| October 10, 2025 
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Hi, movie fans! The email showed up in our inboxes on Saturday and the speculation soon followed: The New York Film Festival had added a secret screening. What could it be? Most educated guesses landed on “Marty Supreme.” Good thing they were right: The packed crowd at Alice Tully Hall was primed for Josh Safdie’s first solo outing — a sports drama (loosely speaking) starring Timothée Chalamet as an obsessed pingpong champion in postwar New York. The reaction in the auditorium was overwhelmingly positive, but I don’t want to spoil anything. I’ll just say this is going to be a fun one to cover when it’s released in December. What else is going on in the film world? Taylor Swift unveiled a movie (also loosely speaking), “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl,” that was the undisputed box office champ over the weekend. That meant slim pickings for “The Smashing Machine,” a sports drama by the other Safdie brother, Benny. But I wouldn’t count out that film, which has Oscar prospects, especially for its lead, Dwayne Johnson. As for this weekend, our critics are recommending “A House of Dynamite,” a nail-biter from Kathryn Bigelow about an unidentified missile in American airspace. Our chief critic Manohla Dargis calls it a “propulsive thriller.” Jeannette Catsoulis writes that the drama “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” from Mary Bronstein, is “a howl of maternal desperation spiked with jagged humor.” It stars Rose Byrne delivering a “remarkable performance” as a stressed-out mother with a mysteriously ill daughter. On the nonfiction front, Ben Kenigsberg has strong praise for “Israel Palestine on Swedish Television 1958-1989,” writing that “it’s great TV and an excellent documentary.” Alissa Wilkinson isn’t as high on “John Candy: I Like Me,” which she describes as “a standard-issue celebrity documentary.” But she adds that it’s worth catching for the archival footage we might never get to see otherwise. Whatever you decide to watch, enjoy the movies! |
