONSON
The Story: The based-on-truth story of a British perpetual prison inmate who makes violence his art form.
The Pitch: Clockwork Orange meets Swimming to Cambodia
Who It's For: Any remaining Brit film fans who haven't been swallowed up this weekend by An Education or Damned United.
Cause for Hope: Looks crazy and weird enough to possibly break through the doldrums of Britain's overworked geezers and guns genres.
Cause for Concern: Viewers are cautioned that Guy Ritchie flashbacks are extremely possible.
Defamer Enthusio-Meter: 6

Amid the contraction and pocketbook panic gripping the independents and mini-majors this winter, predicting a Sundance bear market seems a safe, obvious choice for 2009. But it also seems relative — especially following a year when sales of festival films reportedly plunged 66 percent from their collective 2007 high of $45 million, and eight-figure buys like Hamlet 2 (and its subsequent seven-figure gross) signaled a reality check that had little or nothing to do with an imploding economy. Distributors need content; they just don't need to walk away with one film to show for $11 million.

So what will they be spending on — and for how much — over the next 10 days? We scoured this year's selections for a few intrepid predictions:

· I Love You Phillip Morris. Jim Carrey is a cop who turns to crime, goes to prison and winds up falling in love with a fellow inmate played by Ewan McGregor. Adapted from a true story by the guys who brought you Bad Santa, Morris may not be the first film that goes (it doesn't premiere until Sunday), but it's already commanding the highest going rate at the fest and could tempt a Miramax or Fox Searchlight — the latter of which is one of the few potential suitors with the proven alacrity and class to successfully sell a film like this — to write a $9 million or $10 million check in the wee hours of Monday morning. If it's not this year's What Just Happened?, languishing overhyped, unfunny and out of place in Park City.

· An Education. Nick Hornby adapted his novel about Jenny (Carey Mulligan), a 16-year-old London girl whose coming of age is kick-started after meeting an older man (Peter Sarsgaard) in 1961. She's on her way to Oxford, he's on his way to a nightclub, holy Christ what will she choose? Word is that An Education is a starmaker for Mulligan, aided by another anticipated film at the fest (see below) and a supporting cast — Sarsgaard, Emma Thompson, Alfred Molina, Sally Hawkins — that will attract the likes of Sony Pictures Classics, Miramax and Focus Features for at least $4 million.

· The Greatest. Setting itself up as an In the Bedroom without the undercooked revenge subplot, The Greatest thrusts Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon into grief over the loss of their teenage son in a car accident. Mulligan appears as the dead kid's girlfriend, lessons are learned, Oscar clips ensue — again, if it's any good: Sundance's bead on middle-class white mourning is growing tired, and Brosnan's executive producer credit whispers "vanity project." But to the extent they even show up with any money at all, the Weinsteins and Paramount Vantage are suckers for this kind of stuff. It may not leave Park City with a deal, but we'll probably hear numbers between $4 million and $5 million throughout the week.

· Cold Souls. Paul Giamatti plays himself in the story of an actor, tormented by his forthcoming role as Uncle Vanya, who turns to a futuristic soul-freezing enterprise as a means of assuaging his anxiety. Which works great — until his soul is stolen and enlisted for use by a Russian soap star. On one hand, the quirk potential here is kind of skin-crawling. But on the other, director Sophie Barthes blew us away with her 2007 short Happiness, which skimmed similar themes with warmth and sincerity. Sony Classics won't want anything remotely Kaufmanesque after Synecdoche, New York, but IFC Films and Magnolia Pictures will probably fight over this in the $2 million range for its potential in both the theatrical and VOD arenas.

· Bronson. It may turn out to be this year's Wrestler — not for any stirring actorly comebacks but rather for an edgy tour de force take on crime, celebrity and class as seen through the psychotic eyes of Charlie Bronson (Tom Hardy), Britain's most notorious prisoner. Hardy will pull out an Eric Bana-style prison-saga breakthrough thanks to director Nicolas Winding Refn, whose Pusher Trilogy endures as one of the decade's great (and greatly underrated) cinematic achievements and whose style fuses hyperrealistic violence with Scandinavian chamber drama. It will polarize Sundance and stimulate salivary glands around the Fox Searchlight and Magnolia condos, from one of which (probably Searchlight, who's seen genre risks like Night Watch pay off before) will come a $3 million buy late next week. Bet on it.