Author: Dan Lybarger

• MARTY SUPREME
• Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow and Odessa A’zion)
• Rated: R
• Running Time: 149 minutes
• A24        

Our score:  4.5 out of 5 

Like Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel before him, Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) has a single-minded confidence in his goal. The former knew for certain that the Las Vegas strip would eventually become an unstoppable geyser of cash. Marty believes his skills with a table tennis racket will lead him to riches and recognition.

While Siegel, despite a few setbacks that cost the gangster his life, was right about the future of Sin City, Marty’s less outwardly rewarding quest is consistently entertaining and occasionally poignant.

Like his protagonist, co-writer-director Josh Safdie takes some odd risks. Two of his leads aren’t full time actors, his story takes odd turns and its post-World War II setting seems an odd place to hear 80s bands like Tears for Fears. Thankfully for viewers, Safdie and screenwriter Ronald Bronstein appear to have consistently better judgement than their 23-year-old protagonist.

Marty is a day from being promoted as his uncle’s shoe store and isn’t lying when he says he can sell footware to amputees. He’s also gifted at frustrating Ping-Pong players across the world.

It’s easy to see why Marty might want to take long lunch breaks and neglect the gig that’s actually bringing in cash. His mother is ailing from a variety of non-existent illnesses, and his uncle has a habit of reneging on promised payments. Journalists are also indifferent to assistant managers at shoe stores and grub up his jaw-droppingly arrogant remarks. He boasts that as a Jew, his skills with a paddle are Hitler’s worst nightmare.

Survivors of the Holocaust might not find his attempts at wit successful.

He’s also assuming there’s a demand for the glory of table tennis that might not exist in the real world. He’s even gotten his friend Dion (Luke Manley) to produce a series of custom orange Ping-Pong balls proclaiming “Marty Supreme” on the outside. He tells anyone willing to listen that his face will be on the cover of a Wheaties box momentarily.

Now, if only he can get the money for his flight to the tournament in London.

Back in New York, he’s been romantically involved with Rachel (Odessa A’zion), who just happens to be married to someone else (Emory Cohen), and he runs cons on the side with cab driver named Wally (Tyler the Creator). His family offer him no support and are even enlisting the local cops to stunt Marty’s dreams. Marty also makes the mistake of tangling with a dog loving gangster (moonlighting director Abel Ferrara).

If Marty’s life weren’t already complicated enough, he flirts with a movie star (Gwyneth Paltrow) despite how his arrogance can make him off putting at times. Her husband Milton Rockwell (“Shark Tank” judge Kevin O’Leary) dislikes the cocky fellow but wants to use potential popularity to sell his company’s merchandise in Japan. He’ll pay Marty a king’s ransom if he’ll play against the Land of the Rising Sun’s fearsome champion (Koto Kawaguchi) and throw the match.

Safdie and Bronstein are loosely adapting the life of real life table tennis champ Marty Reisman, but their own tale is consistently engaging because Marty’s wish for something more than a mundane existence is relatable. The two also populate the film with dozens of great supporting characters and surprising twists that have greater weight than simply winning matches.

Chalamet has a gift for playing characters who can do despicable things while keeping an audience’s attention. A lesser performer might make viewers tire of Marty’s broken promises. As I mentioned earlier, the mob got tired of waiting for Siegel’s assurances about Vegas to materialize. Chalamet also has the right physique and looks at home behind a paddle.

As with “Uncut Gems,” which Safdie co-directed with his brother Benny, “Marty Supreme” benefits from a frantic pace that makes it’s two-and-a-half hour running time breeze by. He stages the matches well and handles some sharp changes in tone effortlessly. The movie goes from silly absurdity to moments of danger effortlessly.

It probably helps that Safdie has cast two antagonists who aren’t known actors, but who can play their roles better than most professional thespians. Kevin O’Leary is so appropriately cold and contemptuous that one might see why his wife might be tempted to stray with a naïve braggart like Marty, and it’s easy to believe he clawed his way to a fortune. Similarly, Ferrara projects a dangerous aura that his affection toward a dog can’t dissipate.

The real Marty Reisman had a long career, and Safdie ends his own tale while his athlete is still young. Perhaps he knew well enough wrap things up while the game was going well.

On a scale of zero to five, “Marty Supreme” receives ★★★★½    

• CAUGHT STEALING
• Starring:  Austin Butler, Regina King and Zoe Kravitz
• Directed by:  Darren Aronofsky
• Rated:  R
• Running time:  1 hr 47 mins
• SONY/Columbia Pictures

Our score: 2 out of 5

If there is one thing that the pandemic and the advent of streaming have not changed about the entertainment industry, it’s that any movie entering the marketplace around Labor Day is going to be lacking.

If Sony suspected that this offering from auteur director Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler) with an A-list cast had awards potential, they’d probably have released it in the summer or later in the fall.

They know this won’t be much competition to a holiday cookout or the more focused movies coming down the pipeline.

The script by Charlie Huston, working from his novel, features a menagerie of colorful New York lowlifes who torment a lowly bartender named Hank Thompson (Austin Butler) simply because a Mohawk-sporting Cockney named Russ (Matt Smith) has left the Big Apple for his hometown of London without informing anyone else.

Because Russ is out of town, his business partners in illicit trades want a return on their investments. Because Hank is around but Russ isn’t, a pair of sadistic Russian leg breakers (Nikita Kukushkin, Yuri Kololnikov) pummel Hank inches from death even though he has no idea how Russ affords to feed his violent cat or get his gets his well-maintained punk hairdos.

Hank’s smarter paramedic girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Zravitz) picks him up at the hospital and suggests that he call the cops. The detective who arrives on the scene (Regina King) loves making wisecracks but does little more than warn Hank he’s inadvertently crossed two Hassidic brothers (Liev Schriber, Vincent D’Onofrio) so devout they won’t drive on Shabbos but will deal in chemical recreation and lethal force.

While Huston compiles a formidable body count from his ensemble cast and gives them lots of excentric and sometimes off-putting things to do, Aronofsky’s tone varies from gritty to eye-rollingly silly. When the actors seem to be playing a scene for laughs, Aronofsky dishes out some gore that might make David Cronenberg blush.

In Elvis and The Bikeriders, Butler has proven himself to be a formidable leading man, but here Huston and Aronofsky haven’t given him much of a role. For much of the film, he seems like a hapless bystander who inadvertently invites the fatalities that accumulate in his path.

With the possible exception of Schriber and D’Onofrio’s sibling drug mongers, who manage to be both funny and threatening, most of the oddballs in Caught Stealing aren’t engaging enough to make viewers wonder if they’ll make it to the end. Griffin Dunne as an aging hippie poet and Carol Kane Scriber and D’Onofrio’s matriarch are sadly underutilized. Aronofsky’s frantic pacing may be a disservice to his performers because it reduces their chance to shine.

The central McGuffin isn’t that well-conceived, and Hank’s eagerness for never making it into Major League Baseball can only carry the film so far.

Because this is Labor Day, we can take comfort that all involved will be working on something better soon. It’s a shame they wasted their talents on such an unworthy grift.

On a scale of zero to five, I give “Caught Stealing” ★★   

• BALLERINA
• Starring:  Ana de Armas, Keanu Reeves and Ian McShane
• Directed by:  Len Wiseman
• Rated:  R
• Running time:  2 hrs 4 mins
• Lionsgate

Our score:  3 out of 5

When I interviewed ballerina Moira Shearer who starred in “The Red Shoes,” she happily informed me, “Dancers and boxers lace their boots the same way.”

As the analogy indicates, deadly force can come in seemingly dainty packages.

That may explain why “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina” usually works. Ana de Armas proved she had what it took to be an action hero in “No Time to Die.” In her brief turn, her awkward demeanor belied formidable speed and agility. Her precision dagger was a nice complement of James Bond’s blunt instrumentation.

This time around she plays Eve, a young woman struggling to deal with being orphaned after trained killers murdered her dad. Winston (Ian McShane), who acts like a referee in the universe that Eve and John Wick (Keanu Reeves) inhabit, puts her in the care of the Director (Anjelica Huston).

Eve now has a unique regimen. Most of us don’t have to train for the rigors of both ballet, which can decimate a dancer’s feet, and for martial arts and target practice. Because she’s as sturdy as she is agile, it’s no surprise she spends less time on stage than she does guarding clients or selectively ending lives.

After a few successful missions, she discovers that the people who killed her father are still around. The Director has had a long truce with the rival troupe of killers and their leader The Chancellor (an appropriately chilly Gabriel Byrne).

Eve couldn’t care less about those arrangements. She wants revenge and is willing to charge into a village populated entirely with seasoned assassins.

If anyone could survive such a seeming act of folly, she would be the one. Her bravado is accompanied by the sort of creativity that comes from an education in the arts. This enables her to neutralize larger, stronger opponents.

Watching de Armas leap, kick and shoot is expectedly exhilarating. Screenwriter Shay Hatten, who wrote the last two John Wick films, comes up with a delightfully goofy solutions when Eve runs out of ammo.

Director Len Wiseman (“Underworld”) stages the mayhem with appropriate finesse, but he deviates little from the template that Chad Stahelsski established in the first two movies. “Ballerina” might have been more fun if it gave Eve a stamp of her own. The pneumatic tubes that send death warrants across the oceans in seconds are here, but it the idea of blending classical dance and combat is only partially realized.

Reeves, who produced, returns as Wick. He seems committed, but the script incorporates Wick as an afterthought. Reeves and de Armas share little screen time and don’t get a chance to play off each other much. It would have been more fun if their contrasting styles could have been clearly delineated.

De Armas at least shows that her lean shoulders can carry a shoot-em-up with confidence. Here’s hoping her next turn behind a gun is as nimble as she is.

On a scale of zero to five, “Ballerina” receives ★★★

• MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING
• Starring:  Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell and Simon Pegg
• Directed by:  Christopher McQuarrie
• Rated:  PG 13
• Running time:  2 hrs 49 mins
• Paramount

Our score:  3 out of 5

It’s probably good that “Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning” acknowledges its predecessors. Co-writer and director Christopher McQuarrie loads the latest and reportedly final installment of the series with links to the previous films.

Nonetheless, it’s a lot to ask viewers to spend three hours following Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and the Impossible Mission Force team resting on their laurels.

There are still some jaw dropping stunts, but the follow-up to “Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One” has action scenes that play like outtakes or rough drafts of the scenes that worked in the previous movies. There are only so many times Cruise can hang from plane or other fast-moving vehicle.

Despite all the death defying moments in “Dead Reckoning,” a seemingly all-powerful artificial intelligence known as The Entity is still threatening humanity despite Ethan Hunt and company surviving time bombs and dangling train compartments. The Entity is worming its way into the nuclear arsenals of countries all over the world and doesn’t have qualms about destroying its flesh and blood creators.

It has even rejected its most fanatical disciple, Gabriel (Esai Morales), who now wants to use his insider knowledge to possibly control it. If he eventually takes over The Entity, the situation could potentially be worse than a nuclear wasteland.

The task is obviously bigger than Ethan himself can handle, so Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), Paris (Pom Klementieff), Grace (Hayley Atwell) and Luther Stickwell (Ving Rhames) have to scramble behind the scenes while Ethan dashes, leaps, swims and hangs for dear life to prevent either enemy from gaining the upper hand.

With “Dead Reckoning,” McQuarrie was probably correct when he concluded that audiences would prefer watching Tom Cruise push his body (and his stunt doubles) to the limit than to figuring out the intricacies of artificial intelligence. He created just enough fresh obstacles for the IMF team to tackle to prevent viewers from wondering how conquering physical catastrophes can stop one that lives only online.

It took a lot of effort to fill three hours with stunts and Cruise’s trademark sprinting (in his early 60s, the actor might want to try out for the Olympics). One might feel inclined McQuarrie if he and co-writer Erik Jendresen have run out fresh ways to endanger their leading man.

In McQuarrie’s world, there seems to be a proliferation of time bombs, and the tension of seeing yet another countdown diminishes when Ethan and company discover yet another explosive with a digital fuse.

In a couple of sequences, McQuarrie cleverly switches between Ethan muscling his way past yet another impediment while Benji and company struggle to ensure that their teammate’s heroics won’t be for naught. This gives the new installment momentum it could have used when McQuarrie seems a little too content to follow the series template.

At times it seems as if McQuarrie was too eager to find ways to tie this chapter to its predecessors. The call backs are occasionally fun, but more thought seems to have gone into them than in the current tale.

Perhaps “The Final Reckoning” might have been more fun if McQuarrie and company had explored the logic behind The Entity and figured out how the IMF could potentially outsmart it. With two hackers on the squad and a thoughtful U.S. President (Angela Bassett) and the hair trigger General Sidney (Nick Offerman), one would think they’d create enough real ideas to combat their artificial foe.

McQuarrie won an Oscar for his head-twisting script for “The Usual Suspects,” so he could have taken a more cerebral approach and made a movie that still delivered thrills. Since “Jack Reacher,” he has shown a formidable eye for action scenes to go with his talent for word play. The exchanges between Bassett and Offerman demonstrate he hasn’t lost his dramatic chops, but it would have been nice if he had used them more frequently.

Watching Tom Cruise, who also produced the “M:I” series, dashing toward or from danger is usually fun, but with “The Final Reckoning,” he’s not dealing with a crisis worthy of his speed. Instead he seems be taking an unwarranted victory lap.

Overall, on a scale of zero to five, “Mission: Impossible – The FInal Reckoning” receives ★★★

• WARFARE
• Starring:  Will Poulter and Cosmo Jarvis
• Directed by: Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza
• Rated: R
• Running time:  1 hr 35 mins
• A24

Director Samuel Fuller helmed “The Big Red One” and “The Steel Helmet” and also served in World War II. In the press book for the former movie, he observed that “To make a real war movie would be to fire at the audience from behind the screen.”

Without putting a viewer in actual danger, Alex Garland (“Ex Machina”) and Iraq War veteran Ray Mendoza capture what a tense and frightening 95 minutes in Mendoza’s life was like.

Except for a brief moment where the troops ogle young women in a rather vigorous workout tape, “Warfare” follows them as they take over a building for surveillance. They see lots of potential attackers, but a lot of they people they’re watching are simply trying to get on with their days. As false alarms keep ringing, it’s still a shock when a real grenade explodes in their midst.

They have taken casualties, but getting back to base is challenging now that the enemy have decided to stop waiting patiently. Hostile fire is coming from unexpected directions. Getting the team out of the lethal quagmire borders on being a suicide mission.

Shot and edited in what amounts to real time, “Warfare” drops a viewer into urban combat and the horror it entails. Every shot or explosion reverberates around the auditorium. The dialogue is loaded with military jargon, and when vehicles are six minutes from the scene, you could potentially set your watch accordingly.

During these moments, “Warfare” brims with tension, but Garland and Mendoza don’t do much to orient the audience into 2004 Iraq or explain the banter. The characters and their relationships are also sketchy. We don’t know who is in charge of whom or why occupying a building that seems to be an obvious target would be such a smart move.

The cast, which includes solid performers like Will Poulter (“Detroit”), but we barely learn anything about Poulter’s Eric or his life outside the war zone. D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai plays a character clearly based on Mendoza himself, but we barely get to know him or how he and his unit interact.

If we knew more about they guys in the unit, it would be easier to get involved with their struggles and to care if they survive. The situation is inherently compelling, but “Warfare” misses some of its potential because it loses its energy whenever the lethal fireworks stop.

The Iraqi family inside the building are a little better drawn than in earlier films on the War on Terror and its era. Unlike, say “Blackhawk Down,” Garland and Mendoza express concern over what happens to the residents once the occupying armies are gone. “Warfare” features a coda where one of Mendoza’s former comrades in arms visits the set. It’s one of the rare moments in the movie where emotions other than fear come into play. “Warfare” succeeds at immersing viewers in Mendoza’s tour of duty, but it might have had more impact if he and Garland had come up for air more often.

Starring: Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch
Directed by: Tim Fehlbaum
Rated: R
Running Time: 1 hr 35 mins
Paramount Pictures

Our score:  4 out of 5

George Orwell once lamented, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”

It’s even more challenging when you’re also the one deciding how the rest of the world sees.

That’s the engrossing setup behind September 5, a recounting of how the Palestinian terrorist group Black September held members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage in 1972. The incident was the basis of Kevin Macdonald’s Oscar-winning documentary One Day in September and Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner’s gripping Munich.

Despite covering well-trodden territory, September 5 still feels fresh because it covers how ABC Sports found themselves in the middle of the crisis. Keeping on top of it proved Herculean and required the broadcasters to jerry rig technology where it hadn’t gone before. They also wrestled with ethical issues that would vex experienced hard news reporters.

At the beginning of September 5, the most newsworthy events for ABC’s audience had been the spectacular performance of American swimmer Mark Spitz. Things seem to be so settled that the head of operations, Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) thinks he can catch up on his sleep.

In his place is the relatively inexperienced Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) and an overworked German translator Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch). The expected drudgery turns into relentless anxiety when gunshots ring out from inside the Olympic Village.

Instantly, the crew has a more urgent concern than Spitz’s next medal. Reporter Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker) has to improvise ways to find out how to get the near the scene of the action and how to get heavy cameras and recording equipment where they were never designed to go.

Some of the tensions that worked its way from the Middle East also erupt in the control room when Jasques Lesgards (Zinedine Soualem), a Frenchman of Algerian descent, briefly clashes with ABC executive Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), who’s Jewish. Of course, it’s a given that both realize the story in front of their eyes is more important.

Sportscasters today make placing a distant event in your living room look easy. Much of the thrill of September 5 is that it shows how much effort goes into making something seem effortless. Bader, Arledge and Mason have to sneak 16mm film past guards (who failed to keep Black September out) so that viewers can see how pressing the situation is.

Because the heavens are littered with satellites these days, it’s shocking to learn that ABC Sports had to negotiate with other networks for access to the one satellite available in 1972. Simply staying on the air was almost impossible.

Knowing these facts helps make September 5 exciting. Tim Fehlbaum’s taut direction also helps. In a brisk 95 minutes, Fehlbaum, who wrote the Oscar-nominated script with Mortitz Binder and Alex David, never gives viewers a chance to catch their breaths.

The three acknowledge that ABC Sports completed a formidable achievement in September 5, but they also make Arledge and company completely human. When two technicians successfully figure out how to tap into the Munich police frequency, one makes the mistake of sending Gebhardt out for coffee when she’s the only person in the building who can understand what the cops are saying. Real, flawed people were working that day, and much of the vitality of the story comes wondering which mistakes they can afford to make.

One clever touch Fehlbaum ads is not casting an actor to play Olympics anchor Jim McKay. Instead the director incorporates the actual footage of McKay relaying the story as it came to him. It’s hard to imagine even the best of thespians replicating the power of McKay’s faithful announcements, and Fehlbaum and company seamlessly replicate what the people in the control booth might have been feeding him.

The movie also acknowledges that sometimes doing a good job isn’t always satisfying. Perhaps we don’t get more coverage of the kind ABC Sports provided is because tragedies like the one in September 5 affect the witnesses as well as the participants. Benesch’s turn as Gebhardt is especially moving because she and other Germans hoped the games would be a way for Germans to atone for their homicidal tyranny.

If September 5 is a fascinating look at the past, it’s also a chilly reminder of how terrorism hasn’t gone away and why we need alert and capable people to cover it.

“September 5” receives ♣♣♣♣ out of 5.