Skip to main content

TIPPING POINT (ARMAGEDDON TIME)

© Focus Features & Universal 

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.

© Focus Features & Universal

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.

© Focus Features & Universal

"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'.

© Focus Features & Universal

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.

© Focus Features & Universal

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.

© Focus Features & Universal

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.

© Focus Features & Universal

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.

© Focus Features & Universal

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.

© Focus Features & Universal

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.

© Focus Features & Universal

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.

© Focus Features & Universal

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'.

© Focus Features & Universal

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)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A FAMILY DIVIDED (KIN, SEASON TWO)

© RTE & AMC+ Recently  in a review of 'The Dry' for the Slugger O'Toole website,  I wrote about it being a golden age for Irish TV drama. And it is. Last year saw Sharon Horgan's Irish Film and Television Award winning black comedy ' Bad Sisters ' delight audiences on Apple TV+. Fran Harris ' The Dry ' has made a bit of a splash on Britbox, RTE and ITVx. ©  RTE & AMC+ North of the border, Channel 4's ' Derry Girls ' and BBC Northern Ireland's 'Three Families' and ' Blue Lights ' have really impressed audiences. However over the past eight weeks, one show has muscled its way back to the front of the pack. 'Kin' is a gangland drama made by RTE and AMC. The first series hit our screens in September 2021 and made an immediate impression with its high production values and gripping storyline. © RTE & AMC+ The tale of a south Dublin crime family, the Kinsellas sucked into a feud with a more powerful gang hea

FATHER TIME (FRASIER - REBOOT, SEASON ONE)

© Paramount+ & CBS Studios It's been one of the most eagerly anticipated shows of 2023. It's also been one of the year's most feared shows. 'Frasier' - The Reboot was always going to have huge expectations to live up to. For 11 seasons, the original show was a massive ratings draw on NBC in the US and on other TV stations around the world. © Paramount+ & CBS Studios Adored by critics as much as it was by audiences, the 'Cheers' spin-off built up a huge fanbase with a combination of smart writing and brilliant comedy acting. It netted an impressive haul of 37 Primetime Emmy awards. Even after the final episode aired in May 2004, the Seattle-based sitcom has remained a constant presence on our TV screens, with Channel 4 in the UK airing it every morning. So when it was announced in 2021 that Kelsey Grammer was reviving the sitcom, there was considerable joy in some quarters and trepidation in others. © Paramount+ & CBS Studios Many wondered how wou

TWO SOULS COLLIDE (BALLYWALTER)

© Breakout Pictures & Elysian 'Ballywalter' isn't about Ballywalter. The Northern Irish coastal village simply provides a backdrop for director Prasanna Puranawajah and screenwriter Stacey Gregg's delicate tale of damaged souls coming into each other's orbit and helping each other cope. If anything, Belfast features more than Ballywalter in Puranawajah's movie but we know  that title was already taken . Seana Kerslake plays Eileen, a twentysomething university dropout who has gone off the rails and is back living with her mum, Abigail McGibbon's Jen. Taking on the job of a taxi driver, she has to endure the opinions of customers who don't think it's a job for a woman. © Breakout Pictures & Elysian Eileen doubles as a barista and can be pretty spiky with the customers in both jobs. Disillusioned and dejected, she hides behind drink as she struggles to come to terms with the death of her father, the sudden ending of a relationship with a cheati