time movie review

‘Time’: A Woman’s Life, A Man’s Imprisonment, A Portrait of Love Everlasting

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

There’s a pair of shattering moments at the heart of the 2016 short documentary Alone , directed by Garrett Bradley, that opens the door to the world the filmmaker complicates and expounds upon in her new, feature-length documentary Time . ( Bradley’s latest, which receives a limited theatrical run this week, launches on Amazon Prime Streaming on October 16th.) The first comes when the young woman at its center, Aloné Watts, reveals to her family that she plans to marry Desmond Watson, a man in prison. We have already seen her trying on a wedding dress; we have already heard her say, in a voiceover, “I am beautiful in this dress.” But then Aloné reveals her intentions to her family, and something breaks — loudly. Bradley’s camera rests on the image of Watts’s family home for the extent of the scene. But the sound creates a gap: the voices we hear hit us as if we are inside, at Aloné’s side, when she breaks the news. And what we hear, as loudly and immediately as if they were being hurled in our direction, are screams. A streak of reprimands, heartbreak, and astonished doubt as white-hot as a lightning bolt. All of it born of fear; you can hear it in each voice. Aloné, her family tries to tell her, is going to waste her life. This is not advice. It is, in their eyes, a certainty. 

She later meets with a woman whose voice, though softer, is just as wise and equally certain — this is the next shattering moment. “This system breaks you apart,” the woman tells Aloné. “It is designed, just like slavery, to tear you apart. And instead of using a whip, they use time. They use hardships.” It’s like, she says, “when they used to hang people, but barely hang them, and leave their feet just tip-toeing in the mud. So that they’re constantly on their tip toes, fighting for their lives.”

This woman, a preacher and poet in spirit, if not by trade, is Sibil Fox Richardson, who goes by Fox Rich. It’s Rich’s story that Bradley tells in Time — though “tells” already vastly oversimplifies what Bradley and Rich, together, have accomplished in this remarkable movie. Both Alone and this new  documentary are urgent, lacerating films about black families grappling with the incarceration of loved ones. Both are, more specifically, about the lives of black women, either married to or on the cusp of marrying men who are not free. Women whose sense of their lives, as narrated to us in each film, is that they, too, are not free, and that they will not be so long as the men they love remain incarcerated.

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Time would not exist but for a surprising gesture. Bradley had already finished shooting what was to become a short film on Rich when, on the last day of shooting, Rich stopped Bradley to give the filmmaker a box of tapes. Video diaries, more specifically, spanning 18 years and recorded by Rich and occasionally her children on a mini-DV camera. These videos largely record the mundane: the everyday bits of life, especially with growing children, that are most easily taken for granted until they are lost to us. They are letters to Rich’s husband, Robert Richardson. For their nearly two-decade span, Robert is away serving a 60-year prison sentence without parole, for an armed robbery the pair committed (with a nephew) when they were young, newly married, and desperate for money. Rich had been sentenced to 13 years for the crime; she served three and a half. What followed that ordeal — and what Rich’s video diaries painstakingly document — is the life she lived thereon, without her husband, as a single mother caring for the couple’s six children, two of whom were young twins. This is what goes unsaid in Fox’s brief scene in Alone : It’s the history you hear in her voice when she says, “This system breaks you apart.”

With Time, Garrett Bradley has taken a well-chosen and gorgeously organized sample of Rich’s video diaries and wedded them to recent footage, this time filmed by Bradley and a trio of cinematographers. These scenes, which are somehow equally personal, documents Rich’s still-ongoing fight to get her husband parole. He has, by this time, served nearly 18 years. Rich’s goal is to get him home before the 18th birthday of the twins. 

There was a linear throughway available to Bradley here, one that would have told this story in straight chronology, moving from the self-recorded snapshots of Rich and her children enduring the span of Robert’s time in prison to the near-present, when Robert is still in prison and Rich, now a gainfully employed prison abolitionist, is still fighting for his life. Their life. That version of Time would likely be satisfying, too, and perhaps provide more in the way of straight information about, among other things, the case. 

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But this isn’t a true crime documentary. Against the grain of that genre, it redirects our attention from the crime of this couple to the crime of the system. In the first place, there’s an argument to be made — in fact, by giving ample space to Rich’s own confrontation with the question of forgiveness over the years, Time convincingly makes it — for asking fewer questions about what people did to “deserve” imprisonment and more questions about prison’s impact, not only on the people inside, but on the people waiting for them to come home. For this family and many others, incarceration is the absence of a father, a husband. It’s an absence that structures the rest of the family’s life. 

Bradley opts to make us feel that absence — to witness it, reckon with it, be shocked by it. She does this by finding a non-linear order for telling this story, one that still has a broad narrative arc (the fight for Robert’s parole) but which encourages us to abandon ourselves to the flow of Rich’s ideas and emotions. There is no everyday life that is unaffected by her husband’s absence. But he’s always on her mind, even when she cannot see or hear him. Even when we don’t see him in Bradley’s film, he’s on ours. 

Time incites questions and associations and feelings , all hallmarks of thoughtful editing, though rarely is the effect so generative as it is here. The mini-DV transfers of Rich’s diaries are so pointedly clean and sharp that her movie’s own black and white images flow close enough to seamlessly to be even more uncanny than if they’d been all of a piece. She allows things to shock us: the image of the Richardson children as children in one instance, then the sight (and sound) of them as college students the next. How can this, in itself, prove to be so moving? 

What distinguishes this documentary from other movies about mass incarceration is the novelty with which Bradley subverts the mass and trains our eye, frequently literally, on the particular. Films about imprisonment often feature the family, if only because the family is usually easier to access than the people behind bars. But talking to those wives and sons and daughters is one thing. Bradley has not only Rich’s footage to her advantage, but her own incredible perceptiveness to guide her, and a real intelligence for how to let a face tell the story of an entire scene. In this, she’s guided by Rich herself — who is, among other things, an incredible camera presence. (A cut, early on, from Rich in one of her video diaries to her shooting a local commercial proves this point so well, it’s almost jarring.) It feels as if Bradley has gone out of her way to pick up visual cues from her subject’s own video footage — to converse with those diaries, rather than simply complement or contextualize them. Rich’s footage was for her husband. It shows she wanted him to see what he’s missed all these years, from a world outside of a cell to his children’s faces. Intimate details, in other words: lives in loving close-up. 

This is what Bradley matches in her own attentive, careful filmmaking, zeroing in on the family as if she, too, wants to give Robert something to see: his wife. Bradley’s footage — down to the fact that it, like Rich’s, is in black and white, and is limited to the same aspect ratio — somehow avoids the problem of feeling like an intervening gaze from an outsider. But being an outsider has its benefits too, because it affords Bradley her own ideas. The mere organization of this movie, the associations Bradley finds between past and present, “video diary” versus “documentary,” are a case in point; it’s the stitching that gives away the dividing line between these merged projects. But so is the way the filmmaker trains her attention on Rich in moments both grand and mundane. 

There’s a stirring sequence here, for example, that collects a series of speeches Rich has given over the years about her experience with the prison system; you’re right to feel, here, as if the movie is rooting for her to win. But the ideas are in the editing, too. The movie makes a point of including the moment that Rich announces the date in each of her diaries, which confer less a sense of time passing than of, more interestingly, her commitment to marking time. She is counting the days. We even see her describe her life this way: that year-long cycle of legal appointments, deadlines, and holidays that structure her fight for Robert’s parole. Which is to say, her life. 

Obviously, the film’s name is not arbitrary. But part of the power of Time is in the range of meanings it manages to generate, in an attentive viewer’s mind, over the course of its runtime. The title verges on ironic. Time, by definition, is progress: It hurtles only forward, with no off-ramps or exits, no alternatives, no take-backs. It is only appropriate for Bradley to treat this definition like a rule worth breaking. Because time’s role in our lives is, ultimately, something like a seventh sense. It is that fundamental to our perspective of the shape and span of our lives, so much so that we can’t help but claim, in our language, that it’s ours. We say it can be given, stolen, borrowed, managed, wasted. Bradley’s portrait is a blistering and compassionate reminder that for the incarcerated and their loved ones, time is not something you have, but something you do. It isn’t progress. It’s punishment. To “do time” is to lose it. 

It’s essential, then, that Bradley’s documentary attends so carefully to our sensations as we watch, swelling and swerving its way through this family’s long haul of an emotional ordeal. It’s vital, and also sort of impossible, that the movie climaxes and closes on the most startlingly intimate of notes. I’ll leave the raw details to the movie to reveal. But you can’t miss it. There’s a brief moment, in a car — the suggestion of an incident — which, among other things, reveals the level of trust and compassion flowing between the director and the Richardson family, and gets to the root of what it means to let an artist into one’s life, to say nothing of how it feels to see a life restored. 

Bradley’s own sleight of hand comes soon after, and it is all the more extraordinary for being so simple. She finds a way to recast what came before, building toward a final image that is deeply, knowingly bittersweet. Time, Bradley asks us to remember, is what we lose. Only in a movie can we entertain and engineer the fantasy of getting it back, rewinding the clock, restoring presence to a loved one’s absence. Thank God, then, for movies. This one especially.

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Film Review: ‘Time’ a terrific look at the pull of loss

This image released by Amazon Studios shows a scene from “Time.” (Amazon Studios via AP)

This image released by Amazon Studios shows Sibil Fox Richardson, left, and her husband Robert in a scene from “Time.” (Amazon Studios via AP)

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There is a scene in the documentary “Time” that captures a woman on the phone trying to speak to a judge’s clerk. She’s put on hold. Nothing happens as the seconds tick away. One minute becomes two. The woman is still, waiting patiently. Eventually, she gets through but the call comes to nothing.

Most filmmakers would leave that tedious moment on the cutting room floor, but not director Garrett Bradley, who is making her first nonfiction feature. Her film is precisely about wasted time. “Time” is a story about loss and patience and an unjust system that demands both.

The woman on the phone is Sibil Fox Richardson and she’s trying to get her husband released from prison while also raising six boys. “Time” is her story, augmented by video diary entries she made for her husband, locked up in the Louisiana State Penitentiary.

Bradley weaves these incredibly intimate videos with her own footage of Richardson and her family, always unrushed. A young son is seen sleeping or putting on socks. The slow pan out from a grandmother’s face. A son simply eating. People chatting before an event. All while a lazy piano plays.

“Time” had its world premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, where Bradley was awarded best director for U.S. documentary, becoming the first Black woman to win that prize. “Time” deserves every award it gets: It is terrific filmmaking, augmented by the woman at its center, a formidable and charismatic figure.

Richardson and her husband, Robert, both spent time for the attempted armed robbery of a credit union to help keep their urban clothes store afloat. No money was stolen and the culprits were all first-time offenders. She served three years; her husband got a 60-year sentence in 1999.

This black and white film is not about guilt or innocence. It’s about the cost one family has had to bear. Richardson was pregnant with twins when their father was locked up; the film captures them on the cusp of turning 18. “They have no idea what fathers even do,” she says.

The filmmakers go back and forth in time, juxtaposing images of 20 years ago with recent footage. Toddlers become men, men go back to kindergartners. There is always something missing — a husband and a father.

“Time is when you look at pictures of when your babies were small. And then you look at them and you see that they have mustaches and beards,” Richardson says. “And that the biggest hope that you have was that before they turned into men, that they would have a chance to be with their father.”

The personal gets political as Richardson argues that the national prison system is just a modern form of slavery. “Listen, my story is the story of over 2 million people in the United States of America,” she says. She becomes an advocate and a dynamite public speaker. But above all, there is love, an unwavering, fierce love for a man she can only visit twice a month.

Among the interesting things about Bradley’s approach is the film’s color palette. She has chosen to strip the home movies of color and present her own modern footage in the same monochrome, giving the different parts of the film a knitted smoothness and timelessness, a wheel that keeps spinning.

The last few moments contain some of the most exhilarating and moving moments ever committed to film and Bradley’s reversing of video images — ending with a kiss — is simply gorgeous, poetic filmmaking. “Time” is very much worth everyone’s time.

“Time,” an Amazon Studios release, is rated PG-13 for language and adult situations. Running time: 81 minutes. Four stars out of four.

MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Online: https://amzn.to/34kxpwE

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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About time: film review.

Rom-com maestro Richard Curtis mixes familiar boy-meet-girl ingredients with time-traveling magic realism, starring Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams and Bill Nighy.

By Stephen Dalton

Stephen Dalton

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LONDON — A hugely successful one-man brand whose credits as screenwriter and director have raked in well over a billion dollars to date, Richard Curtis set the gold standard for transatlantic rom-coms over much of the last 20 years. The 56-year-old comedy veteran describes his third writer-director project as his most personal to date, but it still ticks plenty of familiar boxes. Emotionally repressed upper-class Brits? Check. Well-heeled West London milieu? Check? Anglo-American boy-girl romance? Gently whimsical tone? Syrupy musical score? Wedding? Funeral? Check, check, check.

The chief digressions here from the director’s established formula are a light twist of science fiction, and a lot more somber reflection on the value of love and family. This time, Curtis seems to be reaching for the philosophical depth and emotional clout of bittersweet magic-realist classics such as Groundhog Day or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind . He falls short of both, but his ambition is still admirable. Not as charming as his best work, but not as cloying as his worst, About Time received a modestly warm reception at its public premiere in London on Thursday. Commercial prospects will largely depend on whether the Curtis brand still packs the same platinum-plated punch as it did in more innocent times.

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Of course, Curtis made his international reputation writing the light-headed comedies Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, later co-scripting major studio projects including Bridget Jones’s Diary and War Horse . But his move from writer to writer-director has not proved quite so smooth. While his jarringly schmaltzy 2003 debut Love, Actually was a commercial smash, Curtis came unstuck with his 2009 period comedy The Boat That Rocked — retitled Pirate Radio in the U.S. — which stiffed at the box office on both sides of the Atlantic.

Taking no chances, About Time finds Curtis returning to familiar domestic boy-meets-girl material. Harry Potter veteran Domnhall Gleeson stars as Tim, a charmingly geeky 21-year-old trainee lawyer who is painfully clumsy in matters of the heart — in official film jargon, this is called “the Hugh Grant role.” Rachel McAdams co-stars as Mary, the ditzy expat American who becomes the object of Tim’s romantic attentions — in other words, the Andie MacDowell/Julia Roberts role. As ever, the backdrop is an anachronistic fantasy Britain with no discernible social or economic strife. As a shameless peddler of sunny picture-postcard cliches, Curtis is just a few steps behind late-period Woody Allen.

Early in the film, Tim discovers from his eccentric father (Curtis regular Bill Nighy ) that he has inherited the male side of the family’s gift for time travel. The script makes no attempt to explain this bizarre genetic quirk, nor why it only affects men, since it is purely a dramatic device to explore how we might behave if we had the chance to constantly rewrite our past mistakes. In this sense, at least,  About Time is very obviously a screenwriter’s movie.

Curtis is careful to limit Tim’s time-traveling abilities to small personal corrections — as his father ruefully remarks, killing Hitler is not an option. With this arbitrary plot limitation imposed, Tim is free to use his secret skills almost exclusively for wooing young women, quickly settling on Mary after a blind date in a pitch-dark restaurant. Using his special powers, he transforms himself into her ideal partner by rewinding the clock every time he needs to correct ill-conceived remarks or messy misunderstandings. This motif throws up a few inspired quick-fire vignettes, including a first-night sexual encounter that Tim transforms from lackluster to red-hot.

VIDEO: ‘About Time’ Trailer: Rachel McAdams Wooed by Time Traveler

About Time is handsomely filmed in a more intimate, hand-held style than previous Curtis features, but it still suffers from some of the director’s familiar shortcomings. As before, 21st century multicultural London appears to be peopled almost exclusively by wealthy white socialites. Most of the female characters are thinly written neurotics with willowy lingerie-model looks, and much of the dialogue feels labored. If stuck for a joke, Curtis fall backs on the dubious comic delights of posh people swearing and casual insults that liken women to prostitutes. An odd fixation.

Overlong at two hours, About Time sags in the middle with superfluous subplots about babies, car crashes and family crises. Curtis takes a long time to deliver his banal fortune-cookie message that time is precious so we should savor every moment, value our loved ones and treat other people kindly. Really? Hold the front page.

That said, About Time is not without its redeeming charms. Gleeson makes an agreeably quirky leading man while Nighy lights up the screen with his alluringly louche charisma, as ever. Fans of the cult 1987 British comedy Withnail & I will also enjoy seeing Richard E. Grant and the late Richard Griffiths reunited for one last time in an extended cameo sequence. Crucially, there are just enough laugh-out-loud moments here to excuse the lurches into shameless, tear-jerking sentimentality.

Production companies: Working Title Films, Relativity Media

Producers: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Nicky Kentish Barnes

Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy, Lindsay Duncan, Tom Hollander, Margot Robbie

Director: Richard Curtis

Screenwriter: Richard Curtis

Cinematographer: John Guleserian

Editor: Mark Day

Music: Nick Laird-Clowes

Rated R, 123 minutes 

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Common Sense Media Review

Powerful, intense doc about wife's fight for her husband.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Time is a documentary that chronicles Louisiana woman Fox Rich's two-decade-long struggle to advocate for an early release for her husband Robert's outrageously punitive prison sentence. It's a powerful and uplifting (albeit occasionally heartbreaking) exploration of how harsh…

Why Age 14+?

Occasional strong language includes one clear use of the "N" word (said by Fox t

Intimate scene of Fox and Robert's reunion, in which it's clear that they've mad

Discussion of the armed robbery that landed Fox and Robert in prison. A scene in

Brief shot of someone vaping/smoking an e-cigarette; photo of teens holding what

Any Positive Content?

Promotes criminal justice reform and awareness of how mass incarceration and unf

Fox is repentant about her part in the robbery and, after doing her time, she co

Occasional strong language includes one clear use of the "N" word (said by Fox to speculate what a racist White person is thinking). Other words used include "retarded," "crazy," "f--k," "f--kin'," "bulls--tting," "ass," "s--t," "freakin'," "goddamn," and more.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Intimate scene of Fox and Robert's reunion, in which it's clear that they've made love in the back of a limousine. The film shows some of the build up (kissing, him getting on top of her, some soft moans) and the aftermath (he's shirtless, and she's in just a bra), and they're caressing and kissing and staring at one another. Brief nonsexual scenes of a pregnant Fox showing off her growing belly. Fox makes slight innuendoes about how she's primping and getting ready to reunite with Robert.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Discussion of the armed robbery that landed Fox and Robert in prison. A scene in which she apologizes publicly to the bank workers.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Brief shot of someone vaping/smoking an e-cigarette; photo of teens holding what could be alcoholic drinks.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Promotes criminal justice reform and awareness of how mass incarceration and unfairly harsh prison sentences (particularly those without parole) destroy lives and unjustly target people of color. Encourages social activism and speaking out against injustice. Promotes empathy, compassion, and perseverance against the odds. Stresses the importance of family and of human connection between prisoners and the outside world.

Positive Role Models

Fox is repentant about her part in the robbery and, after doing her time, she commits herself to speaking to the public and to the families of incarcerated adults to discuss how unfair that sentencing can be and to lobby for Robert's early release. Fox's adult sons are dedicated to the cause of helping their father and to educating themselves and proving that just because their father is in prison doesn't mean they can't study the law, political science, medicine, etc. The documentary follows a Black family, and nearly all of the subjects are Black.

Parents need to know that Time is a documentary that chronicles Louisiana woman Fox Rich's two-decade-long struggle to advocate for an early release for her husband Robert's outrageously punitive prison sentence. It's a powerful and uplifting (albeit occasionally heartbreaking) exploration of how harsh sentencing and mass incarceration affects one family -- and, by extension, people of color. Expect occasional strong language -- including "s--t," "f--k," "retard," and one use of the "N" word -- and discussion of the crime the couple admits they committed. Spoiler: One scene tastefully depicts Fox and Robert's physical reunion, which includes the before-and-after of them making love after his release from prison. The film brings up many issues related to systemic racism, the need for criminal justice reform, and the importance of advocacy, and it promotes activism, empathy, compassion, and perseverance. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say

There aren't any parent reviews yet. Be the first to review this title.

What's the Story?

TIME is a documentary about how unfair sentencing, including lack of parole, hurts families. In 1997, Fox and Robert, newly married after a decade and three sons together, lost the primary investors in their small business, a hip-hop-inspired clothing store in Shreveport, Louisiana. Desperate, Fox drove Robert and a nephew to a local bank, where they committed armed robbery (no one was hurt). They were all caught and convicted of armed robbery, and although Fox took a plea deal of 13 years (she was released after 3.5), Robert was sentenced to a staggering 60 years without possibility of parole. After Fox's early release, she spent nearly two decades lobbying for her husband's re-sentencing, amnesty, and release. Director Garrett Bradley weaves in footage of Fox's (as well as her sons') efforts with Fox's personal home video footage.

Is It Any Good?

This is an unforgettable documentary about one woman's fight to have her husband released early from an unfair prison sentence. Fox is painfully honest about the couple's crime; this isn't a film like Just Mercy about a wrongful conviction. What Fox wants people to know is that the same brokenness and systemic racism that led Just Mercy 's Walter McMillian to sit on Death Row is responsible for all of the overly harsh sentencing that people of color, particularly Black men, still face in the United States' criminal courts. Fox is an absolutely compelling subject: She's so smart and so fiercely devoted to her husband and their sons, many of whom are in college and graduate school, flying in the face of statistics related to success rates for children of incarcerated adults.

Fox and director Bradley are clearly collaborators in the documentary, with Fox's personal home videos offering a lot to the story. There are a few questions that do go unanswered or unaddressed: How do Fox and Robert have such a young son if Robert has been incarcerated for so long, and what happened to the nephew involved in the robbery? The latter issue is particularly revelant, because there have to be extenuating circumstances related to why Rich isn't advocating for her nephew's early release. It's also somewhat underexplained how Fox ended up with such a relatively short sentence compared to Robert's, even if she was just the getaway driver. Those issues aside, there's so much to appreciate and reflect upon in Time , which will make viewers think not just about the time Robert served but the time he and his family have lost.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how Time portrays incarcerated people and their families. Do you think Fox and Robert's family is unique? Why did Fox succeed when so many others do not?

What did you learn from the film about the justice system's pitfalls? What do you think Fox and her mother mean when they say prison is the new slavery?

How is Fox a role model ? Why are compassion , empathy , and perseverance important character strengths ?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : October 16, 2020
• Director : Garrett Bradley
• Inclusion Information : Black directors
• Studio : Amazon Studios
• Genre : Documentary
• Topics : Activism , Friendship
• Character Strengths : Compassion , Empathy , Perseverance
• Run time : 81 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : some strong language
• Last updated : February 19, 2023

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Time’ on Amazon Prime, An Against-The-Odds Love Story That Pushes Hard Against A Broken System 

Where to stream:.

• Time (2020)
• documentaries

Stream It Or Skip It: 'Lie To Fly' On FX, About The Alaska Airlines Pilot Who Tried To Crash A Plane While Coming Down From Magic Mushrooms

"actually frightening": true crime fans stunned by physical resemblance between scott peterson and 'gone girl's ben affleck, 'the greatest love story never told' hits different now that jennifer lopez has filed for divorce from ben affleck, stream it or skip it: 'untold: the murder of air mcnair' on netflix, a look back at the shocking shooting death of the tennessee titans legend.

Director Garrett Bradley’s award-winning documentary Time , now streaming on Amazon Prime, is an immersive, engrossing film that chronicles one woman’s unyielding quest to free her husband from a nightmarish prison sentence. Constructed in part of home video footage, Time drifts between the past and present to explore the powerful bonds of love, family, and determination.

TIME : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: “At the beginning of every year, every New Year’s Eve for the past 20 years, we have always started the new year knowing that this was gonna be the year that my husband was coming home.” In one statement, Sibil Fox Richardson summarizes her decades-long struggle to free her husband Rob from a 60-year prison sentence for armed robbery, a stretch, she also tells us, “without probation, parole or suspension of sentence.” As Time unfolds, spooling and re-spooling as it does around the present and the past of its star and subject, Fox Rich, filmmaker Garrett Bradley’s documentary presents hard truths about the American criminal justice system, but also profiles the living and breathing everyday life of an American woman, wife, mother, and activist. Rich provided Bradley with hundreds of hours of home videos that she shot over the duration of her time both with and without her husband, and these lengths of tape — lengths of time — are fused together in a not-necessarily-linear manner to illustrate the inside and out of Rich’s world. There is intimacy here, and inspiration. Adversity, and seething frustration. At various points we wait with Rich as she is on hold with the court, interminably and in real time, often only to hear, once again, that there’s no news. There’s no information. Call another day. The system doesn’t care.

Time premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival to universal acclaim, and garnered for Bradley the Directing Award for US documentaries. It gives us a powerful center in Rich, who is equal parts charming, determined, loving, and boldly herself. “I came from a people who had a strong desire to have something, to make something out of ourselves,” she tells us. The film also features her sons — they are rambunctious young boys in one shot, sturdy young men in the next; lives stitched together — and Remington gives us even more insight into the perception of time, and what drives Rich forward. “In our society, image is everything,” her oldest son Remington says. “My family has a very strong image, but hiding behind that is a lot of hurt.”

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Just Mercy , When They See Us , Crime + Punishment , 13th .

Performance Worth Watching: Sibil Fox Richardson is the heart and soul of Life . A montage later in the film of her lively, motivational oratory is particularly compelling.

Memorable Dialogue: “Posting live from experience.” While the phrase only forms part of a social media message Rich is filming to spread the word about an upcoming protest, it gets at what the entirety of Time truly does. This is a film that immerses us in one person’s continued ability to stay upright.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Time is a revelatory look at the nature of living in America, and how the systems and processes of that undergird our society are nameless and unforgiving. It also explodes that notion, and reveals through the strength of one individual how names — proper nouns — can remain unforgotten, remain in the light, remain on the lips and tongues of the people they love, despite the hand that the system dealt. The film benefits from the power of Fox Rich, but also from how it’s crafted, being of both personal footage and professional artistry. We are invited to live within it. Informing all of this and helping to bind it all together is Time ‘s powerful soundtrack, which features the elliptical, enchanting piano compositions of Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Time reveals in its personal footage and profound storytelling a compelling story of one woman’s fight against an unforgiving system. It’s time well spent.

Should you stream or skip Garrett Bradley's award-winning documentary #TimeTheMovie on @PrimeVideo ? #SIOSI — Decider (@decider) October 18, 2020

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

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A director critically reexamines his 1980s childhood in 'Armageddon Time'

Justin Chang

Banks Repeta plays 11-year-old Paul Graff and Anthony Hopkins is his grandfather in Armageddon Time. Anne Joyce/Focus Features hide caption

Banks Repeta plays 11-year-old Paul Graff and Anthony Hopkins is his grandfather in Armageddon Time.

A lot of filmmakers these days seem to be in an intensely personal, self-reflective mood. There's a terrific movie in theaters right now called Aftersun , and it's based on the childhood memories of its first-time director, Charlotte Wells. Several upcoming films, like Steven Spielberg 's The Fabelmans and Bardo , from Alejandro G. Iñárritu, are also drawn from their filmmakers' life experiences.

Armageddon Time , the latest movie written and directed by James Gray, is an especially thoughtful and moving example. While it's a loving re-creation of a time and place Gray knows well — some of it was shot just blocks away from his childhood home in Queens — the director has more than a rosy nostalgia trip in mind. He's made an uncommonly tough-minded movie about race, class, assimilation and white privilege in America. And while it takes place in 1980, a few months before the election of Ronald Reagan, it has nearly as much to say about the present.

The story follows Paul Graff, an 11-year-old version of Gray played by a wide-eyed young actor named Banks Repeta. Paul wants to be an artist when he grows up. He's also a bit of a class clown at his public school, where his best friend is a Black classmate named Johnny, played by Jaylin Webb. They have fun hanging out and goofing off, and they take turns sticking up for each other when they get in trouble, which is often. But as Paul soon notices, it's Johnny who always gets the more severe punishment. He also knows that Johnny is poor and lives with his grandmother.

That places him in stark contrast with Paul and his comfortably middle-class Jewish family. Gray does a wonderful job of immersing us in the everyday bustle of the Graffs' home, where relatives are always coming over for dinner, none more beloved than Paul's grandfather, affectionately played by Anthony Hopkins .

Jeremy Strong is terrific — and very un- Kendall Roy -like — as Paul's father, a plumber with a big heart and a fierce temper. Anne Hathaway does her finest acting in some time as Paul's gentler but more resilient mother. Like any good parents, Paul's mom and dad only want what's best for him. They've worked hard to make a good living and earn a level of social standing in their community. Given their Jewish immigrant roots, they also know the challenges of assimilating into American culture. At extended gatherings, Paul's relatives share grim stories about the anti-Semitic violence their family fled from in Ukraine. But Gray doesn't shy away from exposing their own casual prejudice: We also hear some of those same relatives spout derogatory remarks about Black people around the dinner table.

It's been a while since I've seen a movie that captured family dynamics with this much unsparing honesty. It's also been a while since I've seen a Hollywood movie with such a layered understanding of how white supremacy pits people of different backgrounds against each other. That's a concept that feels painfully resonant now in a moment of heightened anti-Semitism and anti-Black racism. And just to make the present-day parallels obvious, Gray throws in a sharp jab at the Trump family, a major presence at Paul's private school.

At its heart, though, Armageddon Time is about Paul and Johnny's friendship and how that friendship tragically changes. It's here that things get a little tricky: Some might see Johnny as a regrettable stereotype, the Black character who suffers grievously so that his white friend can learn a hard-hitting lesson. But I think that reading may be too easy, partly because the film is all about the limitations of Paul's perspective, and partly because Gray has no interest in dispensing reassurance or uplift. He's made an angry, despairing movie about one boy's disillusionment with the injustice of the world and his own silent complicity with it. What makes Armageddon Time so powerful is that Gray reserves his harshest anger for himself.

Review | Time movie review: 1960s stars Patrick Tse, Petrina Fung reunite in bittersweet drama on Hong Kong’s neglected elderly population

• Moving from black comedy to heartwarming drama, Time is a surprisingly pleasant genre hybrid with a serious message on the loneliness of Hong Kong’s elderly
• Screen legend Tse serves up an intricate mix of honour, vulnerability and deadpan humour that may just see him become a candidate in next year’s best actor race

3.5/5 stars

The loneliness of Hong Kong’s ageing population provides the intriguing backdrop for Time , a surprisingly pleasant genre hybrid which morphs gradually from pitch-black comedy on the subject of assisted suicide for the elderly into a heart-warming drama that ponders the essence of friendship and family ties.

A goofy opening scene offers a glimpse into the mythical past of the three members of the assassination unit at the film’s core. The movie then introduces us to the bleak present of the retired contract killer Chau (Patrick Tse Yin, now 84), whose lethal slashing skill with a blade isn’t even deemed worthy for employment by a modest noodle shop.

Chau’s two former colleagues are not faring much better. His professional partner and dispatcher Fung (Petrina Fung Bo-bo), long since a lounge singer and operator, is being pressured to sell her apartment and move into a nursing home by her son (Sam Lee Chan-sam) and daughter-in-law (JJ Jia Xiaochen). Meanwhile Chung (Lam Suet), the driver, is seeing his dream of marrying his favourite prostitute (Belinda Yan Zi-fei) fade by the day.

The trio find purpose when they launch an ironically successful business to help the suicidal old folks in the city end their lives. But when Chau finds his latest client to be the orphaned schoolgirl Tsz-ying (Chung Suet-ying, The Way We Keep Dancing ), who was recently made pregnant and then abandoned by her boyfriend (Zeno Koo Ting-hin), an unexpected bond forms between the two – and Time turns into quite an endearing family drama.

Produced and co-scripted by Lam Ka-tung ( Hand Rolled Cigarette ), the film marks the feature directing debut of long-time assistant director Ricky Ko Tsz-pun at age 49 – a fitting anecdote for a story about how it’s never too late to find your calling. The rare leading roles for 1960s stars Tse and Fung, whose last film together dates back to the family drama Deep in Love in 1960, also lend Time a strong nostalgic air.

Time ’s story may be farcical in nature but its intention is no joke – this is a critical reminder of how some elderly people are feeling acutely let down by family and society. That sentiment is marvellously essayed by Tse, a screen legend who clearly still treasures his dandy image in real life. The intricate mix of honour, vulnerability and deadpan humour that he brings to this role may just see him become an unusual candidate in next year’s best actor race.

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• DVD & Streaming
• Comedy , Drama , Romance , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Content Caution

In Theaters

• November 1, 2013
• Domhnall Gleeson as Tim; Rachel McAdams as Mary; Bill Nighy as Dad; Lindsay Duncan as Mum; Lydia Wilson as Kit Kat; Richard Cordery as Uncle Desmond; Joshua McGuire as Rory; Tom Hollander as Harry; Margot Robbie as Charlotte; Will Merrick as Jay; Harry Hadden-Paton as Rupert

Home Release Date

• February 4, 2014
• Richard Curtis

Distributor

• Universal Pictures

Movie Review

“Dad always seemed to have time on his hands,” says 21-year-old Tim as About Time begins. “He was eternally available.”

And so he was … more so than Tim could have known while he was growing up. That’s because all the men in Tim’s family share a peculiar secret: They can travel through time, a fact that Dad reveals to Tim on his 21st birthday. Unlike some science fiction visions of time travel, these men can only go backward in time, not forward. And they can only travel through the span of their own lives to rewrite their own personal stories. So, going back and killing Hitler, as Dad notes, is right out.

Still, being able to travel back even through one’s own life offers a unique opportunity for do-overs. Mess it up the first time and, well, you can always try, try again. All these time travelers have to do is go into a closet (or any dark place), close their eyes, clench their fists and think about where—or when, I should say—they want to go.

Tim begins by redoing a New Year’s Eve party where he didn’t quite have the courage to kiss a girl who wanted to be kissed, a miscue he rectifies the second time around. But it’s not long before he sees the full possibilities of such power. In a conversation with his dad, he says it would be easy to amass huge sums of money. Dad warns him off: “Utterly screwed up your grandfather’s life.” Fine. Tim really isn’t interested in money anyway. “For me,” the awkward Brit confesses, “it was always going to be about love.”

He tries, but fails, to rewrite the script of his first love, Charlotte, a friend of the family who had recently spent the summer living with them, mostly hanging out with Tim’s sister, Katherine (who goes by the nickname Kit Kat). “Big lesson No. 1,” Tim reports. “All the time travel in the world can’t make someone love you.”

And then it’s off to London to begin a new chapter in his life. Without the aid of time travel, Tim meets a pretty-but-insecure young woman named Mary. It would have been love at first sight, except that they meet in a club where all the lights are out and they can only talk without seeing one another. Still, the lights-out approach works in Tim’s favor, and he manages to procure equally smitten Mary’s number when they finally see each other.

Then comes big lesson No. 2. In an effort to help the man he’s rooming with, Tim travels back to that night to undo a mistake that really hurt the guy. It’s a selfless, well-intended choice … but one that essentially “overwrites” the night he met Mary. When Tim finally tracks Mary down again, she has no memory of him, and he has to work much harder—and do even more time travel—to initiate a relationship with her again.

He succeeds in re-wooing her, and it’s not long (depending on how you define that term) before they’re married, and Tim’s traveling even more to try to help others and correct things that don’t go just right. Slowly but surely, however, the young husband (and soon, father) begins to realize that some mistakes can’t be undone.

[ Note: Spoilers are contained in the following sections. ]

Positive Elements

Tim’s father, a retired university professor, adores his son. And he uses his time-traveling ability to attempt to right the wrongs that develop between them. One mistake he’s broken up over is that he didn’t tell his son he loved him while giving the toast at Tim and Mary’s wedding, an omission he rectifies the second time around. He also tells his aging, dementia-addled brother that he loves him, a word of encouragement that Uncle Desmond later says gave him the best day of his life. That speech also finds Dad saying, “I’m not proud of many things in my life. But I am proud to be the father of my son.”

Dad’s overarching plan for how to use his power? He says that he lives each day normally—including experiencing all of its stresses and difficulties—then goes back and relives those days a second time to laugh at all the things that stressed him out. The message here is that the things we get so worked up over in life generally aren’t worth the anxiety we devote to them.

Tim goes one step further. He embraces his father’s counsel for a time, as it were. In the end, however, he realizes that the hard stuff and the things that don’t go quite right are an inherent part of life, and that the goal isn’t to iron out every rough spot, but to embrace the difficulties with joy and contentedness.

Twice Tim must make difficult choices about how to use his newfound ability. The first time, his troubled sister Kit Kat has been involved in a drunk-driving accident due to despondence over a failing relationship. Kit Kat’s boyfriend has long been a thorn in her side, so Tim takes her hand and travels many years back to the party where she met him. (The time travelers can take others with them.) They rewrite her history, and the bothersome boyfriend is eliminated. When they return to the present, however, Tim encounters a serious unintended consequence of his “meddling”: His baby girl has become … a baby boy because of the changes he made in history. Heartbroken, Tim seeks his father’s advice, and Dad tells him that if you travel back beyond the birth of a child, it will result in the birth of a different child. So, in a particularly convoluted plot twist, Tim manages to undo what he’s done in order to get his daughter back, a choice that means Kit Kat still has her accident and the consequences of years of bad choices.

Then, when Tim’s dad succumbs to cancer, Tim begins traveling back to visit his dad in the past, which lessens the blow significantly. Mary wants to have another baby, however, and Tim now knows it will mean he can never visit his dad again. It crushes a part of him, but he agrees to Mary’s desire, travelling back one more time to say farewell. “Saying yes to the future meant saying good-bye to my dad forever,” he tells us.

Spiritual Elements

Tim’s father says, “I never said we could fix things. Life’s a mixed bag. Look at Jesus: He was the Son of God for God’s sake, and look how that turned out.” At Dad’s funeral, we hear the Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds song “Into My Arms,” which includes this repeated line: “Into my arms, O Lord.”

Sexual Content

Before Tim and Mary tie the knot, Tim runs into Charlotte again. They have dinner together, and it’s clear that Charlotte wants to sleep with him. She invites him back to her apartment, but at the door Tim turns and runs back to his home with Mary, and proposes.

That’s the good news. Here’s the rest of it: Early in their relationship, Mary invites Tim home with her and makes it clear she’s ready to have sex. We see him removing her pajamas and bra (her bare back is shown) as the two intertwine. Tim is disappointed in his first “performance,” though, and decides to redo it … several times. Accordingly, dialogue (and their body positions) afterward indicates that each subsequent “first time” is more intense than the last.

Tim moves in with Mary. And during a wedding planning session, Mary does a striptease for him, promising she’ll remove one item of clothing for every decision about the wedding Tim makes. (We see her bare back again, as well as her hands covering her breasts.)

An art museum exhibit featuring still photos of British supermodel Kate Moss includes an image of her topless. Kit Kat and Charlotte wear skimpy bikinis, and Kit Kat has a penchant for revealing, clingy clothing throughout. Tim sees Charlotte in a negligee. Mary tries on revealing dresses, labeling one as “too breasty” and saying that another makes her look like a “prostitute.”

Speaking of which, Mary and Tim talk about whether prostitutes enjoy sex. Mary’s best friend implies that she’s quite promiscuous. Suggestive dialogue includes verbal references to oral sex and seeing bare breasts. Tim concludes that Charlotte and a female friend are a lesbian couple. (They’re not, but it turns out that Charlotte’s friend is gay.)

Violent Content

Kit Kat gets in a car wreck, leaving her with cuts and bruises on her face.

Crude or Profane Language

Five or six uses each of the f- and s-word. More than 30 misuses of God’s name, including one pairing with “d‑‑n.” Once or twice each we hear “h‑‑‑,” “pr‑‑k,” “d‑‑k,” “a‑‑,” “arse,” “d‑‑n,” “p‑‑‑,” “b-gger” and “b‑‑tard.” We see obscene hand gestures twice.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Alcohol is consumed socially at parties, including a big New Year’s Eve soiree. Tim says the next day that he’s got a hangover. It’s implied that Kit Kat’s drinking habit is spiraling out of control.

Other Negative Elements

The film doesn’t comment on the fact that Tim and his dad apparently never let their wives in on their time-traveling secret.

About Time is a maddeningly sweet film that, with some strategic edits, easily could have been more accessible to a much wider audience than its R rating will allow.

First, the sweetness part.

About Time tenderly and quietly focuses on the beauty, joy and wonder (as well as the inevitable grief) that flows from a family’s love. It’s an achingly beautiful thing to watch Tim and his dad go for one last walk on the beach, to play Ping-Pong one last time. It’s an achingly beautiful thing when Tim’s fierce mother says of her husband’s imminent death, “I am so uninterested in life without your father.” It’s an achingly beautiful thing to watch Tim strive so hard to change his sister’s hurtful past, only to realize that the consequences of editing her history are too much for him to bear. And when Tim tells us at film’s end, “I just try to live each day … as if it were the final day of my full, extraordinary life,” it’s an achingly beautiful echo of Scripture’s exhortation to seek contentment, to have hearts of gratitude and to cast our cares upon our heavenly Father.

For all that, however, there’s still that maddening part to contend with.

Tim and Mary hop in the sack—repeatedly—very early in their relationship. They move in together not long after that. And their actions once again reinforce our culture’s boundary-free mores when it comes to physical intimacy. Throw in some f- and s-words and more than 30 misuses of God’s name, and all those achingly tender moments elsewhere start to feel achingly sullied as well.

Adam R. Holz

After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.

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Review: ‘Blink Twice’ plunges us into a potent fantasy island with a dark side that’s less clear

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In her daring directorial debut, “Blink Twice,” actor turned writer-director Zoë Kravitz doesn’t flinch once — not even when her film might be served by looking away. She maintains a steely gaze in this caustic social-horror fable, laced with black comedy, which has nods to Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” while Kravitz chooses to aim her artistic weapons at sexual politics, not necessarily race. Co-written with E.T. Feigenbaum, “Blink Twice” is a big, bold swing, even if its message becomes muddled along the way. It’s clear Kravitz wants to make a statement with this film. What’s less clear is what exactly that statement might be.

“Blink Twice” opens with a dead-eyed scroll in a dingy bathroom; our protagonist, Frida ( Naomi Ackie ), thumbs her phone screen on the toilet catatonically, observing the lives of others on Instagram, before she and her roommate Jess ( Alia Shawkat ) rush to work, serving champagne and canapés at a swanky gala hosted by a disgraced tech mogul, Slater King (Channing Tatum). Yearning to feel a part of something bigger, the cater waiters slip into slinky gowns and join the party themselves, warmly welcomed into the inner circle of wealthy men as beautiful young women typically are. Jet off to Slater’s private island with his pals? Frida’s been longing for a vacation.

Kravitz observes this moneyed milieu well, and what she capably achieves in “Blink Twice” is an absurdist comedy of gendered manners once the guys (Tatum, Simon Rex, Haley Joel Osment, Levon Hawke and Christian Slater) and gals (Ackie, Shawkat, Adria Arjona, Liz Caribel and Trew Mullen) touch down at Slater’s secluded spread located in a lush tropical forest. Outfitted in matching white bikinis and resort wear, the girls are plied with fine wine, exquisite food and good drugs. The setting and its accoutrements couldn’t be more more richly luxurious, but Kravitz presents this world with a sickening, unsettling hyperreality.

Everything feels off in “Blink Twice,” intentionally so. The style is quite jarring, with an abrasiveness that’s almost chafing to watch. The camera angles are strange and the flow is jagged, as Kravitz and editor Kathryn J. Schubert construct scenes with seconds and even minutes dropping out. The images created by cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra are oversaturated, too bright, and have an almost burning lucidity and crispness; the sound design is also overly pronounced and too sharp. This postcard-perfect setting becomes almost unbearable to endure.

Of course something’s not right. It’s a terrible truth to realize that you can have all of the nice things and still be having a bad time. Jess eventually realizes it, after a spree of endless nights spent binging on fun-fun-fun, the girls racing around the lawn in a psychedelics-induced stupor after their stultifying dinners with the men. They have no phones, no one knows what day it is and mysterious injuries keep appearing. When Jess goes missing and no one seems to remember she was even there, it’s up to Frida to claw her way out of the fog and find out what happened to her best friend.

Kravitz nails the social analysis and a dark, satirical tone, but as the film becomes a horror thriller, her directorial execution falters. There are some dynamic shots and compositions, and overt references to her inspirations, but the element of suspense and her ability to stage a sequence is lacking. She doesn’t shy away from the ugly truth at the center of her story (best left to the viewer), but Kravitz miscalculates the careful difference between “conceal” and “reveal” that is necessary to skillful horror filmmaking. She makes the mistake of showing us the monster clearly, forgetting that what the audience can’t see is far scarier than what they can.

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Despite its flaws, “Blink Twice” demonstrates a directorial vision bursting with fresh, audacious choices, at least stylistically (narratively, the script is riddled with ideas that are rather facile and preposterous). It’s a strong first effort and Kravitz gets fantastic performances out of Ackie, Arjona and especially Tatum, his quiet, seductive menace boiling over impressively.

However, Kravitz never works out exactly what she wants to say about sex, power and revenge. A deeply cynical coda undercuts any themes of empowerment that might have naturally emerged from this story. Successfully blending righteous rage, sardonic humor and a fist-pumping “girl power” narrative is quite a challenging task (if that’s even what she wants to do — it remains a mystery). Unrelenting hollowness robs the film of any impact or meaning. Maybe that’s the point, but it doesn’t feel good.

Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

'Blink Twice'

Rating: R, for strong violent content, sexual assault, drug use and language throughout, and some sexual references Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes Playing: In wide release Friday, Aug. 23

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Sweet without the schmaltz.

‘Between the Temples’

Ben (Jason Schwartzman), a cantor at a local synagogue who is grieving the loss of his wife, reconnects with his former music teacher in this touching dramedy directed by Nathan Silver.

From our review:

Silver is a sharp, cleareyed observer of human nature, and while he pokes at his characters, including Ben, it’s more teasing than cruel. If there’s a mean joke in “Between the Temples,” I missed it, which helps explain where Silver is coming from. He and Schwartzman make Ben’s pain palpable without sentimentalizing it; you see the hurt in the sag of Ben’s shoulders and in the melancholy that clouds his eyes. Yet there’s a fundamental resilience to the character who, while he’s sometimes off on his own, is never really alone.

In theaters. Read the full review .

Bites off more commentary than it can chew.

‘blink twice’.

After Frida (Naomi Ackie) and Jess (Alia Shawkat) accept an invite to the private island of a tech billionaire (Channing Tatum), they discover an unexpected cost to their free vacation.

To land its horror-stained commentary on sexual assault and cancel culture as well as class and race, it would need a director capable of pushing beyond basic social politics. In her debut feature, Zoë Kravitz is not that director. Rather her film, for which she also wrote the screenplay with E.T. Feigenbaum, exists more as a concept than a complete idea.

Resurrected but better off dead.

Directed by Rupert Sanders, this new adaptation of the comic book series about a grief-stricken, supernatural vigilante tries to escape the shadow cast by the cult-classic film adaptation from 1994.

“Do you think angsty teens would build shrines to us?” Shelly (FKA Twigs) asks Eric (Bill Skarsgard) about their love story … but the real punchline is that the film itself is the embodiment of that kind of hollow caricaturization and emo teen worship, throwing vague echoes of Batman’s Joker villain, “John Wick,” and 2005’s “Constantine” into a laundry machine and hoping faded shades of black eyeliner remain.

A missing actor, a ponderous film.

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, blink twice.

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Early in Zoë Kravitz's directorial debut, we are introduced to Slater King ( Channing Tatum ), a tech billionaire, via a television interview where he apologizes for an undisclosed offense. However, the unsaid transgression is no mystery. The setting—an influential, rich white guy in a confessional interview lamenting his behavior and promising to do better—is a familiar enough scenario that we can assume he weaponized his power in some egregious manner. 

Slater hosts a gala where catering waitresses and best friends, Frida ( Naomi Ackie ) and Jess ( Alia Shawkat ), are working. Halfway through, they ditch their white button downs for cocktail dresses in the hopes of schmoozing with the man of the hour. When Frida’s accidental faceplant draws his attention, the girls get exactly what they were hoping for. Spellbound by his handsome looks, status, and confidence, when he invites them to his island for a vacation full of lavish poolside partying, they jump at the chance. 

Joined by his cabal of miscreants—Cody ( Simon Rex ), Vic ( Christian Slater ), and Tom ( Haley Joel Osment ), and their invitees, Sarah ( Adria Arjona ), Heather ( Trew Mullen ), and Camilla (Liz Caribel)—Slater boards a private jet for the supposed getaway of their dreams. With their cell phones collected by Slater’s nervous and neurotic personal assistant and sister ( Geena Davis ), everyone is left to revel in the indulgences the island has to offer, be it weed, bottomless champagne, or elaborate nighttime dinners. Yet as the boozy days blend together, a sneaking suspicion begins to arise that something isn’t right.

“Blink Twice” believes it has a point to make about the sinister capabilities of rich white men, but it does nothing more than call it out. The writing stops at square one. It doesn’t engage with its proposed thesis, but instead makes a chop shop of buzzwords and hot topics from #MeToo to therapy bros. When the reveal of “Blink Twice” enters via a split-second frame, the shock of the film turning on its head is not one of horrifying suspense, but rather, dejection. And as the quick frame devolves into extended sequences of brutality into a cutthroat race to the finish, the film becomes an affirmation of a tired, simple narrative toolbox being sold as unflinching feminist grit. 

“Blink Twice” sucker punches the audience with its sexual violence and then fails to find intelligence or dexterity in its handling of it or any of the themes running adjacent. Even the stylistic choices, with which the film rides on, are simple. And as the film tries to balance its tone and events with humor, it only belies the success of itself further. It’s unfunny. “Blink Twice” doesn’t earn a laugh when it’s trying to be fun, nor does it elicit a chuckle when collating an act of brutality with a punchline. 

Of all the film’s infractions, the impact of its sloppy logic isn’t primary, but worth noting. The laws by which Slater is able to weaponize his power are inconsistent and confounding once you dip a toe past the surface. If there’s anything to be credited here, it’s the performances from the cast. From his heartthrob origins to “ 21 Jump Street ,” where Tatum debuted his comedic chops, “Blink Twice” shows he’s formidable at tackling darkness too, and that he can indeed be a feared presence onscreen. Ackie manages well in her starring role, with the expressiveness of her eyes locking us in, and her chemistry with Arjona’s Sarah giving us a crutch with which to limp to the film’s conclusion. Yet even with their best efforts across the board, “Blink Twice” has already failed on paper. It is homespun exploitation followed by a pretentious conclusion that smirks at the viewer, declaring prideful resolution.

Kravitz’s leap toward discomfortable should not be misinterpreted as an auteur’s valiance. If we as viewers equate the brazen with the brave, our expectations are far too low. Courageous storytelling requires thoughtful engagement and nuance. Kravitz displays neither, opting for textbook exploitation while feigning sharp wit. She wields her blade haplessly, drawing blood from the women that “Blink Twice” is supposed to (eventually) empower. 

Peyton Robinson

Peyton Robinson is a freelance film writer based in Chicago, IL. 

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Film credits.

Blink Twice (2024)

103 minutes

Naomi Ackie as Frida

Channing Tatum as Slater King

Christian Slater as Vic

Simon Rex as Cody

Adria Arjona as Sarah

• Zoë Kravitz
• E.T. Feigenbaum

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After graduating from high school without any plans for the future, Isaiah receives a push to start making better life decisions. After graduating from high school without any plans for the future, Isaiah receives a push to start making better life decisions. After graduating from high school without any plans for the future, Isaiah receives a push to start making better life decisions.

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In other words, it’s all part of a super-elite reverie, too good true to be true. Before long, the audience begins to wonder the same thing that Frida does: What’s the catch? What’s the price? What’s really going on?

“Blink Twice” may remind you, at times, of “Midsommar,” Ari Aster’s sun-dappled white-cotton-dress bad-dream fantasia about a vacation taken by an American couple at a Swedish commune that turns out to be a cult. That movie had the dark pull of a forbidden fantasy. But “Blink Twice,” though it takes some very high-flying twists, is rooted in the sexual menace of the real world. The movie pings off the sagas of predators like Jeffrey Epstein, who brought vacationers (and fellow predators) to his getaway island, and Bill Cosby, who used drugs to commit his crimes. For a while in “Blink Twice,” there are clues that something very weird is going on. Frida drips steak juice onto her dress…and a bit later, the stain has vanished. She keeps noticing dirt under her fingernails. And what about the mysterious maid (María Elena Olivares) who keeps popping up like a figment out of “Don’t Look Now”? Her main job seems to be killing the big venomous yellow snakes who populate the island. But why?

Naomi Ackie, so superb as Whitney Houston in “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” makes her mark here as a starstruck climber who knows how to turn on the cool. In short hair, she resembles an R&B star from the early ’60s, but she’s got an arrestingly layered contempo presence. We can see that Frida, who dreams of launching her own nail-design brand, idolizes Slater, to the point of infiltrating the white-walled King-Tech fundraising bash she’s been hired to waitress at. She thinks she’s hit the jackpot when he asks her to the island, even as her big flashing detective doe eyes start to register red flags (first one: that they have to give up their cell phones).

Frida has brought along her roommate and best friend, Jess (Alia Shawkat), and feels protected. The film seems to pivot around the idea that Slater, the mogul Prince Charming, has fallen for her. When we observe the wary interplay between her and Sarah (Adria Arjona, from “Hit Man”), a long-time star contestant on a “Survivor” reality show, we think that the rivalry between them is going to drive the story. But that’s just one of Kravitz’s sleight-of-hand gambits.

The men seem arrogant without being excessively creepy, from Christian Slater’s executive bigwig to Lucas the string-bean tech wizard (Levon Hawke) to Tom the cuddly geek (Haley Joel Osment) to Cody the chef, played by Simon Rex as an unctuous New Age food guru. They are not presented as villains, more like representative everydudes. But that’s kind of the point. As the film slowly reveals what’s going on, they emerge as versions of the Ben Kingsley character in “Death and the Maiden,” acting out the dark sides of ordinary men. Yet if Frida and her fellow island guests are victims, why, day after day, are they so in the dark about what’s going on?

Reviewed at Digital Arts, New York, Aug. 16, 2024. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 102 MIN.

• Production: An Amazon MGM Studios release of a Free Association, This Is Important, Bold Choices production. Producers: Bruce Cohen, Tiffany Persons, Garret Levitz, Zoë Kravitz, Channing Tatum. Executive producers: Stacy Perskie, Jordan Harkins, Vania Schlogel.
• Crew: Director: Zoë Kravitz. Screenplay: Zoë Kravitz, E.T. Feigenbaum. Camera: Adam Newport-Berra. Editor: Kathryn J. Schubert. Music: Chanda Dancy.
• With: Naomie Ackie, Channing Tatum, Christian Slater, Simon Rex, Adria Arjona, Haley Joel Osment, Geena Davis, Kyle MacLachlan, Alia Shawkat, Levon Hawke.

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