Marty Supreme

A jittery film — much like its protagonist — that goes far beyond the limits of conventional sports cinema, telling the story of an obsessive table tennis player.

The prototype for Marty Mauser is the real-life table tennis champion Marty Reisman, whose biography Josh Safdie once read. Naturally, the script contains plenty of inspired invention. At the beginning of the film, the hero quits his job selling shoes at his uncle’s shop and heads to London to compete professionally; by the finale, he’s playing in Tokyo — a destination he obsessively strives to reach throughout the film in pursuit of a revenge match against his fateful rival, the virtuoso Japanese player Koto Endo. This goal becomes the driving force behind all the twists and misadventures.

— Anton Dolin

🏆 In The Magnificent Marty, everything works: the picaresque, roguish storyline, the cinematography, the music — and, of course, Timothée Chalamet’s performance. He has already won a Golden Globe for the role and was subsequently nominated for an Academy Award.