Marty Supreme

I go to the pictures as a form of escape from being home alone all day and everyday,  housework avoidance and a place where I like to see movies.  This may be obvious and you may be thinking "why is she being so dumb to think she has to say this?"  Well there is a reason.  I do not watch many movies at home.  I watch documentaries, dramas and Asian street food.  I do not like watching movies on the small screen and most of my favourite movies like Everything Everywhere All at Once are meant to be seen in the cinema.  They don't work at home on the tv set in the living room.   

Yesterday after I got over nearly losing my car on the black ice of the car park and damaging several other cars and moving very slowly to a different parking location completely before I could even think again about what  I was actually doing, i.e. going to see a film,  I did go and see a film and got over the black ice.  But it was deadly.

I went to see Marty Supreme.  This is what my first paragraph was all about, going to the movies to see a movie.  Do not bother to watch this film at home.  I wouldn't and will never watch it at home or see it again.   In fact, even if you are a Timothée Chalomet fanatic like me do not even bother to cry if you miss this movie.  Chalomet is brilliant, so is the vegan well-ness freak Gwyneth Paltrow, in fact all the acting is terrific.  The sound track has to be mentioned, you cannot write about this film and not mention the music.  It is also terrific. 

We are in 1950s New York but we start with  Forever Young 1980s Alphaville and we end with Everybody Wants to Rule the World 1980s Tears for Fears.  

Forget getting in a tizz because it might be a sports movie about ping pong.  Some people have reservations about sports movies.  In fact sports movies are really never about just sport.  Like Christy I went to see a few weeks ago was not about a female boxer but was really about a controlling relationship.  So, Marty Supreme is not really about ping pong.  It really isn't.  It is about a misfit character called Marty who wants to be successful but isn't.  He is a mixed up character who says all the wrong things and then will later come round and make amends for saying them.  He is a hustler, like we don't really have in Britain, a word I don't know much about until I looked it up, a wheeler dealer who is good at it.  Marty is one of those and good at it, a good shoe salesman.  I didn't know whether to like him or not.   

It is chaos and very noisy and that is not just the music.  The story has many many sub-stories and is not always easy to follow, especially the dog, and most of the stories leave you hanging and you never get to the end of them and if like me you like things to be cut and dried they aren't in this film.  The director is on his own and not with his brother who he used to direct with.  Josh Safdie on his own having a load of fun with this movie and spending lots of money on it, I gather.  I can't think why but it was high budget. 

And it is a bit too long too. 

So I had a nice afternoon out, I didn't wreck the car or anybody elses and I saw a fun movie that I didn't like all that much, which was extremely chaotic, noisy, too long, and really not worth seeing if I am honest.