Best Pictures #118: 2025 (98th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee
“I have a purpose. If you think that it's some kind of blessing it's not. It means I have an obligation to see a very specific thing through.”
In 2025 the directorial team of the Safdie brothers (Benny and Josh, whose previous films include much lauded and extremely tense Uncut Gems) each released their solo directorial efforts: Benny with the sports biopic The Smashing Machine and Josh with Marty Supreme, inspired by, but not based on, real life table tennis player Marty Reisman. It would be reductive and inaccurate to call Marty Supreme a sports movie, but like all great sports movies it is not really about the sport. This is a character study equally fascinating and frustrating because while Marty Mauser is very talented at table tennis, his real passion is the next win. This, more than any of the misfortunes and misadventures that Marty encounters, is the great conflict of the movie. Yet, no matter what the Oscar nominated original screenplay by Safdie and Ronald Bronstein throws at Marty, somehow he comes up with a plan and, somehow, no matter how absurd or stressful things get, it is all very entertaining.
Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) is on his way to a stable, average life in New York City in the 1950’s. He works in his uncle’s shoe store and is such a good salesman that he is about to be made manager; but the job is only a way for him to make money to pay his way to compete professionally in the emerging sport of table tennis. Perhaps this is a mild spoiler, but he loses that tournament–he’s quick to blame the type of paddle, not the talent of his opponent–and spends the rest of the movie scheming and hustling to come up with enough money to enter the next global tournament and prove that he really is the best in the world.
If Marty seems frustrating and annoying that’s because he is, but Chalamet's performance and natural charisma go the distance required to make the character and the movie work. There are three things in Marty’s favor. 1) Chalamet’s screen presence: Marty talks fast and big with a mixture of boasts, lies, and bent truths. Chalamet really makes us feel that the next big, epic win is just around the corner; he just needs to get around the corner first. 2) Chalamet’s youthful look: Marty is 23 and each mistake and misadventure feels like a chance for him to learn something. 3) Marty is genuinely, supremely talented at table-tennis/ping-pong and may actually be the best in the world; the only thing standing in the way of a spot in the professional big time is himself.
Although, to be fair, not all of the obstacles Marty faces are his own doing. Marty catches the attention of a wealthy businessman Milton Rockwell (Kevin O'Leary, AKA Mr. Wonderful of TV's Shark Tank), who sees the potential for profits in a new field, but wants Marty to take a dive. (Marty’s affair with Rockwell’s wife, Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), a movie star of yesteryear preparing for her stage comeback only sets up more complications and is Marty’s own doing.) A series of random and ridiculous events has Marty looking after and then almost immediately losing a stranger's dog to a deranged farmer who insists the dog is his. Rachel (Odessa A'zion), his now married childhood friend turned lover and mother-to-be of Marty’s child, tries a hustle of her own and gets Marty wrapped up in a dog ransom scheme with violent gangsters. In so many other movies a plotline involving gangsters and a shootout would feel like a contrived way to force action and "raise-the-stakes”–a favorite term of unimaginative studio executives and screenwriting professors. Here, however, it makes eye-rolling sense; of course Marty Mauser would manage to get mixed up with violent gangsters over something like a dog.
Though firmly set in a realistic 1950's, the soundtrack utilizes music from the 1980's and a score evocative of that later time period. This shouldn't work. It should feel like forced retro hipness, but the music choices hit at the core feelings of particular scenes in such a way that it does not matter if the music is period accurate or not; it is emotionally accurate.
No matter how stressful, frustrating, or absurd the movie gets, it never feels like an assault on the audience or the main character. It feels like we are watching a flawed person deal with their mess instead of watching a fictional character get slapped around for the sake of shock value. Marty Supreme earned an impressive 9 Academy Award nominations, including: Best Picture, Best Actor for Chalamet, Director for Josh Safdie, Original Screenplay, Editing, Cinematography, and the brand new Casting category. It may not be my first choice to win any of these categories but it is a worthy film. Marty Supreme is a rare thing these days: a major studio movie for grown ups.
Nominees: Josh Safdie, Ronald Bronstein, Eli Bush, Anthony Katagas, Timothée Chalamet, producers
Director: Josh Safdie
Screenplay: Ronald Bronstein & Josh Safdie
Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A'zion, Kevin O'Leary
Production Companies: Central Pictures
Distributor: A24
Release Date: December 25th, 2025
Total Nominations: 9, including Best Picture
Other Nominations: Actor-Timothée Chalamet; Director-Josh Safdie; Original Screenplay-Josh Safdie, Ronald Bronstein; Cinematography-Darius Khondji; Editing-Ronald Bronstein, Josh Safdie; Production Design-Jack Fisk (production designer), Adam Willis (set decorator); Costume Design-Miyako Bellizzi; Casting; Jennifer Venditti
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