Caught by the Tides
Sideshow | Release Date: May 9, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
87
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 25 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Rolling StoneDavid FearMay 9, 2025
On paper, the endeavor sounds like the equivalent of a B-sides and rarities compilation. On screen, it plays like a sucker-punch masterpiece. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comSimon AbramsMay 9, 2025
At heart, Caught By the Tides is an experimental romantic drama, though that makes it sound unapproachable and a little gimmicky. It’s neither, thankfully, and that’s largely thanks to Jia’s typical focus on the material signs of time’s relentless passage. Read full review
100
The New YorkerJustin ChangMay 8, 2025
The movie is, paradoxically, both artifact and construct; the instability of the image is precisely what holds it together. Jia’s sense of the ephemerality of the medium, and of the world that the medium reflects, has seldom been more stirringly profound. Read full review
100
The New York TimesManohla DargisMay 8, 2025
A tour de force that is at once an affecting portrait of a people in flux and a soulful, generous-hearted autobiographic testament from one of our greatest living filmmakers. Read full review
100
Original-CinLiam LaceyMay 7, 2025
With its elliptical, patched-together structure and multi-year duration, Caught By the Tides can be a challenging film to follow but, by the end, it achieves something both original and rewarding. Read full review
100
Little White LiesEsther RosenfieldApr 11, 2025
More than a retrospective of his own work, Caught by the Tides is a loving tribute by Jia to his most meaningful collaborator. Read full review
100
VarietyJessica KiangMay 19, 2024
Jia’s risky experiment is so uncannily successful that it is possible to come away from “Tides” with the whimsical impression that this was the film he was building toward all this time, as though all those lauded previous movies were simply him amassing the raw material for this one. Read full review
93
The Daily BeastNick SchagerMay 8, 2025
A mesmerizing film about the sweep and swirl of life, love, and the relationship between yesterday and today. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesTim GriersonJun 24, 2025
Caught by the Tides serves as a handy primer on Jia’s fascination with China’s political, cultural and economic evolution, amplifying those dependable themes with the benefit of working across a larger canvas of a quarter-century. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture) Madeline Leung ColemanMay 10, 2025
Jia’s recycling is not haphazard or mistaken. He’s an artist squeezing all the juice from his lemon: How many different ways can he show us that China’s development is leaving people behind? We also feel his confidence that Zhao, in every film, brings enough of herself to carry multiple characters. His reediting and reuse of her performances is a marvel. Read full review
88
The Associated PressJake CoyleMay 7, 2025
Jia Zhangke’s “Caught by the Tides” is less than two hours long and yet contains nearly a quarter-century of time’s relentless march forward. Few films course with history the way it does in the Chinese master’s latest, an epic collage that spans 21 years. Read full review
85
The Film VerdictDeborah YoungMay 19, 2024
Re-shuffling footage from films he has shot over the last 23 years, Jia Zhang-ke places his awe-inspiring cinematic mastery on full display in Caught by the Tides, though its ravishing poetic beauty tends to obscure the story. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyMay 7, 2025
It goes without saying that much of it will feel familiar to those already well-versed in the Jia filmography: there’s a yearning, a search, and, finally, a return. Read full review
80
Time OutDave CalhounMay 20, 2024
Caught by the Tides is more a montage of music and miscellaneous episodes than anything representing a traditional drama. It’s strongly propelled by music – from Chinese classical music to techno to rock – and it’s a heady visual mix of styles and formats: from grainy, phone-like footage in a documentary style, to much more pristine and considered imagery. Read full review
80
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganMay 19, 2024
An expression of his career-long preoccupations, Jia Zhang-ke’s odyssey through China since the turn of the century has an epic sense within a homespun feel. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyMay 19, 2024
Zhao’s face is one of the most transfixingly expressive in modern cinema, and her long collaboration with her husband Jia stands among the screen’s greatest actress-director unions. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 19, 2024
This is another deeply felt film from Jia Zhangke, with a very contemporary artistry. Read full review
79
TheWrapSteve PondMay 24, 2024
Caught by the Tides is an elegy of sorts, at times angry and abrasive but more often gentle and reflective. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerMay 22, 2025
It’s in the semi-improvised or captured moments, like the looks of desperation and abandonment on the faces of old men on the streets of a mining community, that Caught by the Tides is most striking. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonMay 29, 2025
While I was never bored, I felt somewhat disconnected from this movie. It’s not that I wasn’t engaged or involved — I enjoy when a movie makes me work for its pleasures — it just felt like I was missing so much and left me wishing I’d seen more of the director’s movies. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineWilliam RepassSep 23, 2024
Jia Zhang-ke’s Caught by the Tides attests to the fact that making art under the most adverse conditions can prove to be serendipitous. Read full review
75
The Film StageRory O'ConnorMay 21, 2024
There were times in Tides when I began wondering just how often one can go back to the well. Read full review
67
IndieWireDavid EhrlichMay 19, 2024
Caught by the Tides” is by nature an imprecise film, tethered to the buoys that Jia has collected over the years and prone to drifting through time without any clear sense of where it might take it. Read full review
63
The Seattle TimesQina LiuJul 23, 2025
Caught by the Tides is a beautiful time capsule that holds a record: Humanity can survive wildfire, displacement, disease and heartbreak with music, dance, song and film. Read full review
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