James Gray is contemporary cinema’s reigning New York auteur, and he once again proves his peerless feel for his urban hometown with Paper Tiger.
A spiritual heir to his first three features (Little Odessa, The Yards, We Own the Night), with which it shares a 1980s time period and a story about yin-yang brothers that intertwines familial and mafia drama, the writer/director’s latest is another of his masterful examinations of the knotty ties that bind. The opening night selection (Sept. 25) of this year’s New York Film Festival (after which it arrives in theaters on Nov. 13), it pulsates with heart, rancor, and terror—thanks, in no small part, to standout performances from its illustrious leads Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, and Miles Teller.
The year is 1986, the neighborhood is Queens, and the center of Paper Tiger’s universe is Irwin Pearl (Teller), a mild-mannered engineer in big glasses whose private business is doing just enough to support his homemaker wife Hester (Johansson)—who somehow wears even bigger spectacles than her spouse—and their sons Ben (Roman Engel) and Scott (Gavin Goudey), the latter of whom is approaching his 18th birthday and a departure to college.
Their close-knit Jewish household is full of the usual joking and bickering, and in just a few short scenes, Gray—his touch as deft as it is unaffected—authentically conveys their unremarkably sweet dynamics…