Marty Supreme (2025)

I saw many people mention Marty Supreme as a film in a similar vein to Uncut Gems. I would disagree. I think it's actually more in line with Inside Llewyn Davis. While not looking at grief in the way that film does, it gives us a central character who keeps making himself into the biggest obstacle to his potential success.

Timothée Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, a young man who fancies himself as the world greatest table tennis player. Nobody else really thinks there's a future in that though, and very few people view it as a sport. Marty cannot really afford the life of a dedicated sportsman, which is why he spends some of his time hustling others with his friend, Wally (Tyler Okonma AKA Tyler The Creator). He also spends some of his time being far too intimate with the married Rachel (Odessa A'zion), but ends up in the orbit of an actress searching for a comeback (Kay Stone, played by Gwyneth Paltrow), her rich husband (Milton Rockwell, played by Kevin O'Leary), and a gangster (Abel Ferrara) with a stash of cash and a need for someone to temporarily care for his dog.

Directed by Josh Safdie, who also co-wrote the screenplay with regular collaborator Ronald Bronstein, this manages to play fast and loose within the confines of the sports movie structure, yet also give viewers something that hits a couple of very familiar beats. Based loosely on the real-life Marty Reisman, this keeps us alongside someone strangely captivating, despite being so selfish and loathsome, in a 1950s world accompanied by an enjoyably anachronistic soundtrack (although I was very dissappointed that "Just A Song About Ping Pong" wasn't used). While things go from bad to worse for Marty, he's so consistently self-destructive that any potential bad end feels absolutely expected, and even slightly deserved, removing some of the tension that would otherwise be thrumming throughout every scene.

Chalamet is absolutely superb in the main role, giving an impressively vanity-free performance that sees him playing the lousiest character he's yet played onscreen (and, let's not forget, he played a damn cannibal in one of his previous features). A'zion is also very good, and does well in her scenes with Chalamet to make you believe that she sees something in him that others may miss. Paltrow and O'Leary are both excellent, and both get scenes that allow them to steal the spotlight away from our main character for at least a moment or two, and Okonma excels in his supporting role. Ferrara is a lot of fun, being as mean and dangerous as can be, and there are also damn fine performances from Larry Ratso Sloman, Fran Drescher (who I wish had been in it for a bit longer), Isaac Simon, Penn Jillette, Luke Manley, and Koto Kawaguchi.

There's an excellent score from Daniel Lopatin, great production design throughout that keeps you grounded in 1950s New York (despite those soundtrack choices), and a necessarily impressive display of table tennis in a few main sequences. Some will find it insufferable, because of Marty being so insufferable, but I hope that most will find it as compelling and entertaining as I did. I may not rush to rewatch it, but I AM still thinking about some key moments that won't be leaving my memory any time soon. The fact that the tension feels slightly less palpable, undercut by the personality of Marty, actually makes it a more enjoyable viewing experience than it otherwise would have been. 

Oh, and it may have one of the best opening credit sequences of all time.

9/10

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Until Dawn (2025)

While I am currently trying to pester my partner into allowing me ownership of a sexy and slim PS5, I am very much aware of the fact that I barely have time to play the many videogames I have owned for years already. That includes Ghosts Of Tsushima. It includes some of the more recent Resident Evil games. And it includes Until Dawn, which I once spent about half an hour on. It's not that I disliked it. It's great. As are the other games mentioned. I just don't often have the time required for games that benefit from complete immersion and focus, which is why I end up playing some pinball or Tony Hawks levels instead.

What I am trying to make clear right now is that I don't have much experience, or knowledge, of the Until Dawn videogame. I know how it starts though, and I know that a bunch of young adults end up in an isolated location that starts to present them with a variety of horrors.

The main characters here are Clover (Ella Rubin), Max (Michael Cimino), Nina (Odessa A'zion), Megan (Ji-young Yoo), and Abe (Belmont Cameli). They end up in the middle of nowhere while Clover tries to retrace the steps of her missing sister, Melanie (Maia Mitchell). It isn't long until something scary starts happening, but any fear they experience is exacerbated by the realisation that they're also stuck in a timeloop that starts over whenever they die. Is there a way to stop the cycle, and does it have anything to do with Dr. Hill (Peter Stormare)?

While I have seen some complaints from videogame fans who didn't like the direction taken by this, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did it feel as if it at least tried to stay aligned to the essence of the game, certainly in the opening act, but it turned into something bloodier and more twisted than I thought it would be. Writers Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler work well together, sketching out the characters and premise succinctly enough to pack a healthy amount of scare sequences into the 103-minute runtime, and director David F. Sandberg continues his run of movies that show him to be a very capable pair of hands, if perhaps rarely great (his previous best feature also being written by Dauberman, Annabelle: Creation).

As for the cast, they all know that they're in the film to be put through the wringer. I have seen Rubin in a number of films now. She can do well in the right role, although she doesn't quite feel like a strong enough lead for this. She's not bad, but it's only in the third act that it becomes easier to root for her while the odds against survival grow exponentially. Cimino and Cameli are perfectly fine, I guess, but they're outshone by both A'zion and Yoo, who just have a bit more screen presence, perhaps due to them simply not being as generic as the "himbo #1 and himbo #2" casting calls for their male counterparts. Stormare has fun with his role, and his presence is one of the elements creating, and maintaining, an essential link between the film and the videogame.

From the little I know of the videogame, and I've made clear how little that is, I liked the way it was adapted into a feature. There's still some familiar visuals, the timeloop serves as a way to make everything feel similar to a more standard videogame premise (although it should be noted that Until Dawn is celebrated for NOT being a standard videogame), and things are put together with a healthy balance of fun and frights. Despite the criticisms of some who wanted something more faithful, this is quite a fun crowd-pleaser. AND it makes me want to carve out some more time in my schedule to finally fully play through the game. 

8/10

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Shudder Saturday: Ladyworld (2018)

I was really hoping to start 2022 with a great movie. Well that didn't work out. Nope, not at all.

Although it sometimes depends on the mood I am in, I am always up for a horror or drama that tries to do something a bit different. I am especially keen to try and avoid pigeonholing movies into any one genre, something that saves me from the anger and disappointment I see people experience when something doesn't go along with certain standards that they themselves have imposed upon it. 

That's my way of saying that I was open to the idea of Ladyworld. I read the brief plot summary - a number of teenage girls become trapped after some mystery act of nature, they then start to unravel and turn on one another as their resources dwindle - and I figured that I might enjoy it. It may fit in some horror elements, it may just be a drama, it had the potential to showcase some great young actors and be a bit different from hundreds of other horror movies I have seen.

Sadly, the biggest difference this movie has from many other movies is how absolutely terrible it is. I ended 2021/started 2022 with one of the worst movies I saw/will see that year, which really isn't how I wanted things to go.

I'm going to blame director Amanda Kramer, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Benjamin Shearn (although it feels like a film with a lot of improvisation between people who don't have enough experience in improv). At the most basic level, this is a gender-flipped riff on Lord Of The Flies, bringing the female experience to the material, but it does absolutely nothing of worth with the premise. Characters aren't developed well, dialogue is painfully bad at times, and the most interesting element, a potential male threat in their midst who attacks when individuals are away from the group, is so badly mishandled that it is too often forgotten while the young women go back to arguing with one another (which may well be a point being made, but it's still not one that is well done).

The cast generally don't seem up to the task of carrying the movie, with three of the main players providing varying degrees of irritation. Ariela Barer, Annalise Basso, and Ryan Simpkins are left out to dry by Kramer, who I suspect could have achieved much better results if she'd managed to create a more focused storyline. Maya Hawke and Tatsumi Romano barely manage to rise above the material, but they do enough to warrant being mentioned here as the only two positives I can think of.

As for the ear-damaging score from Callie Ryan, obviously crafted to create an atmosphere of growing tension, insanity, and a sense of inescapable confinement, I would have much preferred to watch the film with that bizzare "pen pineapple apple pen" song from a few years ago playing alongside the visuals.

Not even visually interesting enough to make it worth your time, there's almost nothing here to help any viewer want to watch the whole thing. A mess, and one that obviously thinks it is being artistically impressive and thought-provoking. I won't be rushing to seek out anything else made by Kramer.

2/10

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Let's Scare Julie (2020)

Okay, you're best not to go into Let's Scare Julie looking forward to something presented in what is supposed to look like one long take. It doesn't manage to keep that up, which wouldn't be so bad if the edits didn't feel so unnecessary, as if someone had just forgotten it was supposed to be a gimmick used to sell the movie. You're also best not to go into Let's Scare Julie if you're looking forward to a superior horror movie. It is not. I have seen some people praise this, and it is one of those instances when I start to worry that I have somehow seen some completely different movie from them.

The plot involves a group of girls having a sleepover, kind of. They seem to be fairly typical teenagers, in the way they don't care too much about the repercussions of teasing one another and plotting against others outwith their group. That leads to them heading across the road, to play a prank on a reclusive young woman named Julie. Emma (Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson) stays behind though, looking after her little sister, Lilly (Dakota Baccelli). The prank doesn't go according to plan, which puts everyone in danger. Including Emma and Lilly.

There's a point near the start of Let's Scare Julie when you may get your hopes up that it has something interesting to say. Something that makes the grating performances and faux-gimmickry worthwhile. The girls are teasing Emma, and the dynamic seems to fluctuate between jokey camaraderie and a real streak of meanness. The prank at the heart of the movie is something that provides potential relief for Emma, a standard case of one victim having a breather while tormenters move on another victim. But these are Emma's friends, so the way they have been teasing her cannot be that bad. Can it?

Never mind though, the film doesn't stray too far down that path. Instead, writer-director Jud Cremata simply presents a horror film with too few scares, too little to care about, and too many moments that underline just how carelessly everything is thrown together. The most obvious example is the way in which the girls are jumping about and giggling one moment, telling each other they need to be very quiet as they sneak around the house the next, and then shrieking and making more noise later. It's incredibly insulting to viewers, and cannot be dismissed by shrugging and saying "black magic".

I don't want to be too rude to the young cast, which is why I am not naming more of the characters, or the actresses playing them (as this is almost an all-female cast), but it's worth mentioning that both Johnson and Baccelli are easily the best performers onscreen. Baccelli is also the youngest, so that may give you an idea of how I rated the others.

I struggle to think what Cremata was actually aiming for here. If he wanted to give viewers one of the more painful horror movies in recent years (not counting the million movies with the name Amityville or Krampus shoehorned into the title) then he succeeded. If the aim was something a bit different, and still scary, then he failed. Miserably. I could go on and on about every single thing that caused me annoyance, but that would end up being the kind of hyperbolic review I try to avoid. I just hope that some people trust me when I advise that this is absolutely not worth your time, unless you have to choose between this and some dross called The Amityville Krampus.

2/10

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