Marty Supreme (2025)

On the surface this film, nominated in 9 categories for an Academy Award in 2026, including best casting, tells the story of a gifted but impoverished table tennis hustler in 1950s New York, who wants nothing more than to leave his parent’s shoe shop behind to showcase his ping-pong skills on the world stage. Played at full throttle by Timothée Chalamet, Marty Mauser is a motormouth, sharp in both wits and tongue. He’s selfish, manipulative, and not particularly nice to women, but boy can he smack a ball over a netted table. In fact, there are really no likable characters in this movie--while I can tolerate that for the greater good of the message, that too is lacking here. So, Marty goes to London for the British championship after cobbling together enough cash, where he ends up playing the world’s best, Koto Endo (played by the real-life player Koto Kawaguchi) from Japan. It goes badly, so Marty returns to America, determined to have another stab at glory, all the while shunning anything that looks like real work or responsibility. To do that, he just needs to raise more money. In the meantime, he impregnates his former flame, who happens to also be married to another man, seduces and exploits a sad, faded movie star, and lets down his best friend as he begs, borrows and steals his way back to the Big Leagues. The antics that he goes through to get to Japan for another chance are the core of the movie, and only at the end do we see where he begins to have a chance to make it big. The character Marty Mauser is loosely based on the real-life ping-pong hustler Marty Reisman—a fascinating, colorful and complex man. He died in 2012 at 82 years old of lung and heart complications and at one point was the champion of the world. Chalomee as Marty is believable if unlikable and stands a shot at Best Actor, but really, he should have won last year for the way he completely inhabited the character of Bob Dylan, and not for this.