‘Armageddon Time’ Review: James Gray’s Deft 1980 Coming-of-Age Memoir Is an Old-School Liberal Message Movie in Progressive Drag
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticWhen I watch a movie by the writer-director James Gray, I often have the sensation that I’m seeing two films in one: the story being told and the one hovering offscreen — the one that’s all about his aspiration to be something larger than a mere storyteller.
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.” “Ad Astra” (2019) was a lavishly scaled outer-space thriller suffused with his desire to be making “2001: A Space Odyssey.”“Armageddon Time,” Gray’s eighth feature, marks a break from most of what he has done before.
It’s a more personal project — an autobiographical coming-of-age memoir movie, set in Queens, New York, in 1980 and featuring an 11-year-old hero, Paul Graf (Banks Repeta), who navigates the sixth grade and the wider world that starts to feed into it.
It’s a skillful, exacting, beguiling movie. But the other Gray movie — in this case, a high-handed progressive instructional one — looms as well. “Armageddon Time,” which takes its title from a dub reggae cover by the Clash released in 1979 (and from the fact that Ronald Reagan, in a TV interview clip we see, drops a reference to “Armageddon” into his presidential campaign), has a strikingly different tone from Gray’s other work.
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