REVIEW: 'ARMAGEDDON TIME' SET IN 1980S YET REMINDS OF TODAY

After touching the stars with Brad Pitt, filmmaker James Gray has come back to earth to explore his own childhood in “Armageddon Time.” Set in the fall of 1980, in Queens, it is a patient and mature work about a very specific time and place when he was anything but — age 11 and starting sixth grade.

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American society is shifting in a grand way in this moment. Televisions in the background have then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan talking about a coming Armageddon, while Trump relatives affiliated with the local private school give motivational speeches to the preteens privileged enough to go there about their responsibility to become masters of the universe while not taking any handouts. It is sowing the seeds for an even greedier society to come, and leaders who will look down on those who need help or a “free lunch” to even have a chance of an equal playing ground.

This wave of change has hit the micro level too, in the home of the Graff family, with mom Esther (Anne Hathaway), dad Irving (Jeremy Strong) and their boys Ted (Ryan Sell) and Paul (Banks Repeta), Gray’s stand-in. They are middle class and Jewish, though they changed their name along the way to sound less so, and the first generation raised entirely in America. A very 80s version of success — college, growth industries, wealth — is the goal line they’ve set for their children.