From People Magazine:

The Sundance Film Festival kicked off on Thursday, and movie critic Leah Rozen already has her hot list of the top stars and movies to watch before it wraps up Jan. 28 in Park City, Utah.

• Gwyneth Paltrow costars in The Good Night, written and directed by her little brother Jake Paltrow. A romantic comedy, it�s about a musician who meets his dream girl (played by Penelope Cruz), only there’s a hitch: She’s in his dreams, not his real life.

• Alpha Dog star Justin Timberlake will showcase his acting skills in another movie, Black Snake Moan, starring Samuel L. Jackson an ex-blues guitarist trying to redeem a promiscuous young woman (Christina Ricci).

• Jackson turns up again as a former boxing champ befriended by a sportswriter (Josh Hartnett) in Resurrecting the Champ.

• John Cusack plays a widower grieving for his wife, killed in the Iraq war, in Grace Is Gone.

• In the documentary that opened the fest, Chicago 10, Hank Azaria, Liev Schreiber and Roy Scheider voice animated courtroom scenes to tell the story of a 1969 case against Vietnam War protester Abbie Hoffman.

• Dakota Fanning goes way against type as a young girl with a troubled sexual history in Hounddog.

• Michael Douglas plays a mentally ill father trying to convince his teen daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) to help him search for gold left behind by Spanish missionaries in King of California.

• Laura Linney and Phillip Seymour Hoffman team up to play adult siblings who must take care of their elderly father in The Savages.

• Indie queen Zooey Deschanel stars in two Sundance entries: She plays a mysterious woman who forms an intense connection with a teenager (Lou Taylor Pucci) who steals her car in The Go-Getter and a mysterious woman who changes the life of a small-town outcast (Mark Webber) in The Good Life.

• Jared Leto, who famously packed on weight for the role, plays John Lennon’s killer, Mark David Chapman, opposite Lindsay Lohan in Chapter 27.