Armageddon Time (2022)
Directed by James Gray
In 1980, Queens, New York, a young Jewish boy befriends a rebellious African-American classmate to the disapproval of his privileged family and begins to reckon with growing up in a world of inequality and prejudice.
42 connections found
View:
42 films that influenced Armageddon Time
What critics say influenced Armageddon Time
The tone is sometimes reminiscent of the one struck by Barry Levinson in his memory films (“Diner,” “Tin Men,” “Avalon”), with Gray, in this case, trying to present his experience of growing up in as genuine a way as possible, as if he were ripping pages from his diary.
When “Armageddon Time” focuses on that story, it’s reminiscent of far better films like Barry Levinson’s “Avalon.”
Critic Owen Gleiberman’s comparison to Barry Levinson’s multigenerational Jewish-American saga Avalon is on target.
It’s a little “Basketball Diaries,” a smidge of “The Graduate” and a heaping helping of Barry Levinson’s far more sentimentalized childhood reverie “Avalon,” which was also built around lots of extended family dinners.
It's like Barry Levinson's Avalon morphing into The 400 Blows.
The tone is sometimes reminiscent of the one struck by Barry Levinson in his memory films (“Diner,” “Tin Men,” “Avalon”), with Gray, in this case, trying to present his experience of growing up in as genuine a way as possible, as if he were ripping pages from his diary.
The tone is sometimes reminiscent of the one struck by Barry Levinson in his memory films (“Diner,” “Tin Men,” “Avalon”), with Gray, in this case, trying to present his experience of growing up in as genuine a way as possible, as if he were ripping pages from his diary.
After becoming entranced by a Kandinsky painting, the two ditch the field trip and escape to Central Park, then an arcade and a record shop to buy a Sugar Hill Gang album—unleashed scenes that recall the energy of François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959) in their freedom from school and authority.
It's like Barry Levinson's Avalon morphing into The 400 Blows.
What do Ordinary People, Wildlife, Boyhood and The 400 Blows have in common?
James Gray’s Armageddon Time is the kind of movie you get when a talented filmmaker thinks back upon the painful moments of his childhood and then, after close reflection, decides to remake The 400 Blows.
If Gray is going to evoke “A Tale of Two Cities,” he failed to create the kind of friendship Charles Darnay had with Sydney Carton.
Only James Gray would saddle a modest self-portrait about his memories of sixth grade with a title that makes it sound more like “Apocalypse Now” than any other film ever has (a reference to candidate Reagan’s nuclear hawkishness, “Armageddon Time” borrows its name from a 1979 Willie Williams reggae jam famously covered by The Clash).
Gray’s longtime composer Christopher Spellman’s simple, sorrowful guitar fingerpicking work is also affecting, but the plaintive notes he hits are reminiscent of some of the dolor found in “The Godfather.”
Advertisement
It worked when Sidney Poitier jumped off the train to save Tony Curtis’ life in “The Defiant Ones” (1958), and Gray is hoping, with all the best intentions and underwritten characterizations, that it will work now.
Examples range from “ The Defiant Ones ” to “ The Help .”
These whimsical asides feel inspired by Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ (1983) or perhaps even Bob Clark’s A Christmas Story (1983), where Paul’s mental images take over the screen.
I also enjoyed pointing out the nostalgic early 1980s details (Paul's Six Million Dollar Man lunchbox, "Private Benjamin" showing at the cinema, etc.).
Likewise, only James Gray would render that self-portrait into such a powerful story of post-war assimilation that a family outing to see “Private Benjamin” might resonate with the same cosmic scale as a trip to Neptune.
The last movie he set in New York was his 2013 period drama, “The Immigrant,” whose story finds a resonant echo here when Paul’s grandfather reminisces about the family’s own passage through Ellis Island.
This is what Gray (Ad Astra, The Lost City of Z, The Immigrant) does with Armageddon Time, a clear-eyed coming-of-age drama that is surprisingly muted compared to the artistic flourishes—particularly in mise en scene and camerawork—of his previous films.
(At first, his critical support came mostly from France.) Starting with Two Lovers , his films abandoned their genre elements — The Immigrant and The Lost City of Z turned to the past.
The Russian-Jewish neighborhood of Brighton Beach served as a forlorn and culturally complex backdrop to Two Lovers, the romantic drama he made next, while The Immigrant cast its gaze back through time and memory to evoke New York in the early 1920s, mythologizing it in smoke and gold while rendering the emotional lives of characters in thrall to its expanse with a fraught and fiercely intimate melodicism.
As a director, James Gray has lately been a filmmaker of grand gestures, whether with period pieces like the lush “The Immigrant” to 2019’s sci-fi opus “Ad Astra” starring Brad Pitt.
Little Odessa (1994) was set in Brighton Beach; The Yards in the Bronx; The Immigrant took us to Ellis Island.
(At first, his critical support came mostly from France.) Starting with Two Lovers , his films abandoned their genre elements — The Immigrant and The Lost City of Z turned to the past.
The Russian-Jewish neighborhood of Brighton Beach served as a forlorn and culturally complex backdrop to Two Lovers, the romantic drama he made next, while The Immigrant cast its gaze back through time and memory to evoke New York in the early 1920s, mythologizing it in smoke and gold while rendering the emotional lives of characters in thrall to its expanse with a fraught and fiercely intimate melodicism.
While the white, Jewish, working-class experience of New York’s outer boroughs is hardly new territory for Gray (see also Little Odessa, The Yards, Two Lovers, and The Immigrant), here it’s an experience he examines the very premises and contexts of head-on.
★★★★☆ Whether it’s the neo-noir of We Own the Night, the ménage à trois of Two Lovers, or the sad-dad-in-space opera of Ad Astra, Gray has managed to pursue an intensely personal vision through a variety of genres.
Many of Gray’s films are introspective, interior personal journeys – Two Lovers , The Lost City Of Z and Ad Astra all feel disarmingly intimate.
Pivoting away from the biggest production of his career with a melancholy return to the kind of small-scale New York stories (à la “The Yards” and “Little Odessa”) that first put him on the map, Gray revisits his childhood years and all of their related ghosts with a burnished memoir that hears echoes of 19th European pogroms reverberating through the Trump family — 100 years later and some 4,000 miles away — in much the same way as “Ad Astra” found an Applebee’s on the Moon.
Little Odessa (1994) was set in Brighton Beach; The Yards in the Bronx; The Immigrant took us to Ellis Island.
In his cinematic memoir “Armageddon Time,” the filmmaker James Gray unpacks his early influences with the kind of uncommonly sensitive and keen perception that he has employed throughout his body of work, which has evolved from crime thrillers (“Little Odessa,” “The Yards,” “We Own The Night”) to historical dramas (“The Immigrant,” “The Lost City of Z”) to existential sci-fi explorations of love, existence and family (“Ad Astra”).
Gray (“Little Odessa,” “The Immigrant”) is scrupulously honest about the lineaments of that friendship.
While the white, Jewish, working-class experience of New York’s outer boroughs is hardly new territory for Gray (see also Little Odessa, The Yards, Two Lovers, and The Immigrant), here it’s an experience he examines the very premises and contexts of head-on.
Like his previous efforts (see his debut film “Little Odessa” or the sci-fi drama “Ad Astra”), this story is about relationships, principally, the connections between close family members who construct walls between them.
This is what Gray (Ad Astra, The Lost City of Z, The Immigrant) does with Armageddon Time, a clear-eyed coming-of-age drama that is surprisingly muted compared to the artistic flourishes—particularly in mise en scene and camerawork—of his previous films.
(At first, his critical support came mostly from France.) Starting with Two Lovers , his films abandoned their genre elements — The Immigrant and The Lost City of Z turned to the past.
First, however, comes Armageddon Time, in which James Gray (Ad Astra, The Lost City of Z) revisits his upbringing in early ‘80s New York City.
James Gray’s films have always had a deeply personal kick — even the sci-fi thriller Ad Astra and the period adventure The Lost City of Z — but he has never made one quite as naked as Armageddon Time , his mournful family drama set in 1980 Queens.
One of America’s most talented filmmakers for the best part of two decades, James Gray ( Ad Astra , The Lost City of Z ) may, with the autobiographical Armageddon Time , be a victim of his own talent.
Try as it may, Armageddon Time , based on the upbringing of esteemed director James Gray ( The Lost City of Z, Ad Astra ), is also missing the ideal breadth to fully express legitimate adversity and prejudice.
Pivoting away from the biggest production of his career with a melancholy return to the kind of small-scale New York stories (à la “The Yards” and “Little Odessa”) that first put him on the map, Gray revisits his childhood years and all of their related ghosts with a burnished memoir that hears echoes of 19th European pogroms reverberating through the Trump family — 100 years later and some 4,000 miles away — in much the same way as “Ad Astra” found an Applebee’s on the Moon.
Early Gray films like “The Yards” (2000) and “We Own the Night” (2007) were modest tales suffused with his desire to be making “a ’70s movie.”
Little Odessa (1994) was set in Brighton Beach; The Yards in the Bronx; The Immigrant took us to Ellis Island.
In his cinematic memoir “Armageddon Time,” the filmmaker James Gray unpacks his early influences with the kind of uncommonly sensitive and keen perception that he has employed throughout his body of work, which has evolved from crime thrillers (“Little Odessa,” “The Yards,” “We Own The Night”) to historical dramas (“The Immigrant,” “The Lost City of Z”) to existential sci-fi explorations of love, existence and family (“Ad Astra”).
While the white, Jewish, working-class experience of New York’s outer boroughs is hardly new territory for Gray (see also Little Odessa, The Yards, Two Lovers, and The Immigrant), here it’s an experience he examines the very premises and contexts of head-on.
This is what Gray (Ad Astra, The Lost City of Z, The Immigrant) does with Armageddon Time, a clear-eyed coming-of-age drama that is surprisingly muted compared to the artistic flourishes—particularly in mise en scene and camerawork—of his previous films.
Lest you think that with that title this is more akin to his previous film, the Brad Pitt-starring sci-fi Ad Astra, think again.
Even when he’s shooting for the stars, like with his last film Ad Astra , writer/director James Gray specialises in intimately personal stories.
Yet writer/director James Gray’s follow-up to 2019’s Ad Astra is, beneath that surface, a prickly revisitation of remembrances past, miring itself in a morass of tragedy, heartache, and the complications born from privilege.
First, however, comes Armageddon Time, in which James Gray (Ad Astra, The Lost City of Z) revisits his upbringing in early ‘80s New York City.
As a director, James Gray has lately been a filmmaker of grand gestures, whether with period pieces like the lush “The Immigrant” to 2019’s sci-fi opus “Ad Astra” starring Brad Pitt.
Early Gray films like “The Yards” (2000) and “We Own the Night” (2007) were modest tales suffused with his desire to be making “a ’70s movie.”
★★★★☆ Whether it’s the neo-noir of We Own the Night, the ménage à trois of Two Lovers, or the sad-dad-in-space opera of Ad Astra, Gray has managed to pursue an intensely personal vision through a variety of genres.
Elsewhere the movie can tend towards the stiff, which is a surprise because the material is so intimate for James Gray, its writer-director (We Own the Night, Ad Astra).
Even still, none of Gray’s four previous movies selected for the prestigious Cannes competition — “The Yards,” “We Own the Night,” “Two Lovers” and “The Immigrant” — has ever left the festival with so much as a single prize.
Advertisement
“Armageddon Time” draws its name from a Ronald Reagan news interview, seen in the film, where the former “Bedtime for Bonzo” star warned that, unless he is elected to straighten the world out, “We might be the generation that sees Armageddon.”
The filmmakers are so careful about dodging the snares and assumptions of a template for interracial drama that goes back to “A Patch of Blue” (1965, and Sidney Poitier again, because who else?) that they risk rendering their movie inert.