Our Time Machine | Telescope Film
Our Time Machine

Our Time Machine

Critic Rating

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  • China,
  • United States
  • 2019
  • · 86m

Directors S. Leo Chiang, Yang Sun, Shuang Liang
Cast Tong Zhengwei
Genre Documentary, Drama, Family

When influential Chinese artist Ma Liang (a.k.a. Maleonn) realizes that his father is suffering from Alzheimer's, he invites him to collaborate on his most ambitious project to date - a haunting stage performance. Through the creation of this play, the two men confront their mortality before time runs out and memories are lost forever.

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What are critics saying?

100

Screen Daily by Allan Hunter

Our Time Machine is very carefully balanced between the personal and the professional. An elegant, focused piece of storytelling finds the space to explore the family history revealing the way in which these lives are inextricably linked with the history of China itself.

100

San Francisco Chronicle by G. Allen Johnson

The issues of aging and familial relationships and the appealing nature of this family would make “Our Time Machine” worthy of a look in any case, but what puts it over the top is Maleonn’s fascinating visual inventions.

90

Film Threat

The vision of life’s twilight years presented in the film is frank while still remaining expansive.

90

Variety by Scott Tobias

Sun and Chiang strike a tricky balance between a high-stakes making-of documentary and an intimate, observational family portrait, but Maleonn is such a thoughtful, sensitive, brilliant subject that the film is compelling no matter where on the creative spectrum they find him.

90

Slashfilm

Our Time Machine might deploy too many endings, but each epilogue feels precious as if it is snatching as much time as it could with its subjects.

90

Film Threat by Chris Shields

The vision of life’s twilight years presented in the film is frank while still remaining expansive.

90

Slashfilm by Caroline Cao

Our Time Machine might deploy too many endings, but each epilogue feels precious as if it is snatching as much time as it could with its subjects.

88

LarsenOnFilm by Josh Larsen

The documentary displays such winsome artistry that you also leave feeling energized. It’s an invigorating act of creative defiance in the face of Alzheimer’s disease.

80

The Hollywood Reporter by Justin Lowe

The technical and logistical details of the project are constantly fascinating, but it’s these emotional moments that pack most of the film’s power.

80

The New York Times by Glenn Kenny

This often visually beautiful movie sometimes ventures full-time into Maleonn’s own dreams and is frank in its depiction of the conflicts in the family — as well as of Maleonn’s struggles to be a good son and an active artist, as his ambitions for the project run ahead of his financial resources.

75

RogerEbert.com by Matt Fagerholm

Our Time Machine leaves you wanting a whole lot more, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

67

Austin Chronicle by Marjorie Baumgarten

Maleonn somehow finds an anchor of optimism amidst the situation, despite his father’s steady memory decline. That, too, is part of this film’s gift.