Human Factors.
Klemens Hufnagl/Sundance Institute
This year’s Sundance Film Festival was like no other. Thanks to the ongoing pandemic, the usual red-carpet premieres were replaced by at-home streaming supplemented by screenings at a handful of small venues and drive-ins around the country.
That’s not the way most attendees preferred to experience the movies, of course. But the festival’s 2021 selections were still true to the spirit of Sundance, which fosters independent cinema and innovative voices: They served up exciting stories from around the world, mostly of the kind that Hollywood often skips over. The fiction films that made it to Sundance in this weird year ranged from thrillers to dramas to heartwarming comedies; soon, many of them will be (or already have been) bought by distributors and streaming services.
Marvelous and the Black Hole Review: Appealing Odd-Couple Ode to the Magic of, Well, Magic Marvelous and the Black Hole Review: Appealing Odd-Couple Ode to the Magic of, Well, Magic
A young girl forms an unlikely bond with an eccentric magician in this predictable but gently winning and peppily performed coming-of-ager.
Jessica Kiang, provided by
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Not quite adult enough to be young adult, and not quite a children’s film either, Kate Tsang’s “Marvelous and the Black Hole” is a sweet-natured throwback, the kind of film a parent might wish their young teen would watch, rather than whichever dystopian franchise or fanfic adaptation they’re currently involved with. A set-your-watch-by-it riff on the unlikely-friendship-helps-two-lonely-people formula, this time involving a troubled schoolgirl and a stage magician, it is however so nicely performed and takes such honest pleasure in the flourishes of its little magic show, that only a hard heart would