X
- 2022
- R
- Focus Features
- 1 h 54 m
- 2022
- R
- Focus Features
- 1 h 54 m
Summary Armageddon Time is a deeply personal story on the strength of family, the complexity of friendship and the generational pursuit of the American Dream.
- 2022
- R
- Focus Features
- 1 h 54 m
- 2022
- R
- Focus Features
- 1 h 54 m
Armageddon Time
74
6.6
Where to Watch
Summary Armageddon Time is a deeply personal story on the strength of family, the complexity of friendship and the generational pursuit of the American Dream.
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 54 Critic Reviews
74
78% Positive
42 Reviews
42 Reviews
19% Mixed
10 Reviews
10 Reviews
4% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 54 Critic Reviews
74
78% Positive
42 Reviews
42 Reviews
19% Mixed
10 Reviews
10 Reviews
4% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
By letting the picture embody his failures — by turning Armageddon Time into a self-aware look at his own limitations — the director makes that necessary connection between then and now, between the characters onscreen and us watching. In other words, he denies us the one thing these types of movies almost always provide: reassurance.
Every detail and narrative swerve are stacked on top of the other to build a monumental story of compromises and consequences. This is a brave film, bracing and thoughtful. It is also, at times, painfully funny.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 59 User Ratings
6.6
58% Positive
34 Ratings
34 Ratings
31% Mixed
18 Ratings
18 Ratings
12% Negative
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 59 User Ratings
6.6
58% Positive
34 Ratings
34 Ratings
31% Mixed
18 Ratings
18 Ratings
12% Negative
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
Just superb. All the performances--especially Anthony Hopkins--are excellent. The child actors don't have a false or overly sentimental moment. The movie is an honest slice of life of a time not too long ago. It's strange that some come in to review bomb this based on some notion that it means to be political. That's ridiculous. It just means to capture a world and the lives of a boy and his family.
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Superbly marshalled by Gray, the ensemble cast is excellent – though if you had to pick a stand-out, it’d be Hopkins, as the kindly-but-principled grandfather. He casts a huge shadow over the film, a moral compass for all to follow.
It describes itself as ‘a coming-of-age story that explores friendship and loyalty while America is poised to elect Ronald Reagan as President’. Considering that’s exactly when Gray himself was going from child to teen, this sounds like it could be his most personal film yet.
If Armageddon isn’t quite what happened economically to the U.S. in the 1980s, Armageddon Time is nevertheless a sincere effort to wring meaning out of memory.
The movie ends with a rebel gesture that feels too much like…a gesture. It’s the perfect sign-off for a drama that cares, but maybe not enough to see that this kind of caring actually became part of the problem
Going into Armageddon Time, I had no interest in James Gray’s childhood. But that was to be expected. What I didn’t expect was to have even less interest going out.
With the knowledge that this coming-of-age story is based on its director's own experiences, Armageddon Time plays a dangerous game when it over-embellishes things for the sake of enhancing its work. Of course, it's completely understandable why that would happen in a drama that's constructed that way, but even with the honesty of what it wants to tell, you obviously stop believing much of what you're seeing as the experiences of a child because they just don't feel realistic, even when you are fully aware that you are watching a movie. It has good intentions, I know that, but it becomes complicated to connect with the experience.
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Anthony Hopkins was fine as the grandfather, but the script was meh and the focus on liberal guilt was annoying.
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I can’t imagine a single normal person wanting to pay to see this movie. This is the Fabelmans all over again – multi-millionaire director gazes up his own ass to reflect on a childhood no one earning less than 50k/year could possibly care about. We live in a truly stupid era of movies, where the worth of a project is determined by the politics of the subject instead of greatness of its craft. I hope creators can shake off their idiotic need to jump on the bandwagon of some vague aimless social movement and get back to actually exploring actual humanity through art.
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Production Company
Focus Features,
Keep Your Head,
MadRiver Pictures,
RT Features,
Spacemaker Productions
Release Date Oct 28, 2022
Duration 1 h 54 m
Rating R
Genres
Tagline The end of an era. The beginning of everything.
Awards
San Diego Film Critics Society Awards
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
AARP Movies for Grownups Awards
• 2 Nominations
Santa Barbara International Film Festival
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
