Marty Supreme (2025) A24/Comedy-Drama RT: 150 minutes Rated R (language throughout, sexual content, some violent content/bloody images, nudity) Director: Josh Safdie Screenplay: Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie Music: Daniel Lopatin Cinematography: Darius Khondji Release date: December 25, 2025 (US) Cast: Timothee Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion, Kevin O’Leary, Tyler Okonma, Abel Ferrara, Fran Drescher, Sandra Bernhard, Luke Manley, John Catsimatidis, Isaac Mizrahi, Emory Cohen, Geza Rohrig, Larry “Ratso” Sloman, Ralph Colucci, Koto Kawaguchi, Pico Iyer, George Gervin, Ted Williams, Penn Jillette, David Mamet, Fred Hechinger.
Rating: ****
The Safdie Brothers make movies about losers destined to always be losers. Try as they might, their protagonists just can’t catch a break. They consistently make bad choices. It’s their nature. The Safdies don’t always like their protagonists, but they treat them sympathetically even when they’re at their worst.
Josh Safdie goes solo for the first time with Marty Supreme, a darkly funny sports drama set in the cutthroat world of table tennis circa 1952. Marty Mauser (Chalamet, A Complete Unknown), a young Jewish man from New York City, has big dreams of winning a major table tennis competition in London. Unfortunately, success doesn’t appear to be in the cards for the guy. He easily beats the reigning champ, but loses to an opponent from Japan (Kawaguchi). Marty spends the rest of the movie trying to get to Tokyo for a rematch in the World Championship.
What Marty goes through over the course of the film’s 150 minutes brings to mind Dante’s journey through the nine circles of Hell. It starts with his uncle (author Sloman), also his boss at the shoe store where he works, not giving him the money he promised him for his trip to London. He has to resort to criminal measures to obtain the funds. Later, he cajoles a rich businessman (comedian O’Leary) in an attempt to get him to back him, but blows it when he insults the guy. He ends up having an affair with his wife (Paltrow, The Royal Tenenbaums) instead. Marty has a real knack for sabotaging himself.
Marty also has to deal with an overbearing mother (Drescher, The Nanny) and the childhood friend (A’zion, Until Dawn) he knocks up after a quickie behind her loutish husband’s (Cohen, Brooklyn) back. There’s a situation involving a dog owned by a mysterious but clearly dangerous man (director Ferrara) Marty meets at a fleabag hotel. How they meet you need to see for yourself. Where it leads is just as crazy. It’s the result of more bad choices and just plain bad luck.
Although set in the 50s, Marty Supreme feels more like something from the 70s with a main character who hardly ever stops moving. It’s a propulsive piece with a jittery quality that will surely leave the viewer feeling disoriented. Safdie sweetens the pot by adding needle drops of songs from the 80s by the likes of Alphaville (“Forever Young”), Public Image Ltd. (“The Order of Death”) and Tears for Fears (“Everybody Wants to Rule the World”). This temporal displacement extends to Marty who’s like a yuppie businessman from the 80s transported to the 50s. He talks and fast-talks his way through verbal exchanges without stopping to think before he opens his mouth. This typically gets him deeper into the hot water he’s already in.
I was really rooting for Chalamet to win Best Actor last year for his flawless performance as Bob Dylan in the biopic A Complete Unknown. He lost to Adrian Brody for The Brutalist, a terrific film that everybody stopped talking about months ago. I sincerely hope he gets another shot at the gold with what he does in Marty Supreme. He plays a character impossible to like, a cocky little big shot with more confidence than sense, a guy who sees other people only as a means to achieve his own ends. Marty wants to be the ping pong champ and will stop at nothing to attain his goal, not even when the universe not at all subtly conspires against him, sometimes in darkly hilarious ways. He burns bridges with so many people yet finds ways to get back across when he needs to. He’s a total SOB yet you can’t help but root for him anyway. You want him to succeed just a little.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen Paltrow outside the MCU. You might say Marty Supreme is a comeback film of sorts for her. Oddly enough, she plays a has-been actress attempting a comeback even though hardly anybody remembers her. Her character is a woman who needs to be loved and she’ll take whatever she can get whether it’s from a hand-picked audience or some insignificant individual trying to make everybody believe his own hype. A’zion, also deserving of an Oscar, knocks it out of the park as Rachel, a spirited girl from the same surroundings as Marty. She knows him better than anybody and should be immune to his BS, but she’s blinded by her love for him and will do anything to help him. If there were ever two people who were so right for each other.
Marty Supreme moves along with an energy not found in too many films outside the Martin Scorsese oeuvre. It has this hyper-caffeinated feel like it’s hopped up on cocaine. Safdie is largely responsible, but he didn’t do it alone. He’s aided by a pulsating score from Daniel Lopatin which, at times, is reminiscent of Tangerine Dream, and jumpy cinematography from Darius Khondji. Like the antihero at its center, the film is in constant motion. It’s funny, riveting, frustrating and satisfying. It’s also one of the year’s best films. 
