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MARTY SUPREME
At first, the title character in Marty Supreme (Timothée Chalamet, inspired by a real ping-pong hustler named Marty Reisman) comes off as a talented, delightfully cocksure striver who happens to be kind of a jerk. But before long, it becomes clear that while Marty is the genuine article as an athlete, he’s also a serial hustler who sees everyone around him as either a mark, an accomplice or both. He’s less likable as he drags these people into real peril, yet perversely more when it’s clear how many of these folks are hustlers themselves, some happy to con him right back. It’s an understatement to compare Marty Supreme, Josh Safdie’s solo directorial debut, to a roller-coaster ride. It’s instead a whole theme park tour, one ride after another full of dizzying highs and dips that hit the pit of your stomach. There are calmer moments, sure, but before you know it, you’re careening through another frenetic, bizarre, sometimes terrifying storyline. During the film’s climactic ping-pong match, I realized I had no idea how the match would end and therefore still didn’t know what kind of movie I was watching. Was this the kind of film where the scrappy underdog finally triumphs, or the kind where an amoral loser gets the ass-kicking that’s coming to him? I left feeling nauseated and euphoric, relieved the ride was finally over but already missing it a little. R. CHRISTEN McCURDY. Academy, Bagdad, Cinema 21, Hollywood, Laurelhurst, St. Johns Twin Cinemas, Studio One, AMC, Cinemark and Regal locations.
ALMA AND THE WOLF
Of all the ways Oregon nature has served as a horror movie special effect, Alma and the Wolf employs a new one—labyrinthine coastal dunes illuminated by flashlight beams. The environmental savvy of this Cape Kiwanda- and Pacific City-shot creature feature is a fitting complement to its wolf puppetry and demonic masks, achieving hallucinatory images that feel as if you could reach out to touch them in a dream and still lose your hand. Ethan Embry (Can’t Hardly Wait, Empire Records) plays Ren, a small-town Oregon sheriff who agrees to help a former classmate, Alma (Li Jun Li), hunt the wolf that killed her dog—at least in between the benders and broken dreams that threaten both their grips on reality. Beyond the striking low-budget visuals, though, Alma and the Wolf can’t decide what kind of horror movie it wants to be. Director Michael Patrick Jann (Drop Dead Gorgeous) shifts tone and focus jarringly across rural despair, dark comedy, belatedly introduced horror movie rules, and an incredibly dire take on parents living through their children. A game and slippery performance by Li Jun Li (Sinners) suggests a defter movie, but the muddled ambition to metaphorize the characters’ psychic damage into monsters but then literalize all the results into a thuddingly plotted mystery strands us miles away from the movie’s greatest strength: a well-lit wolf puppet haunting the beach. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Amazon Prime.
PARADISE RECORDS
After spending more than a decade establishing himself as a rapper, producer, and Twitch streamer, Logic adds filmmaker to his résumé with Paradise Records, a slice-of-life comedy about friends working in the record store of the title. His biggest influence is, overwhelmingly, Kevin Smith; Paradise not only draws heavily from Clerks, but Smith himself joins the project as executive producer and reprises his most famous role in a cameo appearance. However, Clerks boasted sharp dialogue and captured the angst of being stuck in a dead-end job. By contrast, Logic’s main thesis seems to be that, although he lacks melanin, he is technically mixed-race and thus allowed to use the N-word (to clarify, I’m not offended by Logic’s vocabulary, but the subject doesn’t need to be litigated this much). There’s a lived-in camaraderie among the cast that feels real and earned, and Logic has the good sense to fill the margins with familiar character actors who are too good for this material. Unfortunately, none of them can escape the gravity of a weak script built on circular conversations and lazy dick jokes. Logic’s fans might find something to enjoy in his feature debut, but Paradise Records tries to remix a classic and ends up just looking like a pale imitation. R. MORGAN SHAUNETTE. Amazon Prime, Apple TV.
And playing on the small screen...
THE CULT OF THE REAL HOUSEWIFE
The Cult of the Real Housewife is the third documentary about Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise. The first two cover major legal scandals related to network executive Andy Cohen’s cinematic universe, while this one, a collaborative TLC/HBO release, is a primer on his most salacious ’Wife. The Rev. Mary Martha Cosby was introduced to the world having married her step-grandfather. How does she get more scandalous than that? Cult allegations. But the first two documentaries focus on national criminal events: the implosion of a powerful law firm and a multistate telemarketing fraud campaign, respectively. Cult presents no legal arguments against Cosby or her Pentecostal church, Faith Temple. Broken into three slightly puffy chapters—with investigative reporter Cheyenne Roundtree and cult expert Dr. Steven Hassan lending credibility alongside YouTubers and ex-congregants like the Enoch family—this docuseries appears geared more toward Bravoholics than the general public. Cult doesn’t show anyone taking legal action against Cosby. Instead, it explores Faith Temple’s cultural significance as a Black-led church founded in white-dominant, civil rights–era Utah. It spends too much time trying to convince viewers that openly prickly Cosby is mean. Jim Bakker went down for fraud, and there’s no claim of that here, only manipulation. Religion is ripe for abuse, especially of vulnerable people with few boundaries, but the docuseries offers little for alleged victims but the healing power of sunlight. TV-14. ANDREW JANKOWSKI. HBO, Hulu.
