'Armageddon Time,' a portrait of white privilege, stirs Cannes

 

James Gray’s autobiographical coming-of-age film, starring Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong, has made a splash at the film festival

When the Cannes Film Festival audience stood to applaud James Gray’s richly observed autobiographical drama Armageddon Time, about the director’s own 1980s childhood in Queens, Gray’s voice quivered as he addressed the crowd.

“It’s my story, in a way,” said Gray. “And you guys shared it with me.”

“It took every last bit of control not to burst out into tears,” Gray said, still recovering the next day in Cannes. “It’s been a really strange journey making the film and my father died two months ago of Covid. The whole process has been fraught and filled with emotion.”

Armageddon Time, starring Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong, has stirred Cannes like no other American film at the festival this year.

Gray’s movie, which Focus Features will distribute in the US later this year, has been received as a tender triumph for the New York filmmaker of The Immigrant and Ad Astra not only for his detailed excavation of his childhood, but for how the film re-examines his own white privilege growing up — how race and money can tip the scales in the formative years of young people.

Paul Graff (Banks Repeta) is a sixth-grader modelled on Gray, now 53, in a middle-class Jewish family. At school, Paul’s friend Johnny (Jaylin Webb) is a black kid with fewer advantages, who is treated differently than Paul. When Paul’s family elects to send him to a private school, the gap only grows. Connections to today’s inequities aren’t hard to decipher. At the private school, Jessica Chastain makes a cameo as Maryanne Trump, sister to Donald and an assistant US attorney.

For Gray, Armageddon Time is a period film about now, and a coming home after two far-flung films in the Amazon-set The Lost City of Z and the space adventure Ad Astra.

Readmore:https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/film/2022/05/21/armageddon-time-portrait-of-white-privilege-stirs-cannes/

CinemaCon highlights: The Rock becomes a superhero and 'Elvis' returns to Vegas

 

The major movie teasers and trailers to be released at the Warner Bros cinema event so far

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson topped a superhero-packed bill as Warner Bros presented its upcoming slate of blockbusters at CinemaCon on Tuesday, while Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis graced the Las Vegas casino stage at the movie industry summit.

Johnson, Hollywood’s top-grossing actor, appeared unannounced to promote his upcoming DC film Black Adam at the annual gathering, where Warner bosses also confirmed a sequel to Robert Pattinson’s The Batman is on the way.

Further superhero sequels Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, as well as new standalone film The Flash, were also presented to movie theatre executives and managers, who gather each year at Caesars Palace casino to be courted by Hollywood’s top studios and A-listers.

Johnson described his character in Black Adam as “the Dirty Harry of the superhero world,” with ambiguous morals.

“Heroes don’t kill people,” says one villain in never-before-seen footage, to which Black Adam replies: “Well I do.”

Warner and Johnson are banking on Black Adam, out in October, becoming a major draw for their DC superhero film universe, which has grossed billions without reaching the heights of the rival and record-breaking Marvel films such as Avengers: Endgame.

Johnson surprised attendees by pretending to speak from Hawaii via video, before suddenly appearing in the Caesars Palace ballroom.

Beyond the superhero fare, which dominates modern megaplexes, Baz Luhrmann took the stage to discuss Elvis.

Luhrmann called the film, out in June, starring Austin Butler as Elvis Presley and Tom Hanks as his domineering manager, as less a biopic and more the tale of “America in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

“At the centre of culture, for the good, the bad and the ugly, is the figure Elvis Presley,” said Luhrmann, describing the music icon as “the original superhero.”

“What this movie is about is America in those three epochs: Elvis the rebel, Elvis the highest paid actor in Hollywood and Elvis the living legend, the icon, trapped in that hotel not 10 minutes from here,” he told the Las Vegas crowd.

Readmore:https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/film/2022/04/27/cinemacon-highlights-the-rock-becoming-a-superhero-and-elvis-returns-to-vegas/