Within the very first minutes of Marty Supreme, one thing is very clear: Josh had the juice. After the split between writing/directing duo Josh and Benny Safdie, each brother struck out to make their own riff on the sports drama. Benny’s The Smashing Machine, a shockingly flat biopic about Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson) and the early days of the UFC, revealed that, as I put it in my review, “he might not only benefit from a creative partner but actually need one. Alone, his work is startlingly inert.” The opposite is true of Josh Safdie. Marty Supreme, his fictionalized sports drama about a grifter table tennis player played by Timothée Chalamet in his best onscreen role yet, has more kinetic life and effortless energy in just the opening scene than the entirety of The Smashing Machine. While it’s not my intent to pit brother against brother in some carnivorous blood match of talent, it is striking to see the cinematic results of their cleaved relationship in such an apples-to-apples comparison. There is no contest: Marty Supreme reigns supreme. Read More