Max's No. 1 Movie With Andrew Garfield & Florence Pugh Will Make You Cry

Do you feel like crying big baby tears at any point in the near future? If the answer to that question is "yes," you should probably queue up "We Live in Time," the weepy new film from director John Crowley that stars Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield.

Crowley — known for another critically beloved tearjerker, 2015's "Brooklyn" — brought two of the Internet's favorite celebrities on board for this touching non-linear love story, which casts Pugh as figure skater turned professional chef Almut Brühl and Garfield as cereal representative Tobias Durand (he specifically works for Weetabix, a brand that might be a bit unfamiliar to Stateside viewers). After Almut accidentally hits Tobias with her car just as he prepares to sign divorce papers for his first marriage, the two strike up an unexpected connection, despite Almut's initial resistance to enter into a relationship and unwillingness to discuss the possibility of having children. Ultimately, Almut reveals that she suffers from ovarian cancer, which could impact her ability to have children; after she receives surgery, the two do have a child, but Almut's cancer returns after their daughter Ella is born.

Pugh and Garfield are absolutely lovely in the film. Both of them have a preternatural ability to express the clearest emotions without saying a single world, and their chemistry is so intense that, during filming, they actually got a little carried away while shooting an intimate scene. So what did critics think of "We Live in Time" — and which surprise player is the movie's real breakout star?

Unsurprisingly, "We Live in Time" — which has a great director behind the camera and two top-tier actors in front of it — earned pretty solid reviews from critics when it released in October of 2024. With 79% on Rotten Tomatoes, the critical consensus reads, "Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh's palpable chemistry will snatch audiences' hearts before breaking them in 'We Live in Time,' a powerful melodrama that uses its nonlinear structure to thoughtfully explore grief," and individual critics certainly echoed that sentiment. "There is something refreshingly direct about 'We Live in Time,'" /Film's review states. "It's a gentle, tear-jerking melodrama in the old-Hollywood mode, assured that the love lives of two ordinary people will make for an extraordinary emotional journey."

"Pugh and Garfield are a dynamite duo in this likably earnest, satisfyingly complicated love story," Amon Warmann wrote for Empire Magazine, concluding that the film is "worthy of your time, and your tears." In his review for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw had some reservations but praised the performances, writing, "I felt that the film was evasive about the uncinematic reality of what serious illness and death actually looks like ... but the film is still something to see, if only for the marvellous performances from Garfield and Pugh."

For Time Out, Helen O'Hara praised Pugh, Garfield, and Crowley all at once: "Crowley, having nailed his casting, directs with a light hand and follows the emotion through, to good effect. It feels real, and honest, in a way that too few romantic films manage." Richard Roeper at RogerEbert.com was quite effusive about the film's two leads, writing, "With Pugh and Garfield delivering authentic, genuine movie-star performances, 'We Live in Time' is an old-fashioned weeper, done with heart and originality." David Fear, in his review for Rolling Stone, may have summed it up best: "'We Live in Time' is an actor's movie, by necessity if not always by design. You know where the destination ends before the movie's even begun. Pugh and Garfield make the endgame worth the journey, no matter where you place it."

/Film also spoke directly with Crowley about the movie for an episode of the /Film Daily podcast:

Yes, Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield — who, I must repeat, are two of Hollywood's most gifted performers who both have Oscar nominations under their belts — are incredible in "We Live in Time," but there's a surprise star in this film that we have to discuss. I am, of course, talking about that freaky-deaky merry-go-round horse from the poster. 

A bright-yellow carousel horse who was inexplicably featured right next to Pugh and Garfield on one of the film's promotional posters ended up making unexpected waves on social media in August 2024, a few months before the movie hit theaters. The thing was eventually memed to death, and during an appearance on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," where Garfield gifted the host with a shirt bearing the horse's, uh, striking image, the lead actor said that while he also thought it was a wild move to put the horse right smack in the middle of the poster, he initially hoped it wouldn't be a big deal. "I see this image, and I think, 'Maybe I'm the only one that will notice this insane horse,'" Garfield said to Colbert in October of that year. "It feels like we're in his poster, in a way. No, I'm probably being overly sensitive. No one else will see it."

People did see it, and that became obvious to Garfield when he was in an airport after a phoneless retreat and saw people laughing at it. Until Garfield follows through on this threat to "get to the bottom of like, where the oversight fell apart and why this horse has taken on a life of its own" and make a docuseries about the horse, "We Live in Time" is available to stream on Max.