Armageddon Time
A deeply personal story about the strength of family, the complexity of friendship, and the generational pursuit of the American Dream.
- Released: 2022-10-28
- Runtime: 114 minutes
- Genre: Drama
- Stars: Banks Repeta, Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, Anthony Hopkins, Jaylin Webb, Ryan Sell, Teddy Coluca, Tovah Feldshuh, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Andrew Polk, Lauren Yaffe, Dane West, Dupree Francois Porter, Griffin Wallace Henkel, Jessica Chastain, Stephanie Groves, Marcia Haufrecht, Oona Girton-Marshall, Ian Hernandez-Oropeza, Aidan Christman, Eva Jette Putrello, Landon James Forlenza, John Dinello, Jacob Mackinnon, Jude Washock, Skyler Wenger, Psalm Mitchell, Jack Parrish, Stephanie Aguinaldo, Diamond Washington, Lauren Sharpe, Lizbeth MacKay, Domenick Lombardozzi, John Diehl, Richard Bekins
- Director: James Gray
Comments
- kwdlwalker - 2 January 2024
What Was Hopkins Thinking?
One of the reasons I thought this would be good was because Anthony Hopkins is in it. Oscar winner and stuff, right? Yeah, maybe he's out of money or something...
None of the characters are likable. There's no one who deserves any sympathy. The kids are jerks, the teacher is an idiot, and suddenly, without any setup or backstory, the dad abuses the kids. Which reminds me that the parents are terrible people and incapable of parenting anyway.
The storyline is taking forever. I'm nearly an hour in and I'm not sure why this movie was made or the story was written. It's going nowhere. There is no reason for me to watch the last hour of this. It would be a waste of time.
Anthony Hopkins, what were you thinking? - kodaiborn-63205 - 9 July 2023
What's it about?
The title doesn't relate to the story at all. Typical young boy growing up and having challenges at school. So he wanted to be an artist and what kid actually wanted to be what his father wanted him to be? The depiction of parents all too disengaged with the kid's situation is not very exciting or novel. There might have been a story in this somewhere but it ended abruptly (I guess that the money ran out and the camerman just quit when the film ran out.
While Anthony Hopkins does well playing the grandfather, there's not much in the rest to get excited about. Again, there might have been a story but the movie stopped before the story got going. I have seen much better movies about a youngster growing up. This one doesn't merit the time spent to watch it. - steve-lucas63 - 14 June 2023
Should have been in Black and White
Theme's of coming of age, fear, bigotry and death, are dealt with in a way that can't avoid stereotypes and a treatment that ultimately feels shallow. For a film with such important messages, it lacks color. It could be that the blandness of the individual characters is supposed to be a metaphor for the sense of desperate dullness of ordinary life portrayed. I personally held on for the full performance on the off chance there would be a 'big reveal' to conclude the story. I didn't see it if it was there, leaving me to wonder what the whole point was!
Only watch if you really don't have anything else to do for two hours. - fleshpixie - 18 December 2022
Lessons for those who wouldn't watch it
This movie carries a very directed nostalgia and life experiences from a time that I can't see the audience who would benefit from it wanting to watch it. It's long, it's a slow burn drama, and to be honest I don't think setting the film in 1980 benefitted the message it contained whatsoever. It's rather generic and wasted efforts in this era. It's hard to hold too much interest in, some good performances from and character dynamics accordingly between Michael Banks Repeta and Anthony Hopkins as the core of this story carried the whole weight. Throw in some recognisable actors just for name value and a crutch to keep it standing up; sad. - paulpatashnik - 29 November 2022
Don't waste your time
A dull and boring film which ended with me thinking "what was the point" and what a waste of time. A complete mystery as to what was the story and more importantly what was the moral of the story. Even Anthony Hopkins could not save this film. I kept on waiting for the wisdom of Hopkins' character to be revealed and passed on to his grandson given his obliquely alluded to family history of terror during the Second World War at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust. All Hopkins' character could come up with was a single reference to "be a mensch". We had to put up with two extremely annoying adolescents. - CoolguyMoviefan - 23 November 2022
With a jerk for a lead, there is little that is interesting about this film. James Grey's film is nothing more than constant complaining about NOTHING!
Armageddon Time, a fictional recount of writer director James Gray's pathetic life, details himself in the fictional character of. Paul Graff, a quite sassy, annoying, loser, who steals money from his parents, smokes weed in the bathroom, gets expelled from public school and really does nothing interesting with his life.
His parents aren't too bright either, his appliance repairman father, Irving, whines about the inequalities of life, despite having the money to eventually send his son to an elite private school run by Donald Trump's father Fred.
The entire film is simply a metaphor about how life isn't fair to the lower middle class, When it's apparent it's lead character and his family are really nothing more than whiners who complain that life isn't fair, yet they do noting to change it.
Gray also tries to hammer home that the country is racist with Paul's African America friend. Johnny constantly taking racist quotes from police and teachers on a daily basis.
This was really two hours of my life WASTED watching a bunch of whiney, self entitled nuances complain about how awful life is, without really wanting to change anything about it.
No wonder this film ended up on steaming so quickly!
Nothing to see here folks, just two hours of your life wasted watching a whiny pretentious kid complaining about his life on a daily basis.
A hard pass from me and most other folks.
