I’ve only a half-hour before my dreaded 5:15 pm AMC Lincoln Square screening of The Housemaid (okay, 50 or 55 minutes if you count the disgusting shitbox trailers, which I’ve no intention of sitting through) but I recently emerged from a 1:30 pm showing of Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme and it’s way, way better, not just inventively and cinematically but in basic holy-shit terms, than One Battle After Another…way the fuck better! Not to mention at least 10 if not 15 times better than Uncut Gems — it’s a primal knockout thing.
It’s entirely driven by Timothee Chalamet’s amoral, selfish, thoughtless, greedy-as-fuck young guy (but greedy for juice, triumph, acclaim and glory rather than money) who’s a serious go-getter, prick, thief, pusher and hustler, not to mention a gifted ping-pong athlete…a guy who never stops and never hesitates…okay, he acquires a little character and a couple of twinges of self-doubt toward the end, but ladies and germs and all the ships at sea…this is world–class cinema!…an alive, contentious and heavy-chugging run-around and hop-around fever dream that never lets you know what’ll happen next.
Chalamet constantly, compulsively, deplorably and always half-charmingly lies, takes, deceives, uses, goads, wounds, gives head, impregnates, insults, boasts, bullshits…and it’s not about morality or “story” or even who wins the big climactic ping-pong match in Japan, this thing…well, it’s finally about shards of decency and morality toward the end, but Marty Supreme is primarily and gloriously about character…and that’s what’s exciting about it.
