Review: 'Marty Supreme' casts a likable Timotheé Chalamet as a charmingly unlikable table-tennis champ

In “Marty Supreme,” Timotheé Chalamet is given the biggest test an actor can face — play the most unlikeable character imaginable in a way that will make audiences love you anyway — and darn if the kid doesn’t do just that.

Chalamet carries the movie, no easy task in a two-and-a-half hour period piece that director Josh Safdie fills to the brim with outlandish moments, sharp characters, a wealth of nontraditional acting talent and a completely original take on the underdog sports drama.

Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, who has a dream to be the greatest table-tennis player in the world. To hear him tell it, he already is the best, and he just needs the money to get to the great tournaments around the world to prove it. But this is 1952, and the people around him in Brooklyn think table tennis is a kid’s game, and not a serious sport.

In addition to being a dreamer, Marty also is a cad. In the stock room of the shoe store where he works, he’s having sex with Rachel Mizler (Odessa A’zion), who’s married to another man — and soon learns that she’s pregnant. He feels cheated by the store’s owner, Murray Norton (Larry “Ratso” Sloman), so he tries to break into Murray’s office and steal back the money he thinks he’s owed — which leads to a run-in with New York’s finest. 

Marty manages to make it to London for a major tournament. He shows his table tennis skills, advancing to the final against a fearsome Japanese competitor, Koto Endo (played by Koto Kawaguchi). But his hijinks away from the table, complaining to a table tennis official (Pico Iyer) about the accommodations and then running up a huge hotel tab charged to the sport’s foundation, land him in more trouble.

In London, he also encounters a wealthy American couple. The husband, Milton Rockwell (played by “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary), owns a multi-million-dollar pen manufacturer who has an offer to bankroll Marty’s career, if he’s willing to sacrifice his integrity. The wife, Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), is an actress on the downslope of her fame — with whom Marty, almost inevitably, has an affair.

That’s probably enough synopsis to provide the gist of the breakneck pace of the script, by Safdie and Ronald Bronstein, who also co-wrote “Good Time” and “Uncut Gems,” both movies Safdie directed with his brother, Benny. 

I haven’t mentioned the eclectic array of supporting performers in this movie, including Fran Drescher as Marty’s mother, Tyler Okonma (aka Tyler the Creator) as his cab-driving buddy, and other roles for NBA legend George Gervin, filmmaker Abel Ferrara, Vegas showman Penn Jillette and fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi. It’s like the casting director Jennifer Venditti was playing her own game of Mad Libs, and somehow it all works.

The gem among the supporting cast is A’zion, who brings a ferocity to Rachel, a woman scorned who won’t put up with her jerk husband but also won’t let Marty get away with his irresponsible antics. A’zion is only in the movie for a few short stretches, but she electrifies every scene she’s in. 

From those opening scenes in Brooklyn to a riveting finale in Japan, a rematch between Marty and Endo that’s as unpredictable as it is inevitable, Chalamet charms his way into the audience’s heart. Marty may do unspeakable things and treat everyone around him like rungs on his ladder to table-tennis success, but Chalamet makes it all feel alright. He plays Marty like an overgrown puppy who knows he’s so cute that he can crap anywhere and everyone will still find him adorable — and “Marty Supreme” hits its stride at the exact moment when Marty starts to realize that not everyone thinks what he’s doing is cute.

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‘Marty Supreme’

★★★1/2

Opens Thursday, December 25, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language throughout, sexual content, some violent content/bloody images and nudity. Running time: 150 minutes.

Review: 'Song Sung Blue' lets Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman sincerely sing and act through a true-life melodrama

Though writer-director Craig Brewer’s musical romance “Song Song Blue” is based on a true story, it feels like the most cornball melodrama, with onstage triumphs and backstage tragedies parceled out in regular intervals.

Without the performances of Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, who bring complete sincerity to their roles, the whole thing would melt away like a hot August night.

Jackman plays Mike Sardina, a singer and guitarist who bounces around Milwaukee’s third-tier music venues in the 1990s, from state fairs to karaoke bars, trying to entertain wherever he can. He does have standards, though, as he demonstrates when he refuses to sing “Tiny Bubbles” as Don Ho at a nostalgia show organized by his friend Mark Shurilla (Michael Imperioli), who does a fair Buddy Holly. He’d rather perform as his alter ego, Lightning.

At one of these shows, Mike meets Hudson’s character, Claire Stengl, who does an impressive job singing as Patsy Cline. The two hit it off, both because they love performing and because they both have had hard lives — Mike acknowledges right off he’s an alcoholic who’s been sober 20 years, while Claire is raising two kids, geeky Dana (Hudson Hensley) and mortified teen Rachel (Ella Anderson). 

Claire suggests Mike perform Neil Diamond songs — though Mike, being an admirer of Diamond, isn’t sure he can do the songs justice. So Claire offers to duet with him, playing keyboards to accompany Mike and his guitar. They’re so good together that Mike suggests they perform under the name Lightning & Thunder — an idea Claire responds to by kissing Mike.

Brewer (who also directed “Dolemite Is My Name” and “Hustle & Flow”) spends the movie’s first half establishing Mike and Claire as a couple, both musically and romantically. In montages set to Diamond’s songs, Brewer captures their early struggles connecting with an audience, their fast courtship and wedding, and their gradual winning over of Milwaukee fans — culminating in the career pinnacle, an invitation to open for Pearl Jam. Even Rachel and Mike’s teen daughter, Angelina (played by the indie singer King Princess), become fast friends.

At around the one-hour mark, something horrific happens out of the blue that changes Mike and Claire’s trajectory radically. The rest of the movie unfolds from that moment, and how Mike, Claire and their families work to recover — and, you can bet, the music of Neil Diamond plays a part in that healing.

The movie is based on a 2008 documentary about the real Scarina family, directed by Greg Kohs, also titled “Song Sung Blue.” I’ve never seen the documentary, and I was actually relieved that Brewer didn’t include clips of the real Mike and Claire over the closing credits — because it would have diminished the effect of Jackman and Hudson performing.

Jackman always lives up to the title of one of his previous movies, “The Greatest Showman,” and here shows us Mike’s onstage swagger and the vulnerability just beneath the surface. The star here, though, is Hudson, who’s pressed into mounting some powerful physical acting (a result of that tragedy I mentioned), and bringing warmth and soul to Claire’s backup and duet singing. 

While Brewer’s script sometimes skirts the edge of shameless emotional manipulation, what earns the movie its flowers is the way he crystalizes Mike and Claire’s joy of entertaining people, even in a Thai restaurant on karaoke night. These folks aren’t expecting a shot at the big time, just a chance to make people smile — and, by the time the movie’s over, darn it if you’re not smiling with them.

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‘Song Sung Blue’

★★★

Opens Thursday, December 25, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for thematic material, some strong language, some sexual material and brief drug use. Running time: 133 minutes.

Review: 'The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants' is more of the same from your favorite rectangular cartoon hero

There’s a handy shorthand to determine whether you will like “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants”: Have you liked “SpongeBob SquarePants” over the years?

If the answer is yes, then you’ll probably like this latest movie in the cartoon franchise, because it delivers the same level of offbeat gags and manic pacing that you used to get in 11-minute bites. If not, find your fun elsewhere.

In this feature-length cartoon, the eager and innocent SpongeBob (voiced by Tom Kenny) wakes up and see that he is now officially 36 clams tall — which means he’s finally a “big guy,” and can ride on the scariest roller coaster in Bikini Bottom’s biggest amusement park. Once he gets there with his best buddy Patrick Star (voiced by Bill Fagerbakke), SpongeBob chickens out and runs back to his boss, Mr. Krabs (voiced by Clancy Brown, who also makes a live-action appearance in the prologue). 

Mr. Krabs tells SpongeBob there are other ways to prove one’s bravery — and when SpongeBob runs into the most fearsome ghost in the ocean, The Flying Dutchman (voiced by Mark Hamill), the little sponge thinks this his way to prove his “big guy” status. The Dutchman has his own motive for pushing SpongeBob along: He needs an innocent soul to help lift the curse that has kept The Dutchman a ghostly prisoner for centuries.

That’s the story, such as it is, that director Derek Drymon (a veteran of the TV show) and writers Pam Brady and Matt Lieberman present here. Thankfully, these filmmakers know the gags are the important part, and there are enough of those to keep kids and some adults laughing.

One thing “The SpongeBob Movie: The Search for SquarePants” confirms is the scene-saving status of voice actor Fagerbakke, whose deadpan readings of the dead-brained starfish can squeeze a laugh out of pretty much anything. Patrick has always been great, but in this movie, he’s a star.

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‘The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 19, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for rude humor, action and some scary images. Running time: 89 minutes, plus a 7-minute short, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Chrome Alone 2 - Lost in New Jersey.”

Review: 'David' puts a family-friendly animated gloss on the Old Testament, with strong visuals and forgettable songs

It’s always interesting to watch filmmakers try to deliver Old Testament stories in animated form, as the makers of “David” do as they turn the bloodiest parts of the Bible into a cartoon musical spectacle that will earn a PG rating.

For those who don’t already know the story, as told in the first and second books of Samuel, a quick synopsis: A prophet, Samuel (voiced by Brian Stivale) enters Bethlehem and tells a family that their teen son, David (voiced by Brandon Engman at this age), is God’s choice to be the king of Israel. This is not welcome news for the current king, Saul (voiced by Adam Michael Gold), who got the job the same way — by Samuel’s pronouncement of God’s decision.

David says he doesn’t want to be king, Samuel answers, “that is a surprisingly good criteria to be a king.” David tells Samuel that he’s just a shepherd, to which Samuel replies, “the people are lost — they need a shepherd.” Still, Samuel advises David and his family to keep this prophecy a secret for now, so as not to incur Saul’s wrath.

Saul has a lot of wrath already, which he dumps on the line of musicians outside his throne room in Jerusalem, all under orders to try to distract the king from his heavy royal burdens. David ends up in this line, and his song — did I mention this is a musical, even if the songs are forgettable? — gives Saul something to smile and laugh about, and soon David is welcomed into the royal family, and quickly befriends Saul’s son, Prince Jonathan (voiced by Mark Jacobsen). David never lets on that he’s been told God wants him to replace Saul.

It takes nearly an hour of this two-hour movie to get to the moment everyone knows about David’s story: When he faces the massive champion of the Philistine army, Goliath, and fells him with a rock and a slingshot. I can’t decide whether the movie takes too long to get here, because it drags getting to this high spot, or too fast because defeating Goliath and the Philistines could easily be the climax to a perfectly decent Bible story.

The second half continues through the books of Samuel, as the adult David (now voiced by Christian singer Phil Wickham) first must escape the kingdom with his family to avoid Saul’s rage, then return understanding the weighty responsibility of following God’s will. That’s made more difficult because the townspeople in this B.C. era, like the Hebrews in Cecil B. deMille’s “The Ten Commandments,” whine and complain to David at every turn, no matter how many times he proves himself and God’s power.

Directors Phil Cunningham and Brent Dawes take the script (by Dawes) and use it to find some striking images in computer animation. “David” becomes a feast for the eyes, though likely only nourishing to those who already know their bible stories. 

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‘David’

★★★

Opens Friday, December 19, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for action/violence and some scary images. Running time: 115 minutes. 

Review: 'The Housemaid' is a thriller with twists and steamy sex scenes — but it's the back-and-forth between stars Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried that turns up the heat.

Part psychological thriller, part revenge thriller and part erotic thriller, “The Housemaid” does a good job of keeping the audience off balance because the script leans in so many different directions, most of them entertaining.

The protagonist, at least when we start, is Millie (Sydney Sweeney), a young woman who seems overqualified for the job of live-in housemaid, which is what she’s applying for with the rich Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried). We soon learn the reason Millie so eagerly accepts the job: She’s living in her car, and she’s out on probation and will go back to prison if she’s not gainfully employed.

But working for the Winchesters turns out to be more difficult than advertised. Nina’s daughter, Cece (Indiana Elle), is a sourpuss who doesn’t like anything Millie does. And Nina turns out to be demanding, and getting into screaming rages when things aren’t exactly as she wants them — with Millie being the main target of that anger. The upside is that Nina’s husband, Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), is hunky and a perfect gentleman.

After Millie learns more things about Nina — mostly from the gossiping PTA ladies in Nina’s neighborhood — you get a good sense of where this movie, based on Freida McFadden’s novel, is going to go. And, for a bit, the prospect of a furtive romance between Millie and Andrew seems very much in the cards. When things heat up, the movie earns its R-rating with some steamy sex scenes between Sweeney and Sklenar.

But that’s not the end of the story, and director Paul Feig (“A Simple Favor”) and screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine (an Emmy nominee for “The Boys”) pull out some twists from McFadden’s playbook that show Millie isn’t the only one who’s pretending to be what they’re not.

Some of the reveals are genuinely suspenseful, while others get telegraphed well ahead of time. Sweeney and Seyfried have the most fun, as their roles and perspectives shift through the narrative, and Sklenar puts his smoking-hot good guy persona — put to good use in “It Ends With Us” and “Drop” — through the ringer in some entertaining ways.

“The Housemaid” is purely a pulp potboiler, and it’s a delight to see a movie with nothing on its mind than messing with its audience, giving them some prurient thrills, and sending them home howling at the outlandishness of it all. 

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‘The Housemaid’

★★★

Opens Friday, December 19, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for for strong/bloody violent content, sexual assault, sexual content, nudity and language. Running time: 131 minutes. 

Review: 'Avatar: Fire and Ash' delivers more of James Cameron's beautiful spectacle — and adds Oona Chaplin's intimidating new villain to the mix.

Director James Cameron guides us deeper into the world of Pandora in “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” the third movie in the franchise — and one where the human beings are becoming more irrelevant, both in the story and the production.

Where the first two movies were centered on the conflict between Pandora’s native Na’vi and the encroaching humans, this chapter introduces a new wrinkle: Natives who aren’t the peace-loving creatures the Na’vi and their waterborne cousins, the Metkayina, would prefer to be. Here, we meet the Ash People, led by the warrior queen Varang (performed, through the motion capture process, by Oona Chaplin). The Ash People are aggressive, and not above making a bargain with the humans if it gets them the territory and slaves they seek.

This puts the franchise’s central family, led by former Marine-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (performed by Sam Worthington) and fierce Na’vi warrior Neytiri (performed by Zoe Saldaña), in the crosshairs of the Ash People and the “recombinant” artificial Na’Vi Miles Quaritch (performed by Stephen Lang). The Sullys — including son Lo’Ak (performed by Britain Dalton), youngest daughter Tuk (performed by Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), adopted daughter Kiri (performed by Sigourney Weaver) and human tagalong Spider (Jack Champion) — decide to leave the Metkayina, and draw the Quaritch’s and Ash People’s wrath elsewhere. 

These battles among the Na’vi, both real and artificially generated, have relegated the story’s lead humans — corporate jerk Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi) and Marine Gen. Ardmore (Edie Falco) — to the sidelines, except for a subplot where they want to capture Spider, who has developed the ability to breathe Pandora air unassisted. Meanwhile, the plot thread from “The Way of Water” involving whaling vessels pursuing the gentle giants, the Tulkun, continues uninterrupted. 

Things like plot and narrative have never been the prime mission for Cameron and his regular writing partners, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. Neither has dialogue — I swear there’s a moment where Lo’ak says “everything I touch gets ruined,” which is what Charlie Brown said when he broke the Christmas tree.

No, the reason we go to “Avatar” movies is for the spectacle, and in “Fire and Ash,” Cameron delivers that and more. The computer-generated action, of Na’vi battling each other and defending their jungle and ocean homes, is as rich and detailed as in the previous films, and the action still as exciting and dynamic. 

If there is a human figure worthy of a shoutout in “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” it’s Oona Chaplin, who brings a dancer’s poise and a banshee’s wrath to Varang. It’s a character unlike any of the elongated Smurfs we’ve seen before in this franchise, and demonstrates what Cameron might do in a future installment — if he ever gets around to making one.

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‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 19, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, bloody images, some strong language, thematic elements and suggestive material. Running time: 195 minutes. 

Review: 'The Secret Agent,' a paranoid thriller for a new era, puts Wagner Moura in a perfect role — a man thinking his way out of deadly trouble

I’m going to keep my synopsis for “The Secret Agent” as brief as I can manage, because it’s best not to know too much going into writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s a slow burn of a thriller — a movie that rewards the audience’s patience.

It’s 1977 in Brazil, which Mendonça Filho refers to as “a time of great mischief.” It’s here where we meet Marcelo (played by Wagner Moura), who’s driving across Brazil to his old home town, Recife. He settles into an apartment building where Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria), an old rebel, provides housing and sanctuary for refugees and other immigrants.

Why has Marcelo returned to Recife? That’s left deliberately under wraps for a while. The one hint Mendonça Filho provides is a scene where an old rich man (Luciano Chirolli) is paying two hitmen (Roney Villela and Gabriel Leone) to find and kill Marcelo. The old man’s reasons seem to be both monetary and personal — and, in later flashbacks, we find out why.

It’s in those flashbacks that we also learn what Marcelo — if that’s his real name — is doing back in Recife. For him, also, It’s personal on several fronts, including a reunion with his son, Fernando (Enzo Nunes), who’s obsessed with the movie he’s not allowed to see: “Jaws.” A news report about a severed leg found inside a shark’s belly doesn’t do anything to dissuade Fernando, but the thought of the shark feeds Marcelo’s nightmares.

When Marcelo gets a job in a government archive, he is befriended by Chief Euclides (Robério Diógenes), Recife’s corrupt head of the police. Euclides, flanked by two young thugs, doesn’t seem to know that people — powerful people the chief knows — want Marcelo dead.

Mendonça Filho steeps “The Secret Agent” in the film language of the ’70s — “Jaws,” obviously, but also early Brian de Palma movies and the paranoid thrillers of the era, like “Three Days of the Condor” and “The Parallax View.” The tension here, though, is also woven into Brazil’s history, and a time of a military junta that stifles dissent through censorship and forced disappearances. 

Moura gives a smoldering performance, one that earned him a Best Actor award at Cannes in May — where Mendonça Filho also was awarded Best Director. Moura keeps his emotions locked down, but in flashes he reveals a lot about what’s brought him back to Recife and what he’s determined to do.

Mendonça Filho also includes a framing story, involving a current researcher (Laura Lufési) transcribing tapes from Marcelo’s time for some government project. It’s a grace note that reminds us that the bad days of authoritarianism aren’t that far removed from today, and can sneak back up on us if we’re not careful.

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‘The Secret Agent’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 12, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for strong bloody violence, sexual content, language, and some full nudity. Running time: 161 minutes; in Portuguese, with subtitles. 

Review: 'Ella McCay,' occasionally funny and earnest to a fault, falls to director James L. Brooks' habit of being too nice to his characters

The thing about James L. Brooks, as a writer and as a director, is that he likes all his characters — sometimes to a fault, as seen in his shaggy, sloppy, overstuffed new comedy, “Ella McCay.”

The man behind “Terms of Endearment” and “Broadcast News” hasn’t directed a movie since “How Do You Know” in 2010, and there’s a certain creakiness in the way he conjures up these characters, many of them well-meaning and charming when taken separately but a little too much when flung together in one movie.

Our title character, played by Emma Mackey, is a young politician in an unnamed state, who’s better at policy details than the glad-handing and horse-trading of modern politics. She started out as aide to Bill Moore (Albert Brooks), a Democratic politician who is a natural at shaking hands and fund-raising — and when Moore became governor, he made Ella his lieutenant governor. 

Before we get to that, though, there’s a prologue showing the teen Ella coping with the death of her mother, Claire (Rebecca Hall), and the unfaithfulness of her father, Eddie (Woody Harrelson). Ella keeps her anger in check, to protect her younger brother, Casey, as they move in to live with their aunt, Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis). 

Back to the present: Gov. Moore gets the call to join the president’s cabinet, making Ella the governor. Ella tries to apply her head for policy to the state’s economic problems. Unfortunately, her lack of skill as a negotiator starts to unravel her governorship just as it’s starting. Compounding her problems is her husband, Ryan Newell (Jack Lowden), who owns some local pizza restaurants and wants to finagle his way into her administration. 

Then more family problems intrude. Eddie pops up unexpectedly, for starters. And Casey (played by Spike Fearn), now an agoraphobic sports-betting wizard with an unusual amount of recreational marijuana on hand, is pining for the woman (Ayo Edebiri) he let get away a year earlier.

Ella is not without support, chiefly from Aunt Helen, who acerbically cuts down anyone who dares to run afoul of her niece. Also in her corner is the state trooper who drives her (Kumail Nanjiani), and her cantankerous secretary, Estelle — played by Julie Kavner, who applies her Marge Simpson tones to the role of narrator.

That’s a lot of people to juggle in one movie, and maybe Brooks had it in mind to let things play out on the set and then cut a couple of characters in the editing bay. If Brooks is familiar with the advice given to writers, to “kill your darlings,” he didn’t heed it here.

Mackey gives a nice performance, though sometimes so subdued that she fades into obscurity amid her louder, wackier co-stars, like Curtis and Harrelson. Among the supporting cast, the standout is Brooks, in fleeting moments, who’s funny as the old-time politician who tries to mentor Ella. 

“Ella McCay” is a movie that hits on five interesting ideas when three would be enough. It’s an unfortunate example of subtraction by addition. 

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‘Ella McCay’

★★

Opens Friday, December 12, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for strong language, some sexual material and drug content. Running time: 115 minutes.