ONE PADDLE AFTER ANOTHER

In the multiplexes on Christmas Day:

Marty Supreme--The Marty here is Marty Mauser, a Lower East Side kid of the early '50s. The supremacy in question is at, of all things, table tennis, or ping pong. He is already an insolently prodigal talent at the sport, with designs on becoming a world champ.

Marty himself wouldn't limit his supremacy merely to table tennis; he's already intolerably cocksure about his ability to do pretty much anything he wants. Even though he could, by his own estimation, "sell shoes to amputees," he despises his job in his uncle's shoe store, regarding it as far beneath him. When some journalists in London point out a retired has-been movie star (Gwyneth Paltrow) of the Norma Shearer or Grace Kelly sort, now respectably married to a rich businessman, he decides to seduce her, not because he's ever heard of her--he hasn't--but because why not?

Directed by Josh Safdie from a script he wrote with Ronald Bronstein--loosely based on the exploits of real-life table tennis master Marty "The Needle" Reisman--this film chronicles a little less than a year's worth of Marty's chaotic, farcical yet sometimes sinister misadventures. The task of reviewing it gives rise to glib descriptions like: It's as if Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, Mordechai Richler and David Mamet were locked up together and forced to write a sports movie without being allowed to sleep.

This doesn't quite do Marty Supreme justice; the movie is a true original. But it gives a hint of the flavor. It's a comic, shocking, inspirational epic of midcentury Jewish hustling. And it's built around another jolting, instant-classic performance by Timothée Chalamet in the title role.

Although he's ably supported by Paltrow, Fran Drescher, Abel Ferrara, Kevin O'Leary, Odessa A'zion, Sandra Bernhard, Emory Cohen and many others, it's Chalamet's party on an acting level. Pasty and zit-pocked, his Marty is somehow both shameless and recklessly heroic, a liar with a streak of the sociopathic--he may carry a touch of Sammy Glick from What Makes Sammy Run? as well--alongside a passionate sense of self-regard and integrity. I couldn't help but root for him.

Safdie's storytelling is similarly expansive. The movie delivers antic, slapstick violence, eroticism and tragedy while sustaining a unified tone. Marty can make scandalous quips about the Holocaust, and minutes later Safdie gives us a bizarre Holocaust flashback that's disturbing and moving. Safdie uses anachronistic musical selections, yet he maintains a sense of period. It's a remarkable achievement.

It's also a very loud, abrasive, unrelenting movie--even though it covers months, it has almost the feel of real time--and I wouldn't blame anyone who found it a bit much. But it explores a great subject: brash, self-promoting American hustlers. And it gets at a great truth: that for better or worse, brash, self-promoting American hustlers have a way of getting what they want. For a while, at least.

OZ AND EFFECT

Opening this weekend:

The Wizard of Oz—For many Americans of my generation, The Wizard of Oz was an annual event, usually shown on TV on Easter Sunday. Many of us watch it now unconsciously mouthing the dialogue and lyrics along with the actors. But seeing it blown up for the IMAX screen—as it will be, for a one-week release opening September 20—brings new meaning to the familiar “See it again for the first time.”

I’ve seen the film dozens of times over the years, but I was struck by how many details from MGM’s extravagant 1939 fantasy based on L. Frank Baum’s novel I had never caught before: The crowned crane and the toucan in the background of the scene with the talking trees, the bric-a-brac in Professor Marvel’s carriage, the costumes on the Munchkins. The performances of Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Frank Morgan, Burt Lahr, Jack Haley, Billie Burke and Margaret Hamilton—it was the finest hour for almost all of them—remain joyous, as do the sometimes darkly comic songs of Harold Arlen, but the real winner in this new version is Toto. On the IMAX screen, he’s the size of a Shetland pony, and his expressive performance gets across. He’s no longer just a fuzzy little smudge, like he was on our black-and-white TV screens half a century ago.

Thanks For Sharing—This comedy-drama follows three Manhattan guys at different stages of recovery from sex addiction: a veteran contractor, Mike (Tim Robbins) whose lifestyle revolves around 12-Step meetings, his younger “sponsee” Adam (Mark Ruffalo), a hotshot businessman who’s been faithfully “working the program,” and Adam’s sponsee Neil (Josh Gad) a young wreck of an ER doctor who hasn’t even really admitted he has a problem. Other characters are woven into the story, like Adam’s new girlfriend (Gwyneth Paltrow) from whom he’s hidden his addiction, Mike’s son (Patrick Fugit), a former drug abuser, and a young woman (Alecia Moore, aka Pink), new to the program, with whom Neil bonds.

Carol Kane contributes a funny but disturbing turn as Neil’s Mom, and Joely Richardson is quietly powerful as Mike’s battle-hardened wife. It’s a smallish role, but in her unshowy way Richardson gives maybe the best performance in the film.

While there’s little consensus in the real-life psychological and medical fields as to what constitutes sex addiction, or if it even exists, the movie, the directorial debut of the gifted screenwriter Stuart Blumberg (The Kids Are All Right, Keeping the Faith), seems to take at face value the 12-Step Model as the answer to it. Whether you agree with this or not, Blumberg does get across the desperation with which these men are containing themselves, and the added difficulty they face in getting others to accept their destructive behavior as pathological rather than just a character flaw—horniness crossed with reckless self-indulgence.

Blumberg makes good, rueful comedy out of the unavoidable ubiquity of sexual stimulation in modern culture, and he gets fine performances from his cast. As the droll, self-loathing Neil, young Gad, in particular, steals much of the flick from his accomplished co-stars.

3 IRON

Once again, Robert Downey, Jr. triumphs in the role of the armored Marvel superhero Iron Man and his alter-ego Tony Stark.

In Iron Man 3, as always, he has the light touch of a comedian and the soulfulness and charisma and glamour of a movie star. His jumpy, fast-talking insolence doesn’t come across as narcissism, because it’s mixed with an uncommon sense of empathy—he seems connected to the other people onscreen, even the villains with whom he’s grappling.

Thus, even when he’s playing a self-absorbed egomaniac like Tony Stark, he, Downey, doesn’t come across as a self-absorbed egomaniac. Or rather, he does come across as a self-absorbed egomaniac, but a lovable one.

Iron Man 3 (or Iron Man Three, as the credits spell it) begins with a sequence set in Bern, Switzerland on the last day of 1999, in which a younger, more obnoxious Tony, by way of snubbing a stranger, unwittingly sets in motion the troubles which will follow. Thirteen years later, a sinister figure calling himself The Mandarin, played with spooky panache by Ben Kingsley, claims responsibility for a series of mysterious explosions.

Eventually Iron Man, now suffering from PTSD after his experiences in The Avengers, runs afoul of a circle of fanatics claiming allegiance to The Mandarin. They’ve been treated with an agent called “Extremis,” allowing them to regenerate when injured, and to turn red-hot from within. This gang kidnaps Tony’s sweetie Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), as well as The President of the United States (William Sadler).

The boots-on-the-ground leader of these hotties is played, rather well, by Guy Pearce. Tony and his pal Rhodey (Don Cheadle), aka Iron Patriot, must ride to the rescue. There are twists and turns—Tony befriends a little kid, for instance—and absurdly magical sequences, like Iron Man’s rescue of multiple people falling out of a ripped-open jet plane. The director here is Shane Black, replacing Jon Favreau of Iron Man and Iron Man 2 (though Favreau plays a sizable acting role here), and while the movie is probably about a half-hour too long—like almost all action blockbusters seem to be any more—it’s polished and mostly engrossing.

But there’s no way around it, or at least there wasn’t for me—recent events intrude into one’s enjoyment of Iron Man 3 as a simple action entertainment. The explosions, the amputees turned into “Extremis” henchpersons, even the Iron Man suits themselves—here often used empty, by remote control, like drone aircraft—all give the movie an ugly, unsavory real-world resonance it wouldn’t have had a few months ago, rightly or wrongly, and a tragic atmosphere it doesn’t really deserve. This doesn’t ruin the picture, but it does leave you more poignantly aware than usual of the genre’s limitations.

No doubt superhero stories have their legitimate place in the human tradition, just as the stories of Hercules or Beowulf did in their time. The fantasies they service, both of being protected and of being a protector, are perfectly human, even noble.

They’re also vain, taken literally. Even if Tony Stark’s technology existed, and even if —far less likely—it was in the hands of somebody as well-intentioned as Tony, it couldn’t protect us from evil. Superhero stories have become far more complex in last half-century, yet in the end, they tend to return reflexively to the touching idea that evil can be vanquished in a fistfight. But evil is the part of human badness that can’t be socked in the jaw. Iron Man 3 reminds us, probably without meaning too, that the superhero archetype is, in the end, an empty suit.