Marty Supreme
I saw this movie in the cinema. I really enjoyed it but it was very unsettling to watch... The Marty character is highly overdone and fictionalized, but he is very similar to certain people I know, which is bizarre.
The soundtrack and the way the movie looked was nice. The camera wasn't too fancy or overdone which has become a hallmark for the Safdie brothers, which I really enjoy. The movie was shot on film giving it the classic yellow/green colorscheme you get off natural film, but it didn't feel annoying like the photography of Nan Goldin.
The film seems to be a cross between Uncut Gems and Cathc Me If You Can. It has the classic anxiety factor of Uncut Gems and a charismatic protagonist that seems to be able to almost hypnotically influence everyone around him even when they can see through the layers of bullshit he tells them.
The table tennis seems to just be a gimmick in this movie though, it provides Marty with motivation to actually do all the things he does which is more palletable for the audience. Irl, the only motivation needed to lie, cheat, and abuse is usually not some grand table tennis tournament but simply human nature and desire for power that in my experience usually manifests through sex.
I thought the movie could have done more with expanding the storyline of Koto Endo. I did like that (also in classic Safdie fashion) there is no catharsis provided to the viewer at the end of the film, as the Marty doesn't really truly punished for his actions, yes he doesn't participate in the tournament and the previous descisions he makes will come to haunt him off screen.. But he does prevail over Endo and seems to have some sort of realisation at the end of the reality of becoming a father.
The casting was great, it seems a lot of actors played some version of themselves, Abel Ferrara as a gangster, Chalamet as a charismatic **actor**, and O'Leary as a serious businessman.
Even with the 150 minute runtime, the film was never boring, it built up the anxiety well although in a different way the Uncut Gems. In UG the anxiety builts as the viewer is rooting for the protagonist as he isn't necessarily a bad person, just a man that makes horrible descisions over and over due to his gambling addiction and other things. You are afraid that things aren't going to work out for him but the filmmakers sprinkle in bits of hope to keep you on edge. The inverse is true with Marty, you are waiting for those bits of hope to dissipate and for him to finally completely fail and fuck up, for people to finally see through him and for his arrogance to be checked. Yet those pieces of hope act more as a gut punch more than anything else. When Kay Stone calls him out on his plan to gain pitty by "returning" the fake necklace and pretending he never tried to sell it in the first place, you get lifted up as someone is finally smart enough to call him out direclty and precisely, yet in the next scene she gives him a real diamon necklace anyway.
I like that they turned their previous character arc on it's head and subverted classic viewer expectations but it was too on the nose, at half of the movie the ending was expected as they laid out all their cards on the table by that point.
Overall.... 7.5/10