Chalamet leads Josh Safdie’s 1952 table‑tennis drama 'Marty Supreme'

Timothée Chalamet stars as Marty Mauser in Josh Safdie’s new film Marty Supreme, set in 1952 New York, playing a driven table‑tennis player who aims for the world championship. The New York Times review by Manohla Dargis treats the film as a Critic’s Pick and calls it electrifying.

Dargis describes the movie as a hyper‑charged bildungsroman whose themes, characters, camera movements and accelerated pacing fit together into a whirring whole. The review highlights Chalamet’s performance — played with “ferocious verve” and pinwheeling arms — and notes the film touches on Jewish identity, family, community, class, assimilation and success without being didactic.

Plot details in the review include Marty’s work in a cramped shoe store, a sequence in which he pulls a gun, his flight to London and a match at the British Tennis Table Open against the Japanese ace Koto Endo; the film also draws on real‑world inspiration in table‑tennis champion Marty Reisman and nods to influences such as Ken Jacobs’s Orchard Street and Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets.

The review praises Safdie’s orchestration of chaos, the film’s recreation of a Lost New York with production design by Jack Fisk, and a vivid supporting cast that includes Odessa A’Zion, Gwyneth Paltrow, Fran Drescher, Tyler Okonma, Sandra Bernhard and Abel Ferrara.

Key Topics

Culture, Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme, Josh Safdie, Table Tennis, Lower East Side