One of 2025’s very best movies is finally available on streaming

It was nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Picture.

The movie sees Timothée Chalamet play Marty Mauser (loosely based on the real-life Marty Reisman), an aspiring table tennis player living in '50s New York City. Extremely talented at the sport, but also arrogant and bull-headed, Marty begins the story as a shoe salesman but longs to compete in several ping pong tournaments across the globe.

Defying his family, who believe Marty's table tennis plans are a pipe dream, the cocky young man embarks on various schemes to garner the cash he needs to compete at the world stage of the games.

Helping Marty on his quest is Rachel (Odessa A'zion), his old friend and occasional lover, who is stuck in an abusive marriage (her husband is played by Emory Cohen of Brooklyn fame).

As the ping pong player becomes increasingly desperate to score some quick cash, he may wind up putting his and Rachel's lives on the line.

Marty Supreme is the first solo movie by Josh Safdie, who made the modern classic thrillers Good Time and Uncut Gems with his brother Benny. His latest retains the energy and exhilarating sense of stress that radiated off those breakthrough films but applies it to a bigger, significantly more ambitious canvas.

A globe-trotting adventure with a huge and frankly bizarre ensemble cast - we haven't even mentioned Fran Drescher as Marty's manipulative mother, or other supporting turns by David Mamet, Géza Röhrig, Penn Jillette and Sandra Bernhard - Marty Supreme is filled with ideas and personality.

On one level, it's a great movie about a young person trying to escape their humdrum existence and achieve their dreams.

It must be noted, though, that while Marty certainly has the requisite table tennis skills (which Safdie highlights in some ridiculously exciting ping pong match scenes) to make it to the big leagues and is definitely charismatic, he lacks the maturity, modesty and respect for others needed to succeed.

This is an idea that subtly runs through the movie before being tied up in a beautiful bow in the film's stunning closing moments.

Even when Marty is at his most conceited and selfish, with Chalamet's youthful and absolutely swaggering lead turn, you are always rooting for the underdog to turn all his fortunes around and prove all his doubters wrong.

Marty Supreme is also tremendous fun. The extended sections of the 150-minute movie in which its lead character runs around New York, becoming involved in several different side-hustles, are wickedly funny, continually finding inventive new ways of putting the ping pong player through the wringer.

It's almost as if Safdie and his co-writer Ronald Bronstein are stacking the deck against the antihero as punishment for his arrogance.

In keeping with this, some of Marty's trash talk against his table tennis opponents is so over-the-top that it is sure to provoke shocked laughter from viewers.

Plus, Safdie scores much of the film to classic 1980s pop bangers, a choice which should jar with the '50s setting but really doesn't, as Marty's unwavering belief in himself matches the tone of those massive songs.

All in all, Marty Supreme blends the period setting and compelling underdog sports drama of The Queen's Gambit with Uncut Gems' levels of authenticity and breakneck thrills.

How to watch Marty Supreme:

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Nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Picture, Marty Supreme is streaming on Prime Video in Ireland and the UK right now.