Marty Supreme (2025)
Directed by Josh Safdie
Marty Mauser, a young man with a dream no one respects, goes to hell and back in pursuit of greatness.
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39 films that influenced Marty Supreme
What critics say influenced Marty Supreme
Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme fuses the relentless intensity of Uncut Gems with the Kafkaesque absurdity of After Hours…
Marty is so stylistically and thematically in line with 2019’s Gems, it’s shocking this isn’t the duo’s official follow-up to that film.
…it’s tempting to compare its structure and many detours to those of Uncut Gems, as both films feature much of the same crew and operate as humiliating character studies…
Josh seems to have retained a bit more of the Uncut Gems/Good Time feel with his latest, Marty Supreme.
Marty Supreme's overall comedic screwball tone and filmmaking remind me of Uncut Gems; it feels like a greatest hits down to its opening sequence being the "business in the front" to Uncut's "party in the back."
Where Uncut Gems is claustrophobic and punishing, Marty Supreme has a laxity and strange warmth beneath the noise.
Even as far back as his debut feature, The Pleasure of Being Robbed, Safdie has had a fascination with charismatic, yet morally precarious or just downright unlikable protagonists in crises of their own making.
Unlike films like “Rocky” and “Invincible,” Marty’s passion doesn’t lift others up but often brings them down.
…people will watch a Rocky-esque movie like theirs…
This is ultimately satisfying like how The Karate Kid or Rocky is satisfying, just in a deeper way.
Like the original Rocky, Mauser doesn’t quite get what he hopes for, but gets to go out in a blaze of glory…
…he's crafted a grand, upturned fairy tale that feels like funhouse reflection inverse of Rocky. Where Rocky's defeat was a spiritual victory, Marty's victory feels like a spiritual defeat…
Safdie has basically taken the broader Rocky/Karate Kid formula of “someone fighting against the odds and their own personal demons to give their best, scrappy shot at their given sport”…
This is ultimately satisfying like how The Karate Kid or Rocky is satisfying, just in a deeper way.
Safdie has basically taken the broader Rocky/Karate Kid formula of “someone fighting against the odds and their own personal demons to give their best, scrappy shot at their given sport”…
Even after splitting up to direct their own films, the duo is still detailing the anxiogenic stories of dreamers, with Benny Safdie making “The Smashing Machine” and Josh Safdie making “Marty Supreme.”
It’s not unlike the empty feeling you’re left with at the conclusion of his brother Benny’s recent “The Smashing Machine,” a similar tale of an obscure, troubled sports figure more popular in Japan than at home.
Josh's Marty Supreme, arriving imminently, looks like every other conventional biopic ever…
…with brother Benny releasing the Dwayne Johnson sports drama The Smashing Machine in October…
This year, Benny helmed The Smashing Machine, a paint-by-numbers MMA biopic…
…or at least a more satisfying one than his brother Benny’s The Smashing Machine…
…their particular type of dreamers are also con-men, liars, and schemers…but ultimately “Heaven Knows What,” “Good Time,” and “Uncut Gems” all revolve around people who dream of a bigger and better life for themselves.
Marty Supreme is the third film in an unofficial Safdie trilogy of thrilling, propulsive character studies of grubby, egotistical, narcissistic New Yorkers, along with Good Time and Uncut Gems…
Josh seems to have retained a bit more of the Uncut Gems/Good Time feel with his latest, Marty Supreme.
If you took any enjoyment from the layers of Good Time and Uncut Gems…
It’s not exactly the neon-lit splendour of Good Time…
It also lacks the subversive fun of the Safdie brothers’ two greatest triumphs, “Good Time” and “Uncut Gems.”
…their particular type of dreamers are also con-men, liars, and schemers…but ultimately “Heaven Knows What,” “Good Time,” and “Uncut Gems” all revolve around people who dream of a bigger and better life for themselves.
Stylistically, it recalls the coked-out energy of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours…
But above all, it feels like After Hours for the way things go wrong for our protagonist in the most outrageously hilarious and unexpected ways.
Safdie takes a page from Raging Bull and is more intimately focused on making this a layered, scrutinising character study.
Sure, but only in the way that Scorsese’s Raging Bull or The Color Of Money are sports movies.
The film has echoes of The Aviator because it’s a period piece inspired by a real person who becomes involved with a Hollywood actress and whose life spirals out of control.
Chalamet indulges Marty’s rough edges and vanities with the glee DiCaprio similarly displayed when he finally shook off coming-of-age parts to play one of Hollywood’s most storied bastards in The Aviator.
A grand tale of aspiration and consequences, à la “Boogie Nights” and “Goodfellas,” it’s one of the year’s best films.
Marty’s haughtiness and drive for success evoke The Wolf of Wall Street, as our protagonist is charming yet detestable.
…the 29-year-old performer exudes a charismatic presence reminiscent of his mentor’s (DiCaprio’s) style in The Wolf of Wall Street.
Sure, but only in the way that Scorsese’s Raging Bull or The Color Of Money are sports movies.
Marty reminded me of Leonardo DiCaprio in two films: “Gangs of New York” and “Catch Me if You Can.
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A grand tale of aspiration and consequences, à la “Boogie Nights” and “Goodfellas,” it’s one of the year’s best films.
…or Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights…
…complete with a Look Who’s Talking!-style opening credits sequence—impregnating his married paramour…
…sequence lifted from Look Who’s Talking, of all places…
Safdie didn’t look much beyond “Shark Tank” when he cast Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary, who lends his smarmy reality show energy to the film.
The casting might have been intentional, since O’Leary already plays a scummy, wealthy man in real life on Shark Tank and Fox News.
Kevin O’Leary-the real life billionaire and star of Shark Tank…
Kevin O’Leary, who is just playing his Shark Tank character on the big screen.
Casting O’Leary, known for his appearances on the reality competition series Shark Tank as Mr. Wonderful, is a clever (albeit controversial) choice that plays directly on the audience’s relationship with the television personality…
That’s right, Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank.
…when one places the music side by side with Tangerine Dream’s contribution to Risky Business, they sound incredibly similar.
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Not since Forrest Gump has so much talent been assembled in service of a story about a guy who excels at a game most of us only have experience playing drunkenly as teenagers in our friend’s basement.
…the film fictionalizes his life into something that occasionally feels like a distant cousin of Forrest Gump. It’s been a while since a movie sent its protagonist ricocheting through this many strange corners of history and ego.
Last year’s The Brutalist explored a similar dynamic, with the key variation here being that Marty is an opportunist, not an intellectual.
The relationship between a wealthy industrialist and an exciting, younger talent, hesitant to work with them but in need of their backing, is a core tenet of stories about the American Dream (The Brutalist, just last year)…