Park City, Utah — All things considered, the Sundance Film Festival is a less-than-ideal environment for discovering new movies, overrun as it is by hype and celebrity and a massive laundry list of titles that screen in an array of makeshift venues, from a hotel ballroom to a converted tennis court.

But it’s still the place where every independent American filmmaker wants to premiere their work. As an attending film critic, one quickly learns that the goal is not to see everything (151 feature films in 10 days would be mission impossible), but rather to avoid embarrassing oneself by missing the next big thing. Take a guess on what’s going to be good and pray that, given the shortage of tickets and screenings, you’ll hit gold.

At the star-studded Entertainment Weekly party Saturday evening at the Legacy Lodge, this was precisely the point of discussion among some of the attending pundits and writers: What movies had already risen above the fray, singling themselves out as must-sees? Judging by the buzz on the city’s buses earlier in the day (almost everyone gets around Park City via free public transportation due to an absolute lack of public parking), the hot ticket of the weekend was “U2 3D,” the three-dimensional concert pic that was scheduled to be introduced by Bono and company late Saturday night.

In terms of celebrity hype, two other items dominated the weekend. “What Just Happened?,” directed by Barry Levinson and starring a glittering cast of Robert DeNiro, Bruce Willis, and Sean Penn, had crowds buzzing, all eager to see this movie about the absurd day-to-day life of a studio producer (though audience reactions after Saturday night’s showing were mixed). The other title, “In Bruges,” opened the festival on Thursday. With stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in attendance, director Martin McDonagh took the stage early in the evening to introduce the first screening of his first feature, admitting (in slightly more colorful language) that he was nervous.

Given the response to that first showing, perhaps he had reason to fear. After hundreds of moviegoers waited in line for hours amid sub-zero temperatures in hopes of securing a wait-list ticket, the response of those who managed to cram their way in was decidedly mixed. A story about two murderous hit men hiding from the authorities in the quaint Belgian tourist town of the title, “In Bruges” alternates in tone between that of a buddy comedy and a morose, macabre morality play. The sold-out audience in the 1,270-seat Eccles theater seemed a bit lost as to whether it should be laughing, crying, or attempting to relate to the odd couple onscreen.

In the hours after the screening, some passionate arguments could be heard on festival buses as the merits of Mr. McDonagh’s work were batted to and fro. By the morning, online reviews of the movie showed a similar disparity, some hailing its distinctiveness and others dismissing it as “erratic.” (New York audiences will have the chance to decide for themselves when the movie opens theatrically February 8.)

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Moving to independent entries crafted by lesser-known directors, one of the weekend’s big winners was the moody, New York-centered coming-of-age comedy “The Wackness.” Starring relative newcomer Josh Peck as Luke, a lonely, pot-dealing, love-struck teenager and Ben Kingsley as a drug-bingeing, mildly psychotic therapist who treats the boy in exchange for regular deliveries of marijuana, “The Wackness” attempts to revive the look, feel, sounds, and politics of New York City circa 1994. The film, sort of a hybrid of “Juno,” “Good Will Hunting,” and “Raising Victor Vargas,” won over an eager, jam-packed press and industry crowd Saturday afternoon.

if and when this closely watched title finds a distributor and hits New York screens, local audiences will no doubt be captivated by director Jonathan Levine’s use of the city as a primary character. at one point, Mr. Kingsley’s therapist urges a distraught Luke to not allow his life to parallel the fate of the city under the rule of Mayor Giuliani. “You can’t just sweep your dirt under the carpet,” he says, standing in the center of a 1994 times Square, pointing to the city’s aggressive strategy for cracking down on crime, graffiti, and homelessness.

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“Change” has become a buzzword around the festival, uttered repeatedly by Robert Redford during an opening-day press conference Thursday as he pointed to the 58 first-time filmmakers as well as to the influx of international work. Along that front, this year’s class of documentaries feels notably different from the catalogs of years past. Last year’s big documentary properties, such as the space-oriented “In the Shadow of the Moon,” the art scandal film “My Kid Could Paint That,” and the Iraq-centered “No End in Sight,” were all somewhat conventional, each tackling its topic by lining up an array of talking heads.

But this year’s documentaries have proven larger in scope and more sophisticated in craft. in particular, Yung Chang’s “Up the Yangtze,” about the unexpected consequences accompanying the construction of the massive Three Gorges Dam, is so dense in material and rich in emotion that it almost feels like a work of fiction (and it shouldn’t be confused with Jia Zhangke’s Three Gorges project “Still Life,” which opened in New York this weekend and is a work of fiction).

Chronicling the ways that the massive dam has forever altered the landscape of the Yangtze river, Mr. Chang documents the reaction of the local citizenry. Amid the controversy, Mr. Chang finds one peasant family poised to lose everything as the river submerges their farm. When the eldest daughter is sent off to work, she ironically lands on one of the new Western cruise ships that carry tourists down the Yangtze over submerged communities, promising a glimpse of a China that no longer exists.

ssnyder@nysun.com