It was obvious and almost certainly conclusive that French critics were going to love James Gray’s “Armageddon Time.” After all, it is the French, along with a very vocal cabal in New York City, that have praised and given much-needed legs to Gray’s career.
Fact of the matter is that Gray’s movies don’t make money, like, practically no money. It is a foregone conclusion that whatever he releases will fall through the cracks at the box-office. It’s what happened this past month with “Armageddon Time” and, yet, Gray still manages to find funding for his next film.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved some of Gray’s films over the years, especially “Two Lovers,” “The Lost City of Z,” “We Own the Night,” and, even, “Armageddon Time,” but not like the French have. AlloCine (the French equivalent of Rotten Tomatoes), has tabulated an overall critics score of 4.4 for Gray’s “Armageddon Time.” This easily places the film as one of the ten best-reviewed of 2022 in France.
Gray’s past films have almost all gone over the elusive 4.0 mark on AlloCine: “Ad Astra” (4.4), “The Lost City of Z” (4.5), “Two Lovers” (4.4), “We Own the Night” (4.4), and “The Yards” (4.1). Only “The Immigrant” (3.7) has failed to reach that plateau.
The year’s best-reviewed films on AlloCine: Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza” (4.5), Dominic Moll’s “La Nuit Du 12” (4.5), James Gray’s “Armageddon Time” (4.4) Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy” (4.4), Alice Diop’s “Saint Omer” (4.3), Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir: Part II” (4.3), Rodrigo Sogoyen’s “As Bestas” (4.2) and Jordan Peele’s “Nope” (4.1), Valerie Bruni Tedeschi’s “Les Amandiers” (4.1), and Arnaud Desplechin’s “Brothers and Sister” (4.1).