Review Type: New

Looking at the two Josh Safdie’s films directed before Marty Supreme, they have a common trend which can be identified in this film pretty early on. They are films that are about a character trying to make his way in a world of bureaucracy, where confronting the systems of power are the only way for survival. The films don’t necessarily justify the actions or even give enough of a back story to the characters to their moral wrongdoing. What they do is illustrate a society were there a just winners and losers.

Marty, the main character here who is played by Timotheé Chalomet, has a conceited view to his own status where fame and the freedom it brings is only so far away. The mundanity of an every day life is what he wants to escape as he sees this as a failure. He wants to become a successful table tennis player, you feel mainly due to the wealth it will bring but on a deeper level it is about status and vain notoriety. The film makes the point that through the matches he plays both competitive and non-competitive, it isnt necessarily the sport that he is drawn to, but more the fact that people are coming to watch him.

Like his other films, this is in no ways a straight-forward success story. He is committing all these immoral acts but the whole point is that Josh Safdie wants to create another film where we feel his actions are justified because of the story he goes through and the means justifies the end, as we too as an audience have to endure what he has to. We are given a subjective look into his life, we don’t see the mothers side of the story and only follow his baby’s mothers (Odessa A’zion) story when he reenters her life and wants to use her for his own benefit. He is forever struggling to stay afloat with financial issues circling in on him and success fading away while the tainted outcome of selling out being closer to reality than he wants it to be. We as an audience hope for him to succeed not because we like him but when we are positioned from a subjective point of view of his story, he want a positive outcome more for our own piece of mind than anything else.

No Other Choice (Chan-Wook, 2025) seems to have a simple enough plot point throughout. It concerns Yoo (Lee Byung-hun) who gets laid off from his job and looks to seek revenge. Already you can tell it’s going to be a social commentary which usually has two different paths to go down, either be a realism piece or descend into chaos acting more as allegory for the inner turmoil. This film decides to do the latter.

There are many films that achieve this well. South Korean films themself have a strong recent history of doing this; Parasite (Joon Ho, 2019) is where someone who is unemployed reaps revenge on the wealthy elite, Broker (Kore-eda, 2022) concerns someone with high debt who steals a baby to sell for a good price, this is just to name two. What these films need to do (and what I believe the two I have highlighted do) is they need to grab the audience early on otherwise their lost throughout. I could tell this was the way it would be early on and in many ways I felt myself panicking to stay afloat. Yet there just wasn’t that connection that meant when it came to the more radical and scenes displaying a breakdown of Yoo’s life and mindset, I just wasn’t believing it or even that invested in it. 

The trailer for No Other Choice is probably the most excited I’ve been for a film release this year, this in itself explains a lot for me. When you strip the film down just to it’s black humour and set pieces, it works pretty well. Yet the plot, and more importantly the plot early on, isn’t enough to justify it later. In many ways the plot was fine to justify a realist telling of the story throughout, but the dynamical shifts and pathos running through it just couldn’t hold the balance for me.

Coming into watching this film, it’s important to note that I knew nothing about the story let alone any Shakespeare plays or even his back story. The film itself has Shakespeare’s story at the heart of it, even if I don’t know too much about it already it still feels to be an overused story. Yet this film does offer a fresh perspective on it.

In terms of the story of the film, the title with Hamnet (Zhao, 2025) of course signifies a lot of what I’ve just said the film will be about. It acts as a back story to William Shakespeare (played by Paul Mescal) where his play, Hamlet, is more of a biography to his life that anything else. Yet the film positions itself more from the family perspective to his life where you see from others his own back story rather than from his own perspective. This can definitely be seen as a recent trend with biographical pictures – take for example Priscilla (Coppola, 2023) which acts as a alternative second hand account of Elvis’ life – we get to see the life of an artist being from the woman’s perspective. Jessie Buckley (Agnes) plays his partner here who throughout goes through her own struggles, while Shakespeare can use art and his success to fend off his own turmoil yet she is the one who has to look after the family dynamic. 

It would of course be cheap to call this a biography in the same way I highlighted with Priscilla. It creates its own story and world which represents more the life and struggle of Agnes more than anything else. At the heart of it, it shows how we are all players in other peoples lives. No matter how famous and successful Shakespeare is, there are just as compelling stories for other people in his life that have had an influence on him.

The film does a great job of giving a fresh take on a well trodden story, the main reservation I would bring to it is that the style and substance of the film. With the time of year this was released and also seeing the films Chloe Zhao has directed already, it is clear that the film is eyeing up the awards season. The film itself felt this way, it is clearly prodding the audience for an emotional response (be it the overused emotional film score or the communal call to despair) that ticks the boxes needed to win critical awards. At this point it doesn’t feel organic anymore, it knows what it wants to achieve rather than letting the story thrive upon itself. A fresh perspective can only take you so far when the feeling that an audience gets from the film isn’t something that is organically produced but instead is thrust open them.

Yorgos Lanthrimos’ latest offering comes in Bugonia(2025) which concerns the accusations of an alien living on earth, yet is his most down to earth film he has made. Just by looking at the poster, you feel that the film is going to deal with an other-worldly narrative. Yet the further it gets into the film, you start to feel maybe this is your own bias you are bringing to it. You believe this will be the case because of the character in which Lanthrimos’ films have behaved in the past, they are an allegory for the human condition which aren’t as straightforward as they may start off. Someone who has never seen one of his films would get something different out of the film than someone who has, in many ways I would envy that.

It never deliberately takes a step out of this dimension, the only glimpse into this is looking into the inner thoughts of Teddy (Jessy Plemmons). Yet this distinction is easy to comprehend. It is also what works best for the film in my opinion. Cinema should be all about suspending belief and giving you something you aren’t expecting, and in many ways a straight Lanthrimos film is something that achieves that. It doesn’t mean I don’t like his back catalogue of movies, it shows more how versatile a director he can be. My only reserve about the whole film and due to what I stated above comes from the end of the film, it becomes something predictable that was obvious in its outcome. In fact I’m annoyed I didn’t leave ten minutes early as this would’ve capped a perfect movie where it may not have been a conclusive ending, but sometimes a film needs that.

Its amazing to see how quickly Harris Dickinson has rose to prominence. Triangle of Sadness (Östuland, 2022) and Babygirl (Reijn, 2024) for me show his talent to the fullest as an actor. For a person with good looks and the physicality to play any main role in mainstream films, he resists this in the films he’s acted in even if these attributes are at the heart of the stories. He is able to see the vision that his roles entail to such a degree that they can ultimately make the films work by themselves, for me this is the case for the films already stated here. The lead male role can only be pulled off here by Harris Dickinson who displays a deepness not usually associated with someone who would be many peoples idea of physical perfection. Yet already at the age of 28 he has stepped back from acting at the real start of what will be an illustrious carer, and directed his first film with Urchin.

What I have said about Harris Dickinson rings true with Urchin. It is a well directed film that shows how he has more talent than just directing a mainstream film. It is a fairly straightforward premise for a film that concerns Mike (Frank Dillane) who struggles to find a place to live in London and altogether place in society. Yet the film is more than just a social commentary or piece of realist drama. It dips its toe into the inner turmoil of Mike but never falls into the absurd. The film isn’t necessarily giving light to injustices within society that have caused to him to fall on hard times, in many ways it shows him in this place as a result of his own actions. It is a drama in the purest sense where the character goes on an individual journey. We are the ones to determine the probability of his outcome after the camera leaves him, and we chose if we can forgive him for his actions and see him as a good person (or even good protagonist).

Happyend (Sora, 2024) is a coming-of-age film about a group of teenagers in a Japanese city that sets itself in the near future. With the film setting itself as a dystopian vision of what might be to come, it is striking to see the portrayal of young adults at the heart of it. Youth being corrupted by surveillance and altogether authoritarian order. That’s not to say the film is totally bleak in its outlook. The spirit of youth through rebellion and altogether hope for a better future is what shines through the most and acts paradoxically as a reassuring picture of what is to come rather than just downbeat visions of future technological changes.

The further the film delves into a dystopian vision of a future, the more rebellious the youngsters become. They all believe that society needs to change like most youth do, but it is about the lengths they will go to to achieve this. One teenager needs citizenship to Japan and can only get this through behaving well, others want good grades to be able to get into their selected universities. It becomes a balancing act between wanting these aspirations, but at the same time having to comply to immoral societal values which they have become part of. As stated before, this is in a society that is more dystopian that the world today. Yet it highlights the situation most teenagers face at this age. To rebel is to highlight injustice and bring about change, yet stability in life is also needed to create a harmonious life.