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" PARK CITY, Utah \u2014 It&amp;#039;s half-time at the Sundance Film Festival, and indie filmmakers are already putting points on the scoreboard. So far, sex is selling: Joseph Gordon-Levitt has scored a nice deal for his directorial debut, the porn-addict rom-com Don Jon&amp;#039;s Addiction. And the Weinstein Co. just picked up Concussion, the story of a middle-aged woman (Robin Weigert) who becomes a prostitute. So far, there&amp;#039;s no bolt-from-the-blue surprise, no Beasts of the Southern Wild or Precious \u2014 but it&amp;#039;s been a strong festival, with some terrific, timely documentaries (99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film, Manhunt, Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer) and a few films that already seem bound for year-end top-tens. Below, read about three of the best. Before Midnight When Richard Linklater&amp;#039;s Before Sunrise debuted at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival, Ethan Hawke was 23 and sporting his scraggly Reality Bites goatee as Jesse, the motormouth romantic who met Julie Delpy&amp;#039;s wackadoodle Celine on a European train. In 2004&amp;#039;s Before Sunset, his character had cleaned up a bit, written a memoir about their star-crossed romance, and bought a proper writer&amp;#039;s blazer. Now, in the heart-stoppingly brilliant Before Midnight, Jesse is 41, with responsibilities and regrets, and that same awful goatee, much to the dismay of Celine. (I won&amp;#039;t spoil anything else.) For Generation X film fans who have spent their entire adulthood with these films, these movies loom like the updates in Michael Apted&amp;#039;s documentary Up series, catching time in a bottle: 23, 33, 41. In the new film, there is talk of virtual reality, digital porn, and love, sure \u2014 but at middle age, those wild pyrotechnic riffs and endless digressions are grounded by the practical talk of divorce and parents, custody arrangements and jobs. Delpy and Hawke have never been as brilliant alone as they are together; their roles are like second skins. The roiling, unpredictable screenplay pumps dialogue like a circular-breathing trumpet player breathing, but it&amp;#039;s a sophisticated, elegant, dissonant sort of music: volcanic arias of resentment, ludicrous comedic solos, and so much wonderful, rat-a-tat bullshitting: Bergman&amp;#039;s Scenes from a Marriage by way of Albee&amp;#039;s Who&amp;#039;s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with a heavy dose of Delpy&amp;#039;s signature screwball spazziness. It&amp;#039;s not just that Midnight is the best film of the series, it&amp;#039;s that it&amp;#039;s the first two films all grown up. The confident maturity of the film in every aspect \u2014 performance, direction, script \u2014 even seems to make the sometimes maddening pretension of the first films seem as charming, in retrospect, as Hawke&amp;#039;s nasty &amp;#039;90s goatee.  The Spectacular Now The last few years, the biggest breakout stars from Sundance have almost all been women: Jennifer Lawrence, Elizabeth Olsen, Mia Wasikowska, Carrie Mulligan, just for starters. The terrific teen flick The Spectacular Now, from Smashed director James Ponsoldt, stars yet another young woman on the brink of major stardom, Shailene Woodley (already Globe-nominated for The Descendants), as Aimee, a quiet, sweet-hearted virgin who gets swept up in the alcoholic orbit of partyboy Sutter. But it&amp;#039;s Miles Teller, as Sutter, who steals the film. Until now, the 25-year-old jughead has been stuck in crummy youth flicks like the Footloose remake and Project X, but here, he&amp;#039;s got a platform built entirely around his chatterbox charm. Sutter&amp;#039;s the kid at high school who everybody likes to party with \u2014 the kid who can get you a six-pack of beer and a ride to the next party, but who nobody takes seriously. His story checks off every item in the teen-movie playbook (absent dad, drunken mistake, halting romance, sudden tragedy, goofball pals). Instead of being hamstrung by his insecurities, he bulldozes through them, and Teller sells it all: Beefy, with a little beer pudge, he swaggers through the burbs with a puffed-up chest, unbuttoned shirt, and lovable cluelessness. He talks and talks and talks. Aimee can&amp;#039;t shut him up. His teachers can&amp;#039;t shut him up. Sutter is such a charmer (puppy-dog eyes to his mom, awkward dance moves for his girl, big hugs to his bros), such a fun fk-up, everyone can&amp;#039;t help but love him. Teller is such a charmer, and makes his fk-up so lovable, he&amp;#039;s going to be a star.  Ain&amp;#039;t Them Bodies Saints If Casey Affleck wasn&amp;#039;t such an extraordinary actor, everyone would hate him: surly with the press, openly dismissive of almost everything in Hollywood, his faux-doc I&amp;#039;m Still Here with Joaquin Phoenix, and the subsequent obviously deceptive interview tour, was the kind of arrogant prank that could have turned his fans against him. If he wasn&amp;#039;t so damn good. In Texan writer-director David Lowery&amp;#039;s beautifully shot debut Ain&amp;#039;t Them Bodies Saints, Affleck returns to the drawl and menace he minted in The Assassination of Jesse James and The Killer Inside Me. The American outlaw logline is familiar: Again, Affleck plays a strange, mumbling loner with a strange conviction that he&amp;#039;s smarter than everyone else in the room. This time, he&amp;#039;s a Texas robber who gets caught stealing money for his wife (a terrific Rooney Mara) and child \u2014 and ends up in prison. Then he outsmarts his guards and escapes, only to spend the rest of the film working his way back to his love, lurking and waiting and obsessing over just the right moment. This is drama material you&amp;#039;ve seen in movies before but rarely done so well. There&amp;#039;s not a better-looking film at the festival (cinematographer Bradford Young, who also lensed the gorgeous Brooklyn indie Mother of George, seems a lock for the cinematography award), nor a better cast: Nate Parker, Keith Carradine, and Ben Foster could carry a film on their own. But Casey holds the center, quiet and creepy, feared and loathed. Maybe, in the end, that prickly offscreen persona is part of what makes this performance so damn convincing. SUNDANCE 2013: Read More on The Culture Blog Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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