{"id":261099,"date":"2026-01-28T02:52:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T02:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/261099\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T02:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T02:52:07","slug":"andrew-stantons-centuries-spanning-epic-is-woolly-and-sentimental","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/261099\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Stanton\u2019s Centuries-Spanning Epic Is Woolly And Sentimental"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tImagine the first two lines of Whitney Houston\u2019s mawkish hit \u201cThe Greatest Love of All\u201d on a loop for an hour and a half and you\u2019re part way to experiencing Andrew Stanton<\/a>\u2019s decades-spanning compendium movie. Unfolding with all the urgency of an early-2000s screensaver, it takes a big swing at life, the universe and everything in a bid to pay some kind of tribute to the laws of evolution that keep the human race alive, at least for now. To Stanton\u2019s credit, it\u2019s not as long and awful as Cloud Atlas, the film it most closely resembles, but the concept that links the three stories linked together here is too obvious \u2014 and too long in the unveiling \u2014 to sustain interest in its three very different strands.<\/p>\n

\n\tLike that weird, trippy interlude in Terrence Malick\u2019s Tree of Life, In the Blink of an Eye<\/a> begins with a brief history of time, accompanied by a pithy, literary line: \u201cRemember, remember, this is now, and now, and now.\u201d Well, it\u2019s certainly a cause for concern if you\u2019re getting your inspirational slogans from Sylvia Plath, but the writer\u2019s quote does explain the film\u2019s ambitious structure, taking place in three very different timelines that, just as you might imagine, exist in the now and show many happy correlations with the present. Neanderthals and people in the future who live for hundreds of years \u2014 they\u2019re just like us!<\/p>\n

\n\tIndeed, the first stop-off we make is in 45,000 BCE (Before Common Era, apparently), where a primitive man called Thorn is busy providing for his wife and child. This is by far the dullest section of a film that, even at the best of times, excels at being inoffensively unexciting, which means that just when we might be tiring of Thorn and his family, we are politely summoned to 2025. Here we meet Claire (Rashida Jones), an academic anthropologist who is forensically examining an ancient but well-preserved corpse that could \u2014 even though it mostly likely isn\u2019t \u2014 be the famous Missing Link.<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: Deadline Studio at Sundance Film Festival 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tClaire is having an affair with someone called Greg from \u201cStatistics,\u201d and their very modern, will-they-or-won\u2019t-they storyline is the cinematic equivalent of negative equity, which may be why we are quickly flung into the year 2417. Here we meet Coakley (Kate McKinnon<\/a>), in the part of the film that plays Silent Running to the first part\u2019s Quest for Fire. Coakley is a \u201clongevity enhanced\u201d human being who has been charged with establishing an off-world human colony for her ship\u2019s cargo of unfertilized embryos.<\/p>\n

\n\tI know what you\u2019re thinking: What could possibly happen next? Well, reach for the Xanax, because a mysterious plant disease has invaded Coakley\u2019s greenhouse, an environment that, quite categorically, shouldn\u2019t allow for outside pathogens. Yet here we are, and the disease is busy gobbling up the plants, while back in 2025 some woman is seeing a bloke she may or may not be all that keen on, and, even further back, in pre-history times, a prequel to Sasquatch Sunset is unfolding. It\u2019s tough to be mean to a film that has its heart in the right place, but it beggars belief that, having been sent briefly to Director\u2019s Jail with the middling\u00a0John Carter, its director would expect a film as woolly and sentimental as this to take him anywhere except backwards, to Director\u2019s Siberian Gulag.<\/p>\n

\n\tTitle:\u00a0In the Blink of an Eye
Festival: Sundance<\/a> (Premieres)
Director: Andrew Stanton
Screenwriter:\u00a0Colby Day
Cast:\u00a0Rashida Jones, Kate McKinnon, Daveed Diggs, Jorge Vargas, Tanaya Beatty
Distributor: Searchlight Pictures\u00a0
Running time: 1 hr 34 min<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Imagine the first two lines of Whitney Houston\u2019s mawkish hit \u201cThe Greatest Love of All\u201d on a loop…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[137449,146,85,137450,46,137451,397,19830,48764],"class_list":{"0":"post-261099","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-andrew-stanton","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-in-the-blink-of-an-eye","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-kate-mckinnon","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-sundance","16":"tag-sundance-film-festival"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}