Marty Supreme

Josh Safdie's Marty Supreme is filled to the brim with energy, charisma, and enough ping-pong to make Forrest Gump lose interest and move to running back-and-forth across the country.  To top things off, the main character, played by Timothée Chalamet, meets a very burned-out Gwyneth Paltrow (I think that she was playing a character); their relationship isn't exactly something that they write fairy tales about.  While the film does contain a Rocky-esque pursue-your-passions-but-don't-lose-yourself-in-the-process story, for the most part the story only exists to provide a vehicle for all the crazy things that happen to Chalamet's character Marty, in what seems to be a few wild nights.  And that is the main problem with the movie, everything is so contrived that it ceases to be interesting.  By the time Marty's bathtub crashes through the floor, crushing the elder gangster's arm, who just so happens to be bathing his dog in the floor below, I had already checked-out.  If Safdie wanted to feature his screenwriters so prominently, he should have just made them the subject of the film, since it felt like each scene in the movie was simply one writer trying to out-do whatever happened in the previous scene.  Before Safdie makes his next movie, he should order a 4k Blu-ray copy of The Wolf of Wall Street from Amazon, watch it in the comfort of his living room, and then think about his life choices.  I'm not sure whether this will have an effect on his directing, but it couldn't hurt.