Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere - A Review: Born to Run in Place

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

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This bio-pic starts strong but finishes much too weakly to be a worthwhile venture. It could have, and should have, been significantly better.

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, written and directed by Scott Cooper, is a bio-pic of sorts that chronicles both Bruce Springsteen’s struggle to make his critically-acclaimed 1982 album Nebraska and his battle with depression.

The film, which stars Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen, hit theatres on October 24, 2025 and is now available to stream on Hulu…which is where I watched it.

When I was growing up my first real introduction to Bruce Springsteen was his massively popular 1984 album Born in the USA. I was not fan of that song in particular, and the album in general…so much so that I wrote off Springsteen altogether. He seemed terribly uncool (something that was important to me as a young teen) and the jingoism of Born in the USA was repulsive to me on its face.

Then about a decade later a buddy of mine had an extra ticket to a Springsteen concert and gave it to me for free…and who am I to turn down a free concert ticket…so I went.

The concert was Springsteen without the E Street band and was part of the tour promoting his solo albums Human Touch and Lucky Town – two albums I didn’t think much of if I ever thought of them at all. Our seats were elevated and essentially behind the stage…which didn’t seem ideal….then Springsteen hit the stage.

It is a testament to Springsteen’s talent and skill that he turned a malevolent anti-fan like me into a big fan over the course of one concert. I understood by the end of that night what all the fuss was about regarding Springsteen…and why he was called The Boss.

Since then, I have essentially gone back and experienced his early albums for the first time, and even saw Born in the USA from a different perspective and liked it. It also helped hearing the stripped-down acoustic version of the song which is deliciously caustic in regards to its intentions.

After having spent the last three decades appreciating and absorbing The Boss’ work, I have come to the conclusion that he is one of the most essential American singer-songwriters of his era and maybe of any era.

Which brings us to Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.

This film is a bit of an odd duck, as the first half of it is as ambitious and audacious as any music bio-pic you’ll find, but the second half of it is so painfully trite and pedestrian it feels like an after-school special.

Let’s start with the good. The film’s first half deals with Springsteen fighting to keep his artistic integrity amidst pressure from his record label and struggling to make a stripped down, dark album that satiates his artistic urges.

Watching a film attempt to dramatize an iconic artists’ life by getting into his actual creative process and seeing what inspired him and propelled his work, is something that doesn’t fit nicely into the music bio-pic formula…and that’s what makes this choice so bold and brazen.

This is easily the best part of the film, as we see Springsteen research a murder in Nebraska that piques his interest and sparks his imagination and artistry. This is the less glamourous part of The Boss being The Boss. No fanfare, no nonsense, just him, his guitar, paper, pencil and long hours.

The album he eventually records at home on a four-track becomes his iconic work Nebraska…but he has to get the record label on board first, and maybe re-record in the studio…and this is when the film shifts.

The second half of the film is not about creation or artistry, it is about Springsteen dealing with his family, his fame, and his depression…all standard fare for a music bio-pic….and none of it is very compelling.

The decision to all of a sudden make the movie about Bruce’s struggle with depression is a bizarre creative choice as it scuttles any momentum and it feels entirely unearned. Also unearned is a romance with a local Jersey girl that feels random and lifeless.

The ending of the film has a written epilogue that is reminiscent of an after-school special where the viewer is informed that everything worked out for Bruce as he becomes a massive superstar and he essentially overcomes his depression with help from professionals. Yikes.

That epilogue reminded me of the textual epilogue at the end of Clint Eastwood’s 1988 film Bird – a biopic about jazz legend Charlie Parker that features a brilliant performance from Forest Whitaker. Bird is overall a pretty bad movie, and that is only accentuated by the epilogue which – in true Regan era sloganeering form, tells us that unlike the drug-addled Charlie Parker who died at 34, supporting-character “Red Rodney is actively performing today, providing an example of musical excellence and a drug-free life.” Thanks, Nancy Reagan.

Deliver Me from Nowhere didn’t need its textual epilogue…at all. It should have just let sleeping dogs lie but it couldn’t, probably because Bruce Springsteen had control of what could, and couldn’t be in the movie. That is unfortunate because when it happens the much-needed hard edges of drama and artistry get softened and rounded.

Jeremy Allen White does a decent enough job as Springsteen throughout. He is hamstrung by the script which in the second half is a bit too melo-dramatic than it should be.

I’ve not watched White’s popular series The Bear, but I can see why he is as popular as he is because he has a screen presence that is appealing and a certain magnetism that serves him well. I thought overall his work as Springsteen was not spectacular but, ironically, workman like.

Jeremy Strong plays Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau – who is a legend in the music industry. Strong is a very good actor, but he isn’t given much to do in this role. He, like White…is just fine in the role but not great.

The biggest takeaway I had from the performances of both White and Strong was that this movie had the opportunity to be great…but it never coalesced into what it could have, and maybe should have, been.

A lot of the blame for the film’s failing lies with writer/director Scott Cooper. Cooper has had a strange career. His first film was Crazy Heart (2009), which won Jeff Bridges his best Actor Oscar. Pretty impressive. His next film was Out of the Furnace (2013) – which despite a stacked cast bombed at the box office and was critically forgotten.

In 2015 Cooper delivered the film Black Mass, about the life and times of Whitey Bulger, and while I like that film, it underperformed and underwhelmed. Since then, he’s made Hostiles (2017), Antlers (2021) and The Pale Blue Eye (2022), none of which made much of a dent in the culture despite their top-notch casts.

Cooper’s biggest issue with Deliver Me from Nowhere is that he doesn’t commit to the arthouse version of the film where it is just about Springsteen trying to write and record Nebraska. Trying to round out that story with flaccid familial drama and cookie-cutter mental health stuff feels like an attempt to make the movie more commercially viable…which ironically is what I think made it less commercially viable.

Speaking of which, Deliver Me from Nowhere did not do well at the box office, making $45 million on a $55 million budget. It also did not receive any award nominations or critical praise…which pretty much is in line with what happened to the rest of Scott Cooper’s filmography.

Ultimately, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is a harmless and pretty forgettable movie which has moments of artistic insight that if further pursued could have led to brilliance….but t’was not to be.

I’d also like to say one thing about Springsteen himself. I think you’d be much better served going back and listening to his entire discography, including the outtakes and live material, than watching this movie. I also think you’d be better served watching his Broadway one man show, Springsteen on Broadway, on Netflix, and reading his autobiography Born to Run…both of which are excellent.

One final matter regarding the The Boss that I feel needs be said, and it’s this. Bruce Springsteen is an icon and avatar for the working class in this country, the white working class in particular…despite by his own admission, having never had a real job in his entire life.

What bothers me about Springsteen nowadays is that he has more money than he’ll ever know what to do with….and his kids, his grandkids, and all the way to his great-great-great grandkids, will never have to work a day in their lives if they don’t want to. And yet…Springsteen charges the most exorbitant and outrageous prices for his concert tickets…essentially forcing his hard-working fans to either shell out a huge chunk of their savings/credit or miss out on seeing their blue-collar savior.

This bothers me no end. It bothers me because I want to believe that Bruce Springsteen is the real deal…that he gets it and gets working class people and understands the struggle. But then he gets greedy, and reveals himself to be just another pompous, self-serving, boomer shit-lib prick who is only playing the working-class thing as a shtick to separate fools from their money – (consider me among the fools).

I feel the same about another band of greedy boomer shit-libs, U2, who have forever and ever been preaching about their political and spiritual righteousness in one form or another, and lots of people…like me for instance…have fallen for it. U2 are calculated con-men playing the role of concerned citizens. They don’t believe in anything but their own fame and fortune. This is why they spoke out about South African apartheid in the 1980s, but refused to pick sides in the struggle in Northern Ireland (only waving a white flag)…because one of the sides in that struggle was the largest market they needed to break in to…England. They couldn’t make a moral and ethical stand over civil rights for Catholics in Northern Ireland because that would alienate the audience they needed...but it cost U2 nothing to make a stand regarding South Africa. This is also why U2 refused to speak out against apartheid Israel and its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank…they wouldn’t dare stand up to the powerful Zionist moneyed interests in Israel and the U.S. Nevermind the bands use of tax havens while demanding working Americans and the Irish pay for their foreign policy moral preening projects.

Now that the scales have fallen from my eyes, I see U2 and Bono and The Boss not just as bullshit artists but genuinely malignant and nefarious actors in the public sphere. That’s not to say that their music sucks and to discard all of the things they’ve created…it’s just to say that it’s difficult to take what they say – be it in the world or in their music, at face value once you’ve seen who they really are behind the mask.

The truth is that this entire topic is worthy of a much deeper conversation, but that conversation is for another day, but I thought I’d just throw these thoughts out there as a little appetizer.

As for Springsteen: Deliver me from Nowhere…if you are a Springsteen fan you will probably watch it regardless of what I say, and you’ll probably be a bit underwhelmed by it just like me. If you’re not a Springsteen fan, the reality is that you really have no need to watch this movie at all.

©2026

Emptying the Notebook - Four Film Reviews for the Price of One

END OF YEAR HOUSECLEANING

As the year is coming to a close, I went back through my notebook and discovered some films I watched but did not properly review. So I figured why not just empty everything out and share some brief thoughts on these movies in case you were looking for something to watch over the holidays.

THE APPRENTICE – Available to stream on Amazon Prime

The Apprentice is actually a 2024 film but I never got around to watching it…and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised as I had very low expectations for the film and they were easily exceeded.

I expected a sort of run of the mill anti-Trump diatribe in film form…a sentiment I understand but which I believe would make for a rather dull feature film. What I got instead was a really incredible performance from Sebastian Stan as The Donald, in a rather nuanced and, all things considered, restrained biography of the early adult years of our current President.

Directed by Ali Abbasi, The Apprentice chronicles Trump’s ascent in the New York real estate and social world from a nepo nobody to a socialite somebody. Trump’s relationship with uber-scumbag Roy Cohn – portrayed with aplomb by Jeremy Strong, gives the background to his cutthroat approach to both business and politics.

The film is shockingly good in the first half in presenting Trump as an actual human being trying to understand the world and his place in it. In the second half it loses some steam, some perspective and nuance, but Stan never loses his grasp of the character or his humanity (or inhumanity as the case may be).

Sebastian Stan’s portrayal of Trump in this film is jaw-droppingly good. He doesn’t imitate Trump, but he is subtle in recreating some of his mannerisms and speech, and he gives a truly seamless and sterling performance. Stan was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar and Strong for Best Supporting Actor…and both nominations are very well deserved.

If you are looking for a solid movie to watch, you could do much worse than watching The Apprentice. That said, if you are burned out on all things Trump…I get it.

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

WARFARE – Available to stream on HBO MAX

Warfare is a 2025 film directed by Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza that sort of slid under the radar when it hit theatres in April.

The film chronicles a single military encounter of a Navy SEAL platoon in 2006 during the Battle of Ramadi. It is based on the real-life experience of director Mendoza and accounts from his team members.

Alex Garland is a filmmaker who showed great promise in his debut feature Ex Machina, but who has disappointed since then. His most recent film, 2024’s Civil War, showed great promise as well but never was quite as good as it should have been.

Warfare is, in my unhumble opinion, Garland’s best film since Ex Machina. It is a rather simple set up, a platoon of Navy SEALS is stuck doing surveillance in a house in Ramadi. Then the shit hits the fan and a battle erupts.

The film is well shot by cinematographer David J. Thompson, and well-choreographed by Mendoza. The battle is chaotic and feels entirely real. The best thing about Warfare is that it feels like you are plunged into a real setting and situation with real warriors. It doesn’t have the usual Hollywood film structure or pacing or anything like that. There are no grandiose speeches are dramatic movie star posturing, just a cast of regular looking dudes thrown into a hellish environment and trying to survive it.

The film is not overtly political, but it certainly does have something to say about the Iraq debacle if you have eyes to see it.

I found Warfare to be an effective and affecting piece of moviemaking. It isn’t a great film, but it is a good enough one to recommend people check it out and do so with an open mind.

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

28 YEARS LATER – Available to stream on Netflix

28 Years Later is the sequel to the 2002 film 28 Days Later, both of which were written by the aforementioned Alex Garland. It is the third film in the 28 Days Later franchise…and a fourth is on its way in 2026.

I greatly enjoyed 28 Days Later when I saw it in the theatre back in 2002, as it gave a real jolt of energy to the zombie genre – a genre I admittedly had little interest in or knowledge of.

Having revisited 28 Days Later recently, the shine has come off that film in many ways. It wasn’t quite as good as I remembered it (I hadn’t seen it since seeing it in the theatre).

That said, I went into 28 Years Later with an open mind. I found the film, which is directed by Danny Boyle – the director of the original, to be mostly underwhelming.

The movie features a top-notch cast of Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Jack O’Connell and Ralph Fiennes, so there is a great deal of potential there…but unfortunately it never coalesces into a compelling piece of cinema.

To be clear, it isn’t a bad film, but it also isn’t a great one…it just kind of exists. It is less a zombie movie than an existential and philosophical one…and that gives it some energy, but the plot and the execution of it all never quite comes together in a way that satisfies or satiates.

The biggest question I had at the end of the film was why was this necessary? I mean, I get that the first movie was compelling and the second – 28 Weeks Later (2007), was forgettable…but why make another movie in the franchise nearly twenty years later when there wasn’t exactly a rallying cry from the masses to get it done?

Ultimately, 28 Years Later is a pretty forgettable bit of moviemaking, something that has become all-too common in the last decade of Danny Boyle’s directing career.

I say skip 28 Years Later unless if you’re a gigantic zombie movie fanatic…but even then, you’ll be disappointed with the general lack of zombie mayhem captured on screen.

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

THE SHROUDS – Available to stream on The Criterion Channel

The Shrouds, iconic filmmaker David Cronenberg’s latest film, hit theatres in 2025 and is now streaming on The Criterion Channel.

The film, which stars Vincent Cassel, Guy Pearce, Diane Kruger and Sandrine Holt, tells the story of a widower who has invented a new technology called “GraveTech”, that helps the grieving to monitor the decomposition of their loved one in the grave. Yes…this is some weird Cronenberg-ian shit.

The film is a sort of glorious concoction that mixes the usual Cronenberg body horror with a philosophical mediation on love, death, life and the modern world. Throw in some conspiracy theorizing and some big business corruption and you’ve got quite the arthouse phantasmagoria.

If you are a fan of David Cronenberg – and I consider myself one…not a super fan but a fan, then you will absolutely love The Shrouds as it is quintessential Cronenberg – most especially late-stage Cronenberg, as a man grappling with his own mortality and the death of his wife.

If you’re a normal human being you will probably find The Shrouds to be a completely alien, convoluted, and rather ghoulish cinematic experience. I understand that entirely and don’t judge anyone for feeling that way.

But if you are a Cronenberg fan, or a fan of somewhat eccentric arthouse cinema from a quality filmmaker who sometimes makes somewhat eccentric arthouse cinema…then I recommend you at least check out The Shrouds.

Ultimately The Shrouds might not be everybody’s cup of tea, but it is undeniably an original idea…and that is pretty rare nowadays.

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars (3.5 out of 5 stars for Cronenberg fans)

If you want to check out some other Cronenberg films here is a brief rundown of movies to see.

Solid horror movies – The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers.

Very Solid Mainstream Movies – A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, A Dangerous Method.

Gloriously Bat-Shit Crazy Movies Worth Watching – Crash (1996)

Alright gang…that is all I have for now. I hope everyone has a happy and healthy New Year!!

©2025

Succession (HBO): Final Season Review - All's Well That Ends Well...Enough

****THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SOME SEASON 4 SPOILERS!!! THIS IS NOT A SPOILER FREE ARTICLE!!****

Season 4 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Overall Series Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: WATCH IT. Great acting and great writing make for some great TV.

Succession is dead. Long live Succession.

The HBO prestige drama about the dysfunctional Roy family and its mega-media empire had its season four and series finale last night.

For its four seasons Succession has been a glorious dramatic feast served in an era where both film and television have consistently fed us mostly middling, mind-numbing, middlebrow mush.

Watching patriarch Logan (Brian Cox) and his ne’er-do-well offspring Kendall, Shiv and Roman run roughshod over America and its culture was insidiously entertaining but also bone chilling because of its unnerving similarity to the real-world.

The Roys are part Murdoch (Fox), part Redstone (Viacom/CBS/Paramount), part Cox (Cox Communications) and part Roberts (Comcast), and like them all, entirely awful.

Despite being a toxic brew of capitalism porn and media mogul soap opera, Succession never failed to be a joy to behold and the reason for that is two-fold.

First, the acting was superb across the board. Secondly, the dialogue brought to life by these actors was razor sharp and never failed to be anything but modern-day Shakespeare.

That all said, season four was the weakest of the Succession seasons. It wasn’t terrible at all, in fact, it featured the greatest episode not only of the series (episode 3) but of any series in recent memory. But it felt like season four was less dramatically and narratively crisp as the seasons that preceded it.

Part of the issue with season four was that it didn’t earn much of the drama it tried to use. For example, the political election storyline felt trite and shallow because the stakes of the election were not sufficiently developed, and then when they were upon us felt artificially heightened…much like our own real elections.

The same was true for the climax of the finale. Without giving too much away, there is a confrontation between the siblings at a crucial moment that rang surprisingly hollow and underwhelming because it just seemed forced and manufactured, which is not something that happened throughout the run of the series.

This crucial confrontation needed more lead time in order to be more developed and more believable. Unfortunately, the lack of believability around this confrontation undercut the dramatic momentum of the episode, season and series.

Season four was also hamstrung by killing off its most compelling character, Logan, early in the season. Logan was the center of the Succession universe and while it was amusing watching the Roy children try and fill the gaping void left in his absence, it was never quite as profound as when Logan was sitting atop the throne.

Speaking of King Lear…oops…I mean Logan, Brian Cox was absolutely phenomenal in this series. Cox’s Shakespearean speechifying was as good as it gets and has ever gotten in television. Cox’s Logan was a combustible and curmudgeonly king and we should all bow down to his combativeness.

Kieran Culkin as Roman Roy was also spectacular. Watching Roman go full Fredo…and you never go full Fredo, in the final season was extraordinary. Culkin’s ability to bring Roman’s self-loathing and searing, rapier wit to life with such skill and verve was among the show’s highlights.

Sarah Snook’s oh so human, desperate and transparently wounded Shiv was a consistent pleasure to watch as she was Lady MacBeth, Goneril and Gertrude (Hamlet’s mother) all rolled in to one.

Jeremy Strong was outstanding as Kendall, the broken boy who would be king but can’t get out of his own way. Strong’s unrelenting commitment to the vacuous and vacant Kendall was impressive.

In season four, Alexander Skarsgard was exquisite as Swedish tech guru Lukas Mattson. Skarsgard was so great in season four as the GoJo CEO he basically took over the show with his quirky, nerd guy darkness.

But of all the great actors on Succession, nobody tops Matthew Macfadyen who played Shiv’s pain sponge, sycophant husband Tom Wambsgans. Tom reeked of shameless ambition and sweaty desperation but never succumbed to self-pity, only to self-interest.

Tom’s whipping boy, cousin Greg, played by Nicholas Braun, yearned to be part of the amoral and incompetent Roy sibling “quad” and would do anything to make it happen or to make anything happen for himself. Braun was outstanding as he stole scenes and episodes with his priceless line readings and his character’s insecure maneuvering and backdoor bravado.

I suppose the reason why, despite its faults and despite having watched the finale on the new, annoyingly glitchy, streaming service Max (fuck you, Max!), I liked Succession so much was that it accurately spoke to our current time and current predicament.  

Watching a Shakespearean-esque dramatization of the ruling elite and ownership class of America, filled with an endless supply of second and third-rate fucktard, mid-wit nepo-babies devoid of balls but ravenous for power, who surround themselves with sycophantic psychopaths whose only ambition is to hold onto their own tiny, Mordor adjacent fiefdoms, was as entertaining as it was unnerving because this is exactly how empires, like America, fail and fall.

For instance, anyone who is even remotely aware can see that America’s ruling class are a decidedly spent force. For God’s sake we are on our way to having another election between fourth-rate, incompetent shitstains Joe Biden and Donald Trump. In a country of over 350 million people, it is impossible that we must choose between a compulsively lying, narcissistic, dementia-addled, pedophile politician and a bloated, incoherent, shameless, compulsively lying, nepo-brat, failure.

Of course, the truth is we only have a choice between these two asshats because we don’t actually have any choice…only the illusion of choice. Succession makes it clear that the decision between who rules and who is ruled is not a decision at all…it’s simply theatre, meant to entertain and distract while the Logan Roys and Lukas Mattsons – the ruling elites of the world, sit on high and pull all the strings.

It was great fun while it lasted, but Succession, like America’s global empire and the dollar’s dominance, is over…and frankly…it needed to be over. Succession needed to end because it ran out of runway for its drama and the American empire needed to end because it, like all empires before it, has grown much too decadent and depraved whilst wearing the crown to survive.

America will no doubt deeply miss its empirical power when it’s gone because if Succession has taught us anything it’s that while being in power is a cold, barren, miserable, sterile, lonely, painful existence, life without power is much, much worse.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

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