The source material for Train Dreams–a lovely grief-stricken portrait of early twentieth-century Northwestern American logging country by filmmaker Clint Bentley–is a novella by the late Denis Johnson—one of his prettier, later, off-hand works. It has made for a stunningly beautiful movie with another brilliant performance by the chameleonic Australian actor Joel Edgerton. Here he’s as good as I’ve ever seen him (which is saying a lot) as Robert Grainier, a loner and hard worker who falls in love with Gladys (Felicity Jones) and makes a life for himself and their young daughter in a log cabin in Idaho. When tragedy strikes, the film shifts into a chronicle of endurance, of solitude and grief. If that all sounds…slow, the cinematography and the sheer expressive power of Edgerton’s craggy face carry you through the film’s gentler moments. It ends with a powerful sense of how the sheer weight of time can bring a measure of grace. (Train Dreams was acquired by Netflix with a release date to be announced.) —TA

Predators

Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

David Osit’s Predators is a provocative, riveting, and, at times, shocking dissection of the early-aughts TV phenomenon To Catch a Predator and the legacy of vigilante entertainment it helped spawn. The hit Dateline NBC candid-camera series lured sex offenders to a film set, where host Chris Hansen interviewed them and police waited outside to arrest them on camera. It’s no small feat to critique a production that the vast majority of viewers believe to be on the side of moral righteousness, but Osit successfully manages to cast everything, even his own complicity behind the camera, with ambiguity. It’s no doubt uncomfortable to have one’s moral certitude be shaken or to be dislodged from a seat of judgment, especially in our era of outrage, but together with Geeta Gandbhir’s gripping The Perfect Neighbor and Charlie Shackleton’s Zodiac Killer Project (all three among the best documentaries at Sundance this year), this feels like a turning point in the true-crime industry that’s dominated entertainment for the past decade.—Lisa Wong Macabasco

Sorry, Baby

Eva Victor in Sorry, Baby.Photo: Mia Cioffi Henry