Two movies seen this year that I didn’t like.

Marty Supreme

A young Jewish shoe salesman in 1950s New York wants to be table tennis champion of the world.  He’s manically focussed on this goal and full of brattish self-confidence.  In fact he’s kind of the John McEnroe of the table tennis world.  It’s a long movie – 150 minutes.  I saw it with a friend who said I would have no right to write a review because I dozed off and missed bits of the plot.  This is true.  It was all so tiresome:  the convolutedness of the plot, the feverishness of the action, the harshness of the voices and the volume and speed of the frequently overlapping dialogue.  I also found Timothee Chalamet’s central character deeply annoying.  Even more annoying than John McEnroe.

The Housemaid

Millie Calloway (Sydney Sweeney), a young woman with a troubled past, becomes the live-in maid and nanny for wealthy couple Nina and Andrew (Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar) and their young daughter.   But the household harbours dark secrets.

The plot twists and turns, red herrings abound and the domestic horror cliches pile on as we grapple with questions like why does Amanda Seyfried keep having meltdowns?  Is Brandon Sklenar only here to show off his buff bod?  And who is the real baddie?  

It’s described as an erotic psychological thriller but it’s more your stock-standard Hollywood domestic monster flick with lots of gratuitous sex and rather nasty violence.  Think Fatal Attraction for the #MeToo generation.