TIPPING POINT (ARMAGEDDON TIME)

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What does a filmmaker do when they get burned making a big budget movie for a Hollywood studio?

Go the other direction.

That's exactly what James Gray did after the experience of making the Brad Pitt sci-fi vehicle, 'Ad Astra'.

Gray delivered a handsome looking space odyssey in 2019 but many critics were underwhelmed by the film.

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On top of that, the box office also fell short of expectations, much to the disappointment of 20th Century Studios and its owner Disney.

At the Lumiere Film Festival recently, Gray revealed what went wrong, admitting the movie was effectively taken out of his hands during the editing process.

"Creatively, it became a very tortuous experience," he confided to an audience at the festival.

"The film was taken from me, ultimately. It's not my cut of the movie and I find it a very painful experience to have people tell me things they hated about the movie that I had nothing to do with.

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"I was so deeply upset, I had lost all my enthusiasm for making films. And I said: 'If I'm going to do it again, if it's going to be bad, it might as well be my bad."

Gray's next project is the much more modesty budgeted autobiographical drama 'Armageddon Time'.

In many ways the movie is a return to his filmmaking roots.

A family drama, it is in the mould of his earlier critically acclaimed dramas 'Little Odessa,' 'The Yards' and 'We Own The Night'.

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These lower budget indie films were notable because of the casts they drew.

The likes of Tim Roth, Edward Furlong, Maxmilian Schell, Vanessa Redgrave, Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, Charlize Theron, James Caan, Ellen Burstyn, Faye Dunaway, Eva Mendes and Robert Duvall all flocked to work with Gray.

As with those movies, 'Armageddon Time' has a scene chewing script and it it has attracted actors of the calibre of Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, Jessica Chastain and Anthony Hopkins.

The cast also features newcomer Banks Repeta in an eye catching lead role as Paul Graff, a Ukranian Jewish American kid in New York on the verge of adolescence.

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A classic growing pains movie, it is set on the cusp of Ronald Reagan's 1980 Presidential Election win and begins with Paul starting 6th grade in a public school.

We see him fall foul of his teacher, Andrew Polk's Mr Turtletaub on his first day.

A talented sketch artist, on hearing his teacher's name he draws an image of Mr Turtletaub's head imposed on the body of a dove.

This gets a lot of laughs from classmates but it results in him being made to stand at the front with Jaylin Webb's pupil Johnny Davis who has been kept back a year and is often punished for being too disruptive in class.

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Johnny is an African American kid from a disadvantaged background who forges an unlikely friendship with Paul.

He is also openly dismissive of Turteltaub in class and the school authorities.

The boys regularly get into bother but Paul naively thinks that because of his mum, Anne Hathaway's Esther's involvement in the school council, that can give him and them plenty of latitude.

Paul also lives with a quick tempered dad Jeremy Strong's boiler repairman Irving and his older brother Ryan Sell's Ted who goes to a private academy where the kids in uniforms inspire to be political leaders or captains of industry one day.

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His closest family relationship, though, is with his maternal grandfather Anthony Hopkins' Aaron Rabinowitz who likes to spoil him - buying him sweets and also a toy rocket which they plan to launch together in the local park.

When Paul starts to get deeper into trouble with Johnny, the family begins to fret about whether the public school system is the right place for him.

And when Aaron arranges for him to go to Forest Manor Prep instead with Ted, he encounters racist, privileged kids as well as John Diehl's businessman Fred Trump, a father of a future US Presidebt and his daughter, Jessica Chastain's Mary Trump.

Exposed to the toxic world of white privilege, Paul tries to keep his ties with Johnny until his eyes are opened to how just racist society really is.

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Gray's response to the experience of making 'Ad Astra' is what you might have hoped for, writing and directing an absorbing family tale.

The film plays to all Gray's strengths, reclaiming the place he once staked out as the natural successor to the great director Sidney Lumet.

Like Lumet, the New Yorker knows how to craft handsome, robust, yet intimate dramas that wade the moral swamp of his great city.

He also shares Lumet's ability to extract wonderful performances from his cast.

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Repeta and Webb turn in impressive performances as newcomers in 'Armaggedon Time,' naively roaming their school corridors and city streets for much of the time oblivious to the harsh realities of the world they inhabit.

Repeta also has to navigate the emotional rollercoaster of family life with parents who love him but don't understand him and a brother who often bullies him.

There are solid performances too from Sell as his brother Ted, Tovah Feldshuh as his grandmother Mickey Rabinowitz, Polk as Mr Turteltaub, Diehl as Fred Trump and Domineck Lombardozzi, who some audience members will recognise from HBO's 'The Wire,' as a desk sergeant in a pivotal scene in a police station.

While 'Armageddon Time' boasts an electric cameo from Chastain, its most memorable moments come from Hathaway, Strong and Hopkins.

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Hathaway unquestionably turns in her best performance since 'Les Miserables,' reminding audiences of the actress she can be with a convincing portrayal of a frustrated and concerned mother.

In a role originally earmarked for Oscar Isaac, Strong is his usual quirky self as Irving but his performance as a blue collar dad is also tinged with disappointment and a sense of inferiority.

Hopkins steals the show, however, as a loving grandfather in a part that was originally mooted for Robert de Niro.

Throughout the film, we never doubt Aaron's soft spot for Paul's boyish enthusiasm which he likes to indulge.

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But the Welsh actor also subtly displays concern for the boy as he tries to gently school him in the harsh ways of the real world.

Hopkins' scenes with Repeta are some of the finest you will see on a screen this year - tender, emotionally intelligent and pitched so perfectly.

Handsomely shot by Darius Khondji in sombre wintry palettes, 'Armageddon Time' is also beautifully paced by Gray and his film editor Scott Morris.

Basing its title on the Willie Williams reggae song 'Armagideon Time' that The Clash famously covered on the B side of their single 'London Calling,' the movie's needle drops include the band's 'Justice Tonight/Kick It Over,' the Sugarhill Gang's 'Rapper's Delight' and Boz Scaggs' 'Lowdown'.

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The film also brilliantly captures the start of the Reagan era - a moment when the US and Republican politics took a path that would eventually lead to the nightmare presidency of Fred Trump's son.

And it is that spectre and the undercurrent of racism in New York that haunts the movie, even as Irving bemoans the rise of Ronald Reagan whose brand of Republican politics seems much tamer than the GOP today 

'Armageddon Time' finds Gray back doing what he does best.

It's a welcome return to form but let's also hope he isn't too bruised by his 'Ad Astra' experience and continues to stretch himself as a visual storyteller.

(Armageddon Time was released in UK  and Irish cinemas on November 18, 2022)