Armageddon Time: A Review - Portrait of the Artist as a Stupid and Boring Child

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT.  A sanctimonious, self-pitying and tedious tale of childhood turmoil in 1980’s New York. Move along, absolutely nothing worthwhile to see here.

There has been a spate of semi-autobiographical films this year where filmmakers navel-gaze and examine not only their childhood and how they ended up behind the camera, but also the “magic of cinema”.

There’s Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Bardo, Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, to a lesser degree Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light, and finally James Gray’s Armageddon Time.

Of these four I’ve only seen Bardo (I’ve yet to publish my review) and now Armageddon Time, but I can report that thus far this genre of film is proving itself to be a calamitous cavalcade of cinematic crap.

Armageddon Time, which was released in October to dismal box office returns, is not only directed but also written by James Gray. While I respect James Gray as a visual artist, his movies have always been more miss than hit for me. I find his films, which include Little Odessa, The Yard, We Own the Night, Two Lovers, The Immigrant, and Lost City of Z, to be beautiful and tantalizing but mostly noble failures that never quite coalesce. The notable exception being 2019’s Ad Astra, which I thought was a truly stunning and insightful piece of work. Unfortunately, Armageddon Time is anything but stunning and insightful. I would in fact, put Armageddon Time at the very bottom of the list when judging Gray’s filmography.  

The autobiographical movie tells the story of Paul Graff (a stand in for Gray) and his tumultuous Autumn of 1980 when he attends sixth grade in a public school in Queens, New York. Paul’s family is working-class Jewish with plumber father Irving (Jeremy Strong), PTA mother Esther (Anne Hathaway), and annoying older brother, Ted, who attends a tawny private school. Paul also has his maternal grandparents, most notably his immigrant grandfather Aaron (Anthony Hopkins), with whom he is particularly close.

Paul befriends a black student in his class, Johnny (Jaylin Webb), when they are both punished by their obnoxious teacher Mr. Turkeltaub. Johnny is being raised in poverty by his dementia-addled grandmother, and is doing sixth-grade for the second time. Mr. Turkeltaub has a particular dislike for Johnny and is harsher on him than on Paul.

The story goes from there as Paul and Johnny get into all sorts of trouble at school, and Paul navigates the consequences back home.

Armageddon Time, which is currently available on Video-on-Demand (I paid $5.99), is an interminably slow, sluggish, self-indulgent and self-pitying exercise in virtue signaling that rings hollow, phony and false on nearly every level.

The acting, with the notable exception of the magnificent Anthony Hopkins, is abysmal. Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong give cringe-worthy, Borscht Belt level performances as Paul’s parents.

The child actors, Banks Repeta as Paul and Jaylin Webb as Johnny, are tough to take, and certainly make the hour and fifty-five-minute runtime feel at least twice that long. Repeta’s Paul is completely unlikable and being in his presence for the length of the film is a struggle. To be fair to Repeta and Webb, their characters are so poorly written that asking them to fill them out seems unfair. Webb in particular is given short-shrift, as Johnny is reduced to the sort of one-dimensional, sad-sack, black martyr/messiah stereotype that is both dreadfully dull and diabolically dehumanizing.

Hopkins is the only actor who gives a grounded performance and generates a character that seems like a real person. His Aaron is like a supernova shining brilliantly as it enters its final stage of life. Hopkins ability to elevate material, and to give poorly written characters a deep and compelling inner-life, is remarkable.

One of the biggest problems with Armageddon Time is that its politics, which are decidedly neo-liberal and Manichean, are relentlessly heavy-handed, trite and vacuous, not to mention omnipresent.

For example, there’s a whole secondary story line involving…God help us… the Trump family, with the loathsome Fred Trump (the Donald’s father) front and center, that is so ridiculously ham-fisted that every time it rears its ugly head it feels like the Evel Knievel over Snake Canyon of shark jumps.

The film’s racial politics are equally bromidic, as they’re so paternalistic and condescending as to be offensive. Ultimately the film and its racial politics ends up being little more than a testament to the fact that an artist’s white guilt is an insidious, narcissistic cancer that generates egregiously insipid and vapid art.

The movie is so patronizing and supercilious it’s like a multi-million-dollar colonial style home in a tawny, minority-free neighborhood that has a “Black Lives Matter” sign in its impeccably-landscaped-by-underpaid-Mexican-illegal-immigrants front lawn.

Gray is Jewish, which is why it’s so confusing that he makes viewers feel like a bored parish priest listening to his confession about other people’s impure racial thoughts.

James Gray went to USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, one of the most prestigious and elitist film schools in the world, made his first feature at age 25, and has had a stellar career working with great actors despite rarely having a hit, it seems that he got everything he ever wanted…so the question becomes…why all the masturbatorial bitching?

The reality is that the artist is never as interesting as his art, or as interesting as he thinks he is…which is why Armageddon Time feels more like a misguided tantrum from a spoiled child grown old than a piece of introspective cinematic art from an artist trying to understand himself.

The bottom line is that Armageddon Time is so sanctimonious and self-pitying, not to mention boring, banal and bland, that it will make you yearn for an actual Armageddon to put you out of your misery. Save your time and your money and skip this tedious tale.

©2023

Woke Hollywood Gets Burned By Charlie's Angels Box Office Bomb

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 28 seconds

WOKE HOLLYWOOD GETS BURNED BY CHARLIE’S ANGELS BOX OFFICE BOMB

The new Charlie’s Angels movie is more proof that woke feminist films are box office poison.

Charlie’s Angels, a reboot of the old 70’s tv show and the early 2000’s movies that stars Kristen Stewart, of Twilight fame, along with relative unknowns Naomi Scott and Ella Balinski, hit theaters last weekend with blockbuster ambitions and a defiant “girl power” message. Not surprisingly, the film opened with a resounding thud and fell decidedly flat as evidenced by its paltry $8.6 million box office.

Elizabeth Banks, who wrote and directed the movie, unabashedly declared it to be a feminist enterprise filled with “sneaky feminist ideas”. 

Banks says of Charlie’s Angels,

“One of the statements this movie makes is that you should probably believe women.”

The films star, Kristen Stewart, said of the movie, “It’s kind of like a ‘woke’ version.”

Charlie’s Angels’ failure is just the most recent evidence that woke feminist films are box office poison. The film’s financial floundering comes on the heels of the cataclysmic, franchise-destroying performance of another big budget piece of pro-feminist propaganda, Terminator: Dark Fate, which sank at the box office like an Austrian-accented cybernetic android into a vat of molten steel. Hasta la vista, woke baby.

There have been a plethora of like-minded girl power movies released in 2019 that have produced similarly dismal results at the box office.

One issue with many of these ill-fated woke films is that, like previous feminist flops Ghostbusters(2016) and Ocean’s 8, they are little more than remakes of male movies with females swapped in. These derivative films are the product of a craven corporatism entirely devoid of any originality or creative thought.

For example, the social justice geniuses in Hollywood decided this year it would be a good idea to remake two movies that no one wanted remade, Mel Gibson’s What Women Want (2000) and Steve Martin and Michael Caine’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1998), except this time with female leads. To the shock of no one with half a brain in their head, What Men Want with Taraji P. Henson, and The Hustle, with Rebel Wilson And Ann Hathaway, resoundingly flopped.

This year’s Book Smart, directed by Olivia Wilde, was little more than a rehash of the 2007 Jonah Hill and Micheal Cera smash-hit Superbad. Replacing Hill and Cera with two teenage girls as the protagonists in the formulaic film did not inspire audiences, as indicated by the film’s anemic domestic box office of $22 million.

Original movies with feminist themes fared no better than their re-engineered woke cinematic sisters. Late Night, a feminist comedy/drama starring Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling, made a paltry $15 million domestically, while the painfully politically correct Charlize Theron vehicle, Long Shot, raked in a flaccid $30 million.

As evidenced by these failures, audiences of both sexes are obviously turned off by Hollywood’s ham-handed attempts at woke preaching and social justice pandering. The movie-going public is keenly aware that these woke films are not about entertainment or even artistic expressions, but rather virtue signaling and posing within the Hollywood bubble.

The female stars involved in these failing feminist projects, in front of and behind the camera, have a built in delusional defense though that immunizes them from their cinematic failures…they can always blame misogyny!

The woke in Hollywood are forever on the search for a scapegoat to relieve them of accountability, as it is never their fault that their movies fail. In the case of these female-led movies, the women involved never have to own their failures because they reflexively point their fingers in horror at the angry, knuckle-dragging men, who out of misogynist spite don’t shell out beaucoup bucks to go see their abysmally awful girl power movies.

Elizabeth Banks got an early start in the men-blaming game even before Charlie’s Angels came out when she told Australia’s Herald Sun,

“Look, people have to buy tickets to this movie, too. This movie has to make money. If this movie doesn’t make money it reinforces a stereotype in Hollywood that men don’t go see women do action movies.”

Of course, men will go see women in action movies, Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel being two prime examples of highly successful female action movies, but fear not, Elizabeth Banks dropped some feminist knowledge to counter that uncomfortable fact when she said,  

“They (men) will go and see a comic book movie with Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel because that’s a male genre.”

So even when men go see a female led action film, they are only doing so because it is a “male genre”, got that?  What a convenient way to avoid responsibility…with Elizabeth Banks it is heads, she wins, and tails, men lose.

Banks preemptively blaming men for not being interested in seeing Charlie’s Angels is also odd because she has also openly stated that “women…are the audience for this film” and that she wanted to “make something that felt important to women and especially young girls”. And yet it isn’t just men staying away from Charlie’s Angels in droves, but everybody…including women!

What the feminists in woke Hollywood need to understand is that men and women will go see quality female-led movies, but they need to be good movies first and feminist movies a very distant second.

The problem with Charlie’s Angels, and the rest of these feminist films, is that their woke politics is their only priority, and entertainment value and artistic merit are at best just an after thought, if a thought at all.

My hope is that Hollywood will learn from the critical and financial failure of Charlie’s Angels and the rest of 2019’s feminist flops and in the future will refrain from making vacuous and vapid woke films and instead focus more on quality and originality and less on political correctness and pandering. Considering the continuous cavalcade of Hollywood’s atrociously dreadful girl power movies this year, I am not optimistic.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2019

Colossal Warning on Korea

****WARNING - THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE FILM COLOSSAL!! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!!****

Estimated Reading Time : 5 minutes 12 seconds

The other night a young lady friend of mine, the esteemed Lady Pumpernickle Dusseldorf, wanted to "spend some time" with me, and she decided that the best course of action was for the two of us to watch a movie together. Ever the gentleman, I accepted her invitation and added that she should pick the entertainment for the evening. The Lady chose Colossal, the off-beat art house movie starring Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis. I had already seen Colossal back in April when it was first released, but when a vivacious, pretty, young lady wants something, I am in the practice of always obliging, so we sat down on the couch at a respectable distance from one another and watched Colossal. 

The first time I saw the film I enjoyed it a great deal, so I was more than happy to watch it again. Colossal isn't a perfect movie, but it is definitely an original and unique work of art. Both Hathaway and Sudeikis turn in solid performances and writer/director Nacho Vigalando was always a step ahead of me with his storytelling. 

The reason I mention Colossal now, after my second viewing, is that when I watched it this time I watched it through the prism of escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula between the U.S. and North Korea. Watching the film as potential prophesy made the movie even more compelling to me the second time around, although it also made it slightly less entertaining. My Isaiah/McCaffrey Wave Theory©®™ uses, among many other things, the myths and archetypes of films as a trend analysis and prediction tool, so I am very conscious of movies as a means to reading tea leaves. That said, Colossal has not, at least not yet, reached certain artistic and popular benchmarks demanded by the Isaiah/McCaffrey Wave Theory©®™ to be considered an "Indicator" film. What that means is that the film is unlikely to be of high value as a trend analysis or predictive tool, but to be clear, unlikely to be of high value doesn't mean it has zero value, which is maybe why I was unsettled by what I observed hiding in plain sight in the film and how it relates to our world at the moment.

The similarities between the Colossal and the current Korean situation are pretty fascinating. Let us start with the players. The film's lead character Gloria, played by Anne Hathaway, is a psychologically wounded, self-destructive narcissist New Yorker in a state of perpetual adolescence. When Gloria gets mugged by her unconscious (in her case by getting really drunk), a giant monster, the manifestation of her psychological wound, appears in Seoul, South Korea and starts demolishing the city. 

In regards to our current Korean crisis, does the description of Gloria as a "psychologically wounded, self-destructive narcissist New Yorker in a state of perpetual adolescence" sound like anybody else we know? It seems relatively obvious to me that Gloria is a much prettier, ultimately more self-aware version of Donald Trump. 

The main male character is Oscar, played by Jason Sudeikis, who is a psychologically wounded, love starved, desperate, self-destructive, at first passive-aggressive and then aggressive-aggressive, control freak with some extra spicy misogyny thrown into the mix. To give you a glimpse of Oscar's darker impulses, in a pique of jealousy and anger he sets off a gigantic firework in the bar that he owns and operates, which is a family owned business he inherited, which results in setting the place ablaze, all just to prove to Gloria and her ex-boyfriend how Oscar is the one in power and complete control. Similarly to Gloria, Oscar also comes to discover that his psychological wound manifests itself in Seoul leaving death and destruction in its wake, but unlike Gloria whose demon takes the shape of a monster - a living organism with feelings (albeit unconscious ones), Oscar's demon takes the shape of a robot, symbolizing his total lack of connection with any emotional self.

To me, Oscar sounds an awful lot like Kim Jong-un, the "psychologically wounded, love starved, desperate, self-destructive, at first passive aggressive then aggressive aggressive, control freak" leader of North Korea who "inherited the family run business" of leadership of his country and who seems very capable of igniting a "gigantic firework" that lights the family business on fire.

Watching Colossal as primer for a potential Korean conflict was a bit unnerving, which is the main reason why I found it less entertaining the second time around. To me, it is entirely believable that the two stunted children grown large, Trump and Kim Jong-Un, would use the people of Seoul as their playthings and ultimately sacrifice them at the altar of their egos and personal psychological deficiencies and wounds.

If it meant proving a point about how powerful and virile they both are, I have no doubt that these impotent fools would gladly fire some phallic missiles at one another. The brunt of the damage of any conflagration on the Korean peninsula would fall on the city of Seoul, where 25 million people live in the crosshairs of North Korean artillery. Most power-hungry people who become presidents and leaders of nations are little more than sociopaths if not outright psychopaths, but Trump and Kim seem beyond the pale of even the ordinary madmen who rule supreme on this earth. Both of them appear to me to be craven enough to not even consider the fate of the people in Seoul or anywhere else in the world if their fragile psyches and delicate masculinity were on the line. Just like Gloria and Oscar, Trump and Kim only care about themselves and their own insatiable and relentless wants and needs.

As I mentioned in my original review, the fact that Gloria's monster appears in Seoul, as opposed to Tokyo or Beijing, is no coincidence. Seoul, or more accurately, SOUL, is the battleground where Gloria must reclaim her Self and heal her psychological wounds. If she fails in the task of psychological evolution and integration, then Seoul/her soul, will be destroyed. The same is true of Trump, that if he is unable to restrain his most base desires, which for him are to gain power and control and to avoid embarrassment and humiliation, then Seoul will be forced to pay the heavy price that his ego demands. 

The same is true of Kim, but in a slightly different way. Kim's life is on the line in any resurgence of Korean hostilities. Kim's self-preservation instinct is currently all that is keeping the entire Korean peninsula from armageddon.  For the narcissist, the survival instinct is very strong, as the need for love and approval can be a powerful fuel to get them through life. But as strong as the survival instinct is for the narcissist, there can be a turning point, a sort of emotional/psychological event horizon, beyond which there is no turning back. The narcissist will not only do anything for love and control, but for spite…and Kim could certainly get to the point in the Korean situation where he simply must act in order to maintain his delusion of self-worth and identity, which will have dire consequences for his people, the people of South Korea, and the U.S. military men and women serving in the area. 

In the end of Colossal, Gloria gets sober, thus giving her control, not over others, but over herself and her unconscious, which frees her to do the hard work of self-discovery and self-healing that she desperately needs in order to evolve beyond her childhood trauma and into adulthood. Gloria saves Seoul and defeats Oscar by putting herself directly in harms way and taking responsibility for her life and her choices. Obviously, this is where the Gloria-Trump comparisons come to a screeching halt. Trump, the 71 year old man-child, is not going to change now, and so the people of Seoul will have to live on the razors edge of his erratic psyche until he is no longer in office. 

There is a line in Colossal where Gloria says to Oscar, "you've lost your mind…you know that, don't you?", to which Oscar replies, "The important thing now is that you don't lose yours". Kim Jong-Un and his father and grandfather, have always been described as madmen by their adversaries here in America. To be fair, the U.S. ALWAYS describes their enemies as crazy, so that epithet isn't unique to the ruling family of North Korea. That said, for the first time in my lifetime, it appears that America has a true-blue lunatic of their own leading our nation in Donald Trump. So in the near future we may be dealing with an equation in which Kim Jong-Un has potentially "lost his mind" and we are forced to rely on Donald Trump "not losing his" mind. If that becomes the case then we are in some very deep shit. 

In the final analysis, Colossal is a unique film worth seeing that I hope is just a nice piece of original entertainment and not a doomsday prophecy. Although, if I am being honest, I have to admit I have a sinking feeling that in the long run, Colossal will end up being much too prophetic for my comfort. The sad truth is, when two men with twisted souls like Trump and Kim square off, we all might end up losing our Seoul. 

©2017

Colossal : A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!!****

Estimated Reading Time : 4 minutes 37 seconds

My Rating : 3.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation : SEE IT. See it in the theatre in order to encourage studios to make more films like this! 

Colossal, written and directed by Nacho Vigalondo, is a black comedy about Gloria, an unemployed, alcoholic writer who leaves New York city and returns to her suburban childhood home as a means of last resort, when all of a sudden a giant monster starts attacking Seoul, South Korea. Anne Hathaway stars as Gloria, with Jason Sudeikis playing her hometown friend Oscar.

Colossal is a strange, original, smart, unique and ultimately insightful film that is a worthwhile storytelling venture. Writer/Director Vigalondo masterfully weaves together a story about alcoholism, misogyny, monsters, personal demons and psychological/spiritual healing to create an intriguing and ultimately satisfying movie. 

Colossal is not a monster movie, not really, the monster is a secondary device to mine the inner turmoil of Gloria, and is a metaphor for her alcoholism/psychological scars. It is impossibly clever that writer/director Vigalondo has the monster attack Seoul, or less succinctly, SOUL. It is Gloria's soul/Seoul that is under assault. Her self loathing and self-destructive behavior are born out of being a pawn, or barbie doll, in a male dominated world that is cruel, hurtful and monstrous. 

Hathaway is a polarizing actress, a lot of people spew a great deal of vitriol at her for her public persona. I have no opinion on her as a person, but I will say she does very good work in Colossal. Hathaway's Gloria, like Hathaway herself, smiles maybe a bit too much and seems pretty self-absorbed and disingenuous a lot of the time, which is actually a masterful way to bring the character to life. In a bit of notable artistic courage, Hathaway embraces Gloria's physical and emotional messiness, and allows herself to look her absolutely worst, which is something not every actress would do. Hathaway's Gloria (like Hathaway herself) is very likable in her unlikability, and that is entirely a credit to the actresses charm and skill.

Jason Sudeikis does a surprisingly solid job as Gloria's childhood classmate Oscar. Sudeikis is a funny guy, and he is funny here, but never too funny, which makes his Oscar a totally believable human being and keeps the film grounded. Sudeikis is the polar opposite of Hathaway in that most people generally like him, and as Oscar he uses his inherent likability to lure the audience onto his side to terrific effect. 

Both Hathaway and Sudeikis commit fully to the rather absurd scenario the film lays out for them, which makes the audience never question the legitimacy or veracity of the story as it unfolds. In some way, Colossal reminded me of the brilliant absurdist film from last year The Lobster, in regards to its rather quirky premise. Colossal isn't nearly as good as The Lobster, but it is still an interesting, entertaining and worthwhile film. 

The film may have resonated with me personally because, like Gloria, I too am an alcoholic (unlike Gloria I have a quarter century of sobriety under my belt) and have lots of demons and monsters dwelling inside me that occasionally rear their head to destroy large cities. Colossal expertly captures the relentless cycle of bad decisions and self-immolations that the alcoholic goes through while under the spell of that tantalizing Dionysian nectar. It also wonderfully captures the discomfort those around the alcoholic feel when he/she attempts to stop drinking. Even those who want the drunk to stop boozing are thrown for a loop when they finally do, and seeing that in Colossal rang particularly true for me. It is a common occurrence that people want YOU to change, but they don't want THINGS to change….which, of course, is impossible.

As a psychological exercise, Colossal is pretty marvelous, using a monster attacking Seoul and all the events that follow that bizarre occurrence as a way to tell the story of a woman's struggle to come to grips with her psychological and emotional wounds is a brilliant idea. And it is important to note that this is a WOMAN'S story, as it shows the carnage and soul crushing and suffocating damage men inflict upon the women they claim to love. Much like last years A Monster Calls, Colossal makes a monster movie the way it should be made, as a personal, intimate tale that reveals larger truths, in this instance, the personal experience of a woman trying to survive in a man's world.

Colossal is not a perfect movie, it has its flaws and its occasional sloppiness, but it is an ingenious film that tells a peculiar yet important story. As an alcoholic I can tell you that Anne Hathaway's performance in the final shot of the film is as good as it gets in portraying what life is like living with that affliction. Hope, fear and cold, hard reality all smack you in the face at once when you have reached the mountaintop only to realize you must climb all the way back down again in order to live life on terra firma. Just when you think the battle is won, you realize it hasn't even started yet. 

Whether you're a degenerate drunken booze hound or a teetotaling church goer, Colossal is worth seeing in order to watch what it is like to have your own personal monster projected out there for all the world to see. It is a superbly smart and psychologically relevant film that tells the truth, even when it lies. I recommend you spend your hard earned dollars to see it in the theatre, you never know, the Seoul you save, could be your own. 

©2017