Timothee Chalamet in Marty Supreme

I'm kinda havin feelings about this kid that are interfering with my enjoyment of his performances. It's weird because I've never been a Timothée hater. Honestly, I've enjoyed watching his launch from wherever he came from into one of the most bankable and desirable young actors working in both Hollywood and indie film. It's been a while since there's been an actor with that much broad appeal. He's doing as many small, supporting roles as he is leading blockbusters.

Dune is pretty big. Paul Atradis is a hefty, meaty role that demands gravitas and charisma, and he plays it with ease. I respect the hell out of him as an actor. He seems to have a real knack for finding just the right roles and when to play them to maximize his impact on people.

I mean, he played Bob Dylan. The movie wasn't great, but he was good in it.

Unfortunately, over the last six months or so, while he's been promoting Marty Supreme, I've come to really dislike him as a person. His intense need to be considered "one of the greats" comes across as narcissistic and sad. The fact that he's in a long-term relationship with a Kardashian certainly doesn't help his douche-score either.

Which brings us to Marty Supreme. Josh Safdie took that misguided and frankly gross confidence that Chalamet has and funnelled it into a pretty damned excellent movie. It's a movie that actually reminded me a lot of A Clockwork Orange, the novel. Specifically, the novel. I can't really get into WHY it reminds me of A Clockwork Orange without spoiling the movie, but if you've seen it and read that book, you might know what I mean.

Anyway, Uncut Gems is my point of reference for Safdie movies, and this was certainly in the same vein as that movie. It's kinetic and frantic, leaving you very little time to catch your breath. But it works, and it's good. It's not perfect, and generally I find movies about really unpleasant, awful people difficult to tolerate, but I never really got the sense that Marty's behavior and manipulative bullshit were meant to be taken as a positive thing.

One thing I struggled with, and I think it was something that I was missing, not the movie, but it seemed to be interested in the post-WWII Jewish experience in a way that I think might have gone over my head. There were a couple of scenes with choices I didn't quite understand. I think it's because I wasn't the intended target of that particular message. If I was, it was lost on me. But either way, the movie works quite well as both a sports movie and a character study.

There were, as Sandra described, a number of "side-quest" storylines that probably didn't need to be in there. The movie is 2.5 hours long, and some of the filler felt like it was just that. Let's say that this movie challenged my bladder. Not quite at Avatar levels, but up there.

But that's a small complaint. Overall, the movie is good. Michael B Jordon definitely has competition for best actor this year. Is Chalamet one of the GREATS up there with De Niro, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Denzel? Not yet. He'll get there, though. He's making really good choices in the roles he picks, and I suspect he'll continue to do so.