'Marty Supreme' fires at close range

 

     Readers will hear a lot about director Josh Safdie's Marty Supreme, a feverish, energized look at a rising table tennis star (Timothee Chalamet) who adds new dimensions to the idea of abusing people as he relentlessly pursues Ping-Pong glory.

   Yes, that’s right, Ping-Pong.

   Chalamet's Marty Mauser wants to rule the sport of Ping-Pong, which during the 1950s, when the story takes place, was mostly associated with neighborhood rec centers or finished basements in suburbia.  Marty Supreme tries to do for table tennis what boxing did for Raging Bull; i.e., link the sport to a furious expression of character that says something about ... well ... I’m not sure what. 

   Operating at peak form, director Martin Scorsese turned boxer Jake LaMotta's story into a steaming brew of anger, suffering, and redemption. Watching Marty Supreme, I sometimes wondered why I was subjecting myself to its pummeling style. The movie can be funny, but it can also feel punishing.

    I say this because it’s difficult to watch Marty Supreme without wondering whether Safdie's assaultive style isn't competing with the movie's main character. The camera hovers so close to Chalamet’s face, you can practically count the pores in his skin. 

    Closeness, though, isn't the same as revelation, and it's not always easy to digest a movie when a director seems to be firing at point-blank range. Safdie favors close-ups and tight shots. His camera nearly pins his characters to the screen. 

    Fair to say, then, that there are two major performances in Marty Supreme: Safdie’s and Chalamet’s. The makes the movie less a character study than a showy display of acting and directorial bravado.

    If nothing else, Safdie can be bold. His movie includes shocking moments. You'll be talking about a scene in which a bathtub crashes through the floor of a flop-house hotel, and Chalamet's knife-edged intensity cuts through the entire movie. Chalamet's playing a character who improvises on the fly, and he pulls it off.

    Safdie offers Ping-Pong scenes as he charts Marty's desperate attempts to become a world champion and gain US recognition. A climactic match involves an appearance by Koto Endo, a real table tennis player, but Safdie doesn't overdo footage of Marty's matches. Marty's too busy being a jerk away from the Ping-Pong table, and you’ll be justified if you find yourself asking whether the movie is about Ping-Pong at all. 

      Marty isn't the least bit likable; he's the kind of guy who makes a remarkably distasteful wisecrack about the Holocaust and then excuses it because he's Jewish. He's a user who believes he's entitled to his devious ways.

      An oddball supporting adds pungent flavors. Wisely operating at a slower speed, Gwyneth Paltrow plays a fading movie star who sleeps with Marty.  

   Married to the entrepreneurial owner of a pen company (Kevin O'Leary), Paltrow's Kay Stone may be acting out her rage at her husband. Maybe Marty's primal energy and brashness turn her on. Marty wants the pen company to sponsor his effortsm, and his relationship with O'Leary's character becomes increasingly important.

   When we first meet Marty, he's working at a shoe store owned by his uncle (Larry "Ratso" Sloman). Sloman's Uncle Murray wants Marty to manage his store, but Marty won't settle for life as a retail schlub. He wants more. He wants everything. 

     Odessa A'zion plays Rachel, a married woman with whom Marty cheats. Rachel becomes pregnant, but Marty fears attachments will interfere with his single-mindedness. Rachel, by the way, is married to Ira (Emory Cohen), also a jerk -- albeit a less ambitious and talented one than Marty.

    Tyler Okonma (a.k.a., Tyler, the Creator) signs on as a taxi driver, a pal of Marty who helps him work his way through his many jams. 

    Director Abel Ferrara, a director who knows plenty about intensity, has a notable turn as Ezra Mishkin, a sleazy criminal with whom Marty gets crosswise.

     Mostly set in New York City, the movie treats New York as a seedy cauldron where Marty's sickness blisters and boils. 

     Perhaps as relief, the movie also travels to London, Tokyo, Paris, and Cairo as Marty ceaselessly scrambles for money to support his Ping-Pong quest, a search that improbably leads to a lethal episode in New Jersey. Pieces of the story break off in slabs.

      It's possible to view Marty Supreme as a twisted, go-for-broke comedy. Safdie treats Marty's stint as a halftime act for the Harlem Globetrotters as an opportunity to add laughs.

    Bouncing from one thing to another like a Ping-Pong ball slammed against a wall, Marty Supreme is fueled by Marty's frenzy and Safdie's whiplash editing, but a last-minute attempt at redemption struck me as unconvincing -- unless Safdie intended it as a kind of cruel joke in his formula-defiant effort. Whatever was intended, I didn't buy it as a point of rebirth and transformation.

    Safdie (Uncut Gems) is no stranger to frantic levels of intensity. At times, I got caught up in Safdie's relentless pacing, even as I wished the movie would stop to take a breath. Marty Supreme didn't bore me, but Marty's aggression, along with some of the humiliations he experiences, left me with a sour aftertaste. 

   Or to reiterate: Instead of getting under your skin, getting in-your-face may just get on your nerves.*

*For the record: Director Josh Safdie, who co-wrote the screenplay for Marty Supreme with Ronald Bronstein, treated real-life Ping-Pong champion Marty Reisman's life as a springboard for a movie that fictionalizes much of its main character's world and some of the characters who inhabit it. Reisman died 2012 at the age of 82. The movie struck me as more a work of fiction than anything else, which is why I didn't mention any of this in the body of my review, but am adding it as an addendum for those who have read about the movie's connection to a real-life figure.

   

      

A comedy about sex addiction?

After director Steve McQueen's riveting Shame (2011), it's difficult to imagine why anyone would want to make another movie about sex addiction. Think of Thanks for Sharing -- a comedy into which grenade-sized helpings of drama occasionally are tossed -- as a lukewarm attempt to deal with a searingly hot subject. Despite the presence of a strong cast -- led by Mark Ruffalo and Tim Robbins -- director Stuart Blumberg's foray into controversial material plays like a manual about 12-step programs, complete with sex addicted men who refer to their recovery as "sobriety." The always watchable Ruffalo plays Adam, an environmentalist who's five years away from his worst addiction, which consisted of countless one-nighters, constant masturbation, Internet porn and sex with prostitutes. Robbins plays Mike, a contractor who seems to have won the battle against both alcohol and sex addiction and now serves as Adam's mentor. Josh Gad joins the ranks of the sex addicted as a doctor whose compulsive ways threaten his career. Two story revolves around two main events: Adam's budding relationship with a woman he genuinely likes (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Mike's relationship with his son (Patrick Fugit), an addict who insists he's finally cleaned up. The difficulties of those suffering from sex addiction can feel more illustrated than dramatized, and the movie attempts too much: It wants to be a genial romcom, a cautionary tale about addiction and a comedy about extreme male attitudes about sex. It's hardly a compliment to say that too much of Blumberg's look at a serious and debilitating problem proceeds pleasantly.

The fireworks of 'Iron Man 3'

The finale is explosive, but this installment of Iron Man is not without dull spots.
What must Iron Man 3 accomplish? Must the flawed superhero of Marvel Comics fame save the world from the evil machinations of terrorism-prone villain? Must he somehow reconcile the fragility of his humanity with powers bestowed on him when he dons his protective iron suit? Or must he navigate his way through an early summer mega-movie that might be deemed a dud if it doesn't outdo its predecessors at the box office?

Iron Man 3 seems to want to accomplish all of the above goals, throwing in an explosion that demolishes Grauman's Chinese Theatre in the bargain. A metaphor for the way the movie's supposed to explode at the box office or a bit of bad-taste, post-Aurora pyrotechnics? Decide for yourself.

So, the plusses: The action set pieces of the movie's finale are scaled to impress and include CGI work that leaves you marveling at its undisguised audacity.

The minuses: Iron Man 3 makes you suffer through some significant longueurs before it crosses its 130-minute finish line. The movie's end-of-picture rewards are tempered by mid-picture sags and talky stagnation.

Robert Downey Jr. does everything you'd expect of him in his third Iron Man outing. Iron Man -- who spends a lot of time out of his suit in this episode -- is lightning fast with a retort. He's amusing, especially to himself.

In the movie's early scenes, Iron Man, a.k.a. Tony Stark, is mired in a personal crisis. He can't sleep. He's having anxiety attacks. He's puttering around his laboratory with obsessive fervor, trying to figure out how to make parts of his Iron Man suit leap from the ground and attach to his body. He's also neglecting his relationship with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow).

Director Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) has been assigned the job of following Iron Man through his psychological malaise. Black, who also wrote the Lethal Weapon movies, assumes the franchise's helm to mixed effect, perhaps because he has limited experience with the heavy-lifting required to direct an effects-laden mega-movie.

Still, there are sights to be seen. A prime example: The finale includes a spectacular airborne rescue in which Iron Man saves 13 officials who've been jettisoned from a plane. Good stuff, but the main enticements of this third installment arrive in the form of tasty side dishes.

Ben Kingsley plays a terrorist called The Mandarin, a villain who evokes scary echoes of Osama bin Laden. Rebecca Hall, not the first actress who springs to mind when you think about franchise movies, makes a nice addition as one of Tony Stark's former girlfriends. And Iron Man finds a bit of temporary companionship in an eight-year-old kid (Ty Simpkins), who joins him for mid-picture plot duties.

Guy Pearce signs on as Aldrich Killian, an evil entrepreneur who mutates into a scorching, fiendish Iron Man foe. Pearce seems to be having as good a time as can be had with a sadistic -- if slightly off-the-rack -- villain.

One thing's sure: After this installment, Iron Man's going to need a new home. Early on, he's blasted out of his cliff-hugging Malibu home. This can't sit well with Paltrow's Pepper Potts, the woman who shares Iron Man's residence. Perhaps she's consoled by being Iron Man's main squeeze, although Paltrow's straight-shooting Potts seldom proves as interesting as Hall's morally ambiguous Maya Hansen.

Iron Man 3 is one of those critic-proof movies that has enough successful bits and pieces to keep general audiences and fanboys reasonably well-satisfied.

For me, the movie proved enjoyable in the same way that fireworks are fun. Moments of waiting are punctuated by vivid bursts of action and color that vanish into the night sky leaving only wisps of smoke to grasp at as we await the arrival of the next blockbuster. Iron Man 3 makes plenty of noise, but its pleasures are spectacularly insubstantial.

'Country Strong' is weak on insight

No faulting Gwyneth Paltrow, but Country Strong sings a wobbly tune.

No amount of country spunk can conceal the pain that ripples through the life of Gwyneth Paltrow's Kelly Cantor, a country/western superstar who has hit a bad patch. When she was five months pregnant, a drunken Kelly fell off a Dallas stage and lost her baby. She hasn't been the same since. Well, who would be?

Country Strong, the movie about Kelly's attempted comeback and her on-going tussle with fame, boasts some decent music, but it plays as if writer/director Shana Feste built it around the mistaken notion that a dash of drama, a carload of accents, a bit of sexual intrigue and a dollop of show business cynicism add up to a satisfying big-screen experience.

They don't, and Country Strong winds up tasting a bit like last night's binge. A whole lot of tears have been shed in it, but the beer's still stale.

The movie opens with Kelly in rehab, where she's met Beau (Garrett Hedlund), a handsome young man who likes to sing, and who plays fair guitar. Beau's also destined to become part of a love triangle involving Kelly's husband and manager, played by real-life country star Tim McGraw, who appeared opposite Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side.

It's an index of something gone wrong that McGraw, whose acting ability may be too under-developed to catch all his character's complexities, doesn't sing. Just about everyone else does. The singing actors are all pretty good, although Paltrow's mostly kept away from microphones until a climactic show in Dallas, where Kelly's supposed to make a redeeming comeback.

To thicken the movie's country stew, an aspiring singer (Leighton Meester) becomes Kelly's opening act. Meester's Chiles Stanton is unashamedly ambitious, and once she overcomes a tendency to freeze on stage, she's pretty darn good. Of course, she's also eager to use Kelly in order to advance her own career.

The movie's music isn't half bad, but the ethos that pervades Country Strong seems to have been fabricated from a substance that can be found behind many bulls in many country fields. It goes something like this: Some singers - that would be Hedlund's Beau - are pure. They sing because they love the music, and don't give a hang about adulation. Give 'em a bar on a Saturday night and a thumpin' back-up band, and they're happy as farmers on government subsidy.

Fame, we're told, is not compatible with love, which may be why poor Kelly has allowed her life to spiral toward the bottom of a Smirnoff bottle. Fame has killed the love in her. Well, almost. She seems to feel something for a baby quail that she rescued from a field and keeps in a tiny box. The bird, by the way, eventually vanishes from the picture without explanation.

Confusion reigns when it comes to the love we find in Country Strong. McGraw's James loves his wife, but holds himself back from her, probably because he can't forgive her for being drunk and losing their baby. He's tied to her by what's left of his love and a need to feed off what remains of her career.

Beau, who's recruited for Kelly's comeback tour, seems to have genuine feelings for her, but he also develops a relationship with Leighton's Chiles.

Hey, I'm all for love, even when it takes a few detours, but none of these relationships have as much depth of feeling as a fine country tune, and Country Strong isn't exactly brimming with revelation or a sense that it's grasped something essential about the world of country music. Put another way, it's not likely to do for Paltrow what the role of Bad Blake did for Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart; i.e., win her an Oscar.

Oh well, Paltrow's already won one for Shakespeare in Love, which may prove that she's better off with an English accent than a country twang.

But acting isn't the issue here. Paltrow knows how turn on the charm (watch her in a scene in which Kelly visits a Make-A-Wish child); Hedlund, last seen in the 2010 edition of Tron, has shufflin' credibility; and dang if Meester isn't convincing as a squeaky-clean and perky singer with a less than pristine backstory.

I can't say I hated watching Country Strong, but, like Kelly, it badly needed a trip to rehab - not the kind with shrinks, but the kind with screen doctors who might have been able to give its shopworn story a makeover.