Movie: Marty Supreme
Running Time: 2:29
Nominated for: Best Picture, Director, Leading Actor, Cinematography, Casting, Editing, Costumes, Production Design, Original Screenplay
How I watched: AMC
When it had me: Timotheè, I guess?
When it lost me: So much chatter!
What systems does it challenge: Table Tennis Elitism!
I got to see this movie at 9am! I could really use more of these early morning screenings. There were many options between Christmas and the New Year. It's the best because you're fully awake and you finish the movie while it's still early enough in your day. It won't work with Avatar; that thing is going to waste a day no matter what. But let's get back to the movie we came here for which got nine nominations.
Marty Supreme takes you on a wild sort of ride through the desperation of the under-privileged trying to follow a dream. Some of the stops along the way are funny, others sad and many outright frustrating.
Safdie does a great job of setting up these tense, highly charged moments. It's noisy, chaotic, frantic in dialog, action, camera movement. I would say it is too good of a job because the constant cacophony wears on me. After the first hour or so, I just felt over-stimulated and over it.
His characters live in the underbelly; which also means that they are not perfect angels. The main character, Marty, is selfish, irritating, rude and destructive. It gets hard to stay on his side through the whole thing. He is offered some minimal redemption but it comes so late in a very long movie. I can watch flawed characters if they have some redeeming value. I can watch irredeemable characters if the joy is in watching them fail and get their just desserts. But I don't know what to do with this in-between place where I just don't care if you succeed or not.
I've never seen shark tank. I literally just found out as I was prepping this for posting that Mr. Wonderful played Mr. Rockwell. I don't even know what to take from that. But this is nominated for casting so someone thought it was an artistic decision I guess. It could be a comment on how ruthlessness is praised in successful people but not in those scrambling to become successful?
The overall effect of Marty Supreme was one or two scenes that kind of wowed (I'm thinking of a bath tub) in the midst of a very average movie-going experience. This is probably not a movie made for me.
It didn't need to be this long! There was a repetition of failure going on and in my opinion not every step in the chain was necessary. I was getting real fidgety in the third act and just wanted to be done. Why is no one advocating for better editing? I'm screaming into the void over here.
Post script: There were suddenly a lot of articles in my feed about the "alternate vampire ending" for this film. Are they for real? In what world would that have made any sense? Everyone says it's real but I'm going to keep believing it's a joke because that makes me feel better. You probably don't believe me so you can see for yourself here.
Post post script: Who comes up with the official genre of a film? This one is considered a Sport/Drama. But I saw Timmy playing ping pong on a teeny tiny table (and other seemingly deliberately funny moments) so I thought it was a comedy. There are lot of movies this year that make me question their assigned genre.
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