A new trailer has arrived for James Gray's "Paper Tiger," which premiered in competition at Cannes earlier this year. Once again, Gray left the festival empty-handed. Despite bringing six films to the Croisette in competition, he hasn't won a single award there in the last 25 years.
There is good news for the filmmaker, though. According to THR, Neon is going all in on Gray's latest and will mount a full awards campaign this fall for "Paper Tiger," which opens the New York Film Festival this Friday. The outlet calls it the “first real [awards] push for a James Gray film.”
Like much of Gray's work, the film is semi-autobiographical. Teller plays Irwin, a working-class family man whose hustling brother Gary (Driver) pulls him into a bad business venture, one that puts him, his wife (Johansson), and their kids in the path of the Russian mob. The film cost $15 million, pieced together from so many backers that 24 executive producers are credited. It's exactly the kind of mid-budget adult drama Hollywood has largely stopped making.
Neon is hoping "Paper Tiger" can finally break Gray's Oscar curse. He has been a favorite of critics and Cannes for decades but has never received a nomination himself, in part because his most awards-worthy films keep getting sabotaged. Harvey Weinstein buried "The Immigrant" after Gray refused his edits. "The Lost City of Z" closed NYFF, then was dumped the following spring and quickly vanished. Fox recut "Ad Astra," which Gray has since disowned. His best film, "Two Lovers," never received a campaign at all, and Focus largely abandoned "Armageddon Time" after it flopped at the box office.
Neon acquired "Paper Tiger" last April and is reportedly determined to be the distributor that finally does right by him. For once, Gray has a studio genuinely in his corner. Still, I'm skeptical that this will be the film that earns him real awards traction.
"Paper Tiger" is very much a James Gray movie: romantic, old-fashioned, sometimes overly serious, but capable of incredible suspense. The first half is probably the strongest, the middle gets somewhat bogged down in melodrama, and the final third picks back up and is fantastic. A couple of sequences rank among Gray's best filmmaking. In one, Irwin takes his two sons to Brooklyn to see the Russians at work, only for things to turn terrifying when the mobsters begin threatening him and the kids. In another, intruders enter the family home in the middle of the night, and Gray takes his time, filling the house with shadows and near-silence until it plays almost like a horror movie. The climax is another terrific piece of suspense, proof that Gray hasn't lost his touch for building tension.
The cast is strong, with Driver the standout. He plays Gary as an incredibly confident man who believes he can talk his way out of anything, even as he drags his entire family into a nightmare. Teller is solid as well, particularly as Irwin slowly realizes what he has gotten himself into. Johansson may prove the most divisive of the three; some of her dialogue drew laughs at the Cannes screening, yet her later scene at the doctor's office is genuinely heartbreaking.
Ultimately, "Paper Tiger" is flawed, but much of it is compelling. It marks Gray's return to the gritty New York crime drama he does best, though it may not convert anyone who already dislikes his style. The film currently holds an 84% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 77 on Metacritic, and it hits theaters on November 20.
Um, what? Bruno Dumont, one of the most uncompromising filmmakers alive, has made his next feature, "The End," entirely with generative AI.