Marty Supreme First Reactions: Hollywood Crowns the Superior Safdie Brother

Josh Safdie went solo, dropped a biopic that is not really a biopic, and the early love is loud. With the review embargo finally up, Marty Supreme has landed at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and is already getting called one of the year’s best. If you’re keeping track at home: his brother Benny just did a Dwayne Johnson drama, The Smashing Machine, that drew so-so notices for being pretty by-the-numbers. Josh’s movie is the opposite vibe.

The movie, the numbers, the wrinkle

Timothée Chalamet stars as a young Marty Mauser, a swaggering table-tennis phenom inspired by real-life showman Marty Reisman. This is Josh Safdie’s first solo directorial feature after the split with Benny, and it clocks in at a full 150 minutes. As of now, it’s sitting at 96% on the Tomatometer and a 7.7 on IMDb. It’s an A24 joint and opens in the U.S. on December 25, 2025.

Not your standard biopic (by design)

Here’s the twist: Marty Supreme isn’t a strict cradle-to-grave telling. Safdie uses Reisman as a springboard and then imagines a bolder, bigger version of table tennis itself. That lets him crank up the obsession, desperation, and ambition without being chained to a history lesson. He’s been upfront about that approach:

"I wanted to honor Marty Mauser’s dream to make it the greatest sport in the world. I like imagining an alternative path of history where the sport did become as big as tennis, and I had to act that way because I was making it from Marty’s point of view."

That creative leeway pays off in how the movie moves: the opening and closing beats reportedly play like a classic sports story, while the middle goes full Safdie-chaos, the jittery, nerve-jangling energy of Good Time and Uncut Gems.

Early buzz, distilled

• Critics keep calling it one of 2025’s best, with some saying it’s the most purely entertaining movie of the year.
• Multiple early reactions say the film locks you in instantly and never lets go; Chalamet is being singled out as career-best.
• One reviewer who writes for Slant Magazine said it’s the first time they’ve ever awarded a full four stars there, and called it a dazzling culmination for both Safdie and Chalamet.
• Across the board: raves for the cinematography, the score, and the performances, with more than a few people angling for Chalamet to start clearing space on the shelf.

The brothers’ split screen

It’s a little wild that the Safdie breakup led to both brothers tackling biopics in the same season. Benny’s The Smashing Machine, fronted by Dwayne Johnson, got a middling response, mostly for sticking too close to the formula. Josh, meanwhile, zagged hard with a fictionalized, alt-history riff and is getting rewarded for it.

A real Best Actor shot for Chalamet

The awards conversation has already started. Johnson’s early Oscar buzz dimmed alongside The Smashing Machine’s reviews, but Chalamet’s momentum is pointed in the opposite direction. He’s already got two Academy Award nominations on his resume, including one for last year’s A Complete Unknown, and early reaction says Marty Supreme could be his strongest work yet. The competition is no joke, though: Michael B. Jordan in Sinners, Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another, and a returning Daniel Day-Lewis are all in the mix. Still, given the response so far, this might be Chalamet’s cleanest path to a Best Actor win.

Bottom line: this is not a dutiful bio, it’s a swaggering, high-gloss fever dream about a guy who wants to turn ping-pong into the Super Bowl. If that sounds like your thing, Christmas Day is circling the calendar.