Paper Tiger

After heading to the Amazon rainforest and then to outer space, it’s wonderfully satisfying to see James Gray return to his roots, as New York brings out his most operatic work. ARMAGEDDON TIME (2022) saw Gray revisiting events from his Queens childhood under Ronald Reagan, and now PAPER TIGER, set in the same era and slightly less semi-autobiographical, touches on the same down and dirty crime milieu we’ve known and loved since LITTLE ODESSA (1994). The American dreamers in PAPER TIGER are engineer family man Irwin (Miles Teller, excellent) and his brother Gary (Adam Driver, enthusiastic), a worldly, hubristic ex-cop who pulls his younger brother into a get-rich-quick scheme involving the depollution of the Gowanus Canal. This almost immediately leads to Irwin’s two kids and wife Hester (Scarlett Johansson, seemingly playing a version of the director’s mother) being terrorised by none other than the Russian mob. Like all of Gray’s films, PAPER TIGER examines family loyalty and failed ambition through an unironic moral lens. Of course, Gray mounts a few boffo set pieces along the way, providing further proof that he might be the only filmmaker crafting stories the way they used to in the good old days of classical Hollywood. (Mark Peranson)

Ö1 breakfast film on November 2: Admission and coffee at 5.30 am and free breakfast-to-go after the screening!

James Gray: COWBOYS AND ANGELS (1991, K), LITTLE ODESSA (1994), THE YARDS (2000), WE OWN THE NIGHT (2007), TWO LOVERS (2008), THE IMMIGRANT (2013), THE LOST CITY OF Z (2016), AD ASTRA (2019), ARMAGEDDON TIME (2022)