Marty Supreme (2025)

Director: Josh Safdie

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion, Kevin O’Leary

Have I Seen It Before: Nope.

Did I Like It: I missed—and continue missing—the whole Uncut Gems (2019) thing, so there’s a part of me that felt like I missed the beginning of the Safdie party.

So I didn’t know what was getting into. I was probably going to be annoyed by Paltrow and Chalamet, who have annoyed me in the past*.

And as such, it winds up being the perfect vehicle for them. Their characters might be the worst people who were ever imagined. They are generally surrounded by a series of equally terrible people, except for Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), who is perfect pure, and in a simpler time would have warranted a film all his own. This terrible-by-design quality makes the ever-increasing series of awful events that befall them at least mildly satisfying. Its a well-shot, well-cast film that never makes me dis-believe its early-1950s setting. If somebody were to put this film above Sinners (2025) as their favorite movie of the year, I wouldn’t judge them too terribly harshly in their fundamental incorrectness.

But that miles of established behavior also makes the ending, where Marty’s (Chalamet) heart suddenly grows several sizes and he is moved to absolute tears by the fact that the child he denied the entire film winds up getting birthed. What am I supposed to feel at the end of the movie? Marty’s a good person now? He’s going to be a good father and husband, or even a somewhat competent one? Will he never pick up a ping-pong paddle again? Will he ever be able to make a dime doing anything? Will he spend the rest of his life in prison? All are possible, some are even plausible. I enjoyed the ride, but I still feel like everyone’s getting off a little light in a world that easily lets people off lightly.

*They don’t annoy me like Jared Leto annoys me, so don’t get too excited.

Dune: Part Two (2024)

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, Austin Butler

Have I Seen it Before: In as much as I’ve read the novel and seen all of Dune (1984) I’ve been through all of the story beats, but no. I worry I missed it on IMAX…

Did I Like It: Somewhere between seeing the movie and writing this review, someone asked me what I thought of the movie, and I said “it was more of part one.” That seems reductive, but it is meant in a positive way. The scale is epic, the movie is not weighed down by a too much*, and the performances are uniformly pretty great, even in the context of a story where one might have been forgiven (I refer again to the David Lynch original) for appearing to be slightly embarrassed by the whole affair.

As with most adaptations, the more interesting parts are where the filmmaker decides to make things different. In the novel Chani (Zendaya) is shunted aside almost glibly (you might disagree with that interpretation) but the film goes out of its way to give her agency and a measure of righteous rage. Those decisions aptly introduces the idea that the Muad’Dib (Chalamet) might be just another villain in the piece.

Maybe he’s a well-meaning villain, but I’ll just have to read further into Herbert’s saga to make that final decision. That is ultimately the best thing I can say about the movie. It might be more of the same, and lose a bit of its surprising qualities in the process, but any movie that would make me want to continue with such a densely packed series of novels clearly has something going for it.

*It’s probably impossible to completely shed all of the silly exposition when one is adapting Herbert’s novel.

Dune (2021)

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin

Have I Seen it Before: Never. See my remarks about my boneheaded Dune-related decisions in my review of David Lynch’s Dune (1984).

Did I Like It: It’s going to be difficult to find something to say about this film that isn’t immediately clear from being exposed to any piece of information about the film. It is a sumptuous production, being a nearly perfect fusion of modern special effects and epic filmmaking of old. The performances are finely tuned, with excellent performers managing to inhabit a space opera with not a single one of them looking embarrassed that they are taking place in the proceedings. Preceding decades may have been filled with varying degrees of false starts, but this is unequivocally the best possible adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel. It is all made more impressive by the fact that Villeneuve and company had to accept that they only had the resources to tell half of the story (to say nothing of the larger tale of Paul Atreides (Chalamet) and his heirs) with no guarantee that the film would catch on with audiences to necessitate the rest of the story going before cameras. It’s not a fair example, but the makers of Battlefield Earth (2000) made the same gambit and had it blow up in their face. This film had to be good, and it shows.

Had we been left with only this film, it might have been a supremely unsatisfying experience. What’s more, in stark contrast to David Lynch’s version of the story, much is left unexplained. I’m honestly surprised that the film did as well as it did, as the uninitiated might have found some of this inscrutable. Against all odds, I’m really glad that I read the book first. Take that to mean what you will.

Wonka (2023)

Director: Paul King

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Calah Lane, Keegan-Michael Key, Paterson Joseph

Have I Seen It Before: Never. Indeed, it was particularly off my radar as any attempt to catch the magic of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) ought not be worth anyone’s time. I did see large swaths of the end credits over the last month, incidentally, cleaning up the big theater at Circle before screenings of White Christmas (1954). So that’s got to count for something, right?

Ultimately, a weird twist of fate and my wife’s belated office holiday party put me in a seat at my favorite theater while the movie happens in front of me.

Did I Like It: Ultimately the film is inoffensive enough, and more interested in harnessing the energy of the original film—I’m looking in your direction, Tim Burton…-- that I’m willing to give the film a passing grade. Chalamet can’t quite measure up to Gene Wilder, but few could, and he brings some manic glee—if none of the menace—to the role. What’s more, seeing even a few members of the troupe that brought BBC’s Ghosts to the airwaves getting more exposure is always good news.

Is it possible I like the film?

Let’s talk a little bit about that magic I opened up with, shall we? I watch the climax of these films and can’t help but be a little revolted in watching people joyfully eat chocolate in which characters had been swimming in only minutes before. I never thought about that in the old film, even though terrible things happen to the people and the sweets in that one, too. Maybe it says more about me as I become an increasingly old, increasingly fuddish duddy, but I’m more than a little prepared to say that it says more about the film being a homogenized piece of entertainment that we’re all liable to forget almost immediately.