5 Movies To Watch If You Like Timothée Chalamet's Marty Supreme

The pursuit of perfection is a heady and fascinating topic, which is probably why this journey is the central focus of so many movies, TV shows, and stories across different mediums. That's certainly true of "Marty Supreme," the feel-bad movie of 2025 directed by Josh Safdie and written by Ronald Bronstein, which stars Timothée Chalamet as Marty Mauser, an aspiring ping-pong world champion who leaves a path of ruin in his wake no matter where he goes.

To say Marty is a personal and professional wrecking ball is an understatement; across Safdie's two-and-a-half-hour movie, Marty abandons his pregnant lover Rachel (Odessa A'Zion), steals money from his uncle Murray (Larry "Ratso" Sloman), and just generally wreaks havoc on anyone who dares to cross his path. (About an hour into "Marty Supreme," I was overcome with a strong desire to kill Marty Mauser with a hammer; what I mean by this is that Chalamet did a great job.) So why does Marty do these horrible things? He's overcome with an overwhelming need to become the best ping-pong player in the world, even if that means facing off against world champion Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi). Perfection, Marty learns, won't come easy.

Chalamet didn't take home the Oscar for leading actor in a motion picture that he so clearly desires — he was ultimately edged out by Michael B. Jordan's astounding dual performance as trickster twins in "Sinners" — but "Marty Supreme" became an instant classic in the young actor's oeuvre. So what stressful, high-octane movies — or movies about people who drive themselves into a frenzy to be "perfect" — should you watch next? Try any or all of these five picks.

With Josh Safdie and his brother Benny behind the camera, "Uncut Gems" took the directing duo firmly out of the indie sphere and into the big leagues — thanks to a deeply stressful story centered around a genuinely phenomenal performance from Adam Sandler. 

Released in 2019, "Uncut Gems" focuses on Sandler's Howard Ratner, a jeweler living and working in New York City's famous "Diamond District" who's dealing with an intense gambling addiction that threatens to bankrupt him and his family. Desperate to make some extra cash to cover his debts, Howard comes up with a scheme to smuggle a massive African black opal into the United States from an illicit Ethiopian mine, but in doing so, he borrows a big chunk of change from his brother-in-law, Arno (Eric Bogosian). As Howard dodges Arno after his deadline to repay that money passes, juggles his wife Dinah (Idina Menzel) and mistress Julia (Julia Fox), and gets into a frankly bizarre situation involving real-life basketball star Kevin Garnett and Garnett's championship ring, the tension grows, and the stakes get higher and higher.

"Uncut Gems" is both brilliant and borderline unwatchable; the movie as a whole feels like a heart attack in real time. Don't let me and my weak constitution talk you out of "Uncut Gems," though — Sandler is enthralling, and the build-up of this movie put Josh Safdie on a perfect path to "Marty Supreme." Maybe don't watch these two movies on the same day, though. Might not be good for your blood pressure.

Before he struck gold with "La La Land," writer-director Damien Chazelle broke onto the scene in a big way with "Whiplash," a story about a young drummer named Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller) who finds himself tormented by one of his instructors. When Andrew gets into the prestigious and fictional Shaffer Conservatory in New York City at just 19 years old, he's elated ... until he meets Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), who conducts a jazz ensemble at Shaffer that's widely considered the best performance group in the entire school. Desperate to find a spot in Fletcher's ensemble, Andrew becomes an alternate for the existing drummer, only to realize that Fletcher employs dangerous and even abusive tactics to "teach" his students — and Andrew finds that out firsthand when Fletcher has Andrew fill in for the drummer and becomes incandescent with rage over Andrew's rendition of Hank Levy's standard "Whiplash."

Simmons, who makes Fletcher one of the most terrifying movie villains in recent memory, won an Oscar for his brutal and grandiloquent performance, and Teller is in fine form as a young man whose desire to become a "great drummer" at any cost absolutely derails every aspect of his life. Chazelle also smartly uses a drum-centered soundtrack to up the stress level throughout "Whiplash," and it'll get you sweating even if you've never picked up a drumstick in your life. Just try to imagine Simmons saying "not my tempo" without involuntarily shuddering a little. Bet you can't!

Written by "Marty Supreme" scribe Ronald Bronstein and co-directed by Benny and Josh Safdie, "Good Time," which hit theaters in 2017, is yet another entry into the "guy tries to accomplish something and messes absolutely everything up" canon. Set, like their other movies, in New York City, "Good Time" introduces audiences to Robert Pattinson's Constantine "Connie" Nikas as his brother Nick (Benny Safdie) meets a court-ordered therapist, Peter (Peter Verby), to figure out why he has such violent and seemingly uncontrollable impulses. 

Before they can get to the heart of the matter, Connie helps Nick escape, and the two almost immediately rob a bank. When Nick is arrested at the scene, but Connie manages to get away, he's determined to track down his brother and save him by any means necessary — but as Connie tries to get Nick out of Rikers Island, the cops are hot on his tail too.

Pattinson — a wonderfully quirky and intentionally twitchy actor who also happens to love doing a silly voice on-screen — is perfectly cast in "Good Time," and it's easy to see how a character like Marty Mauser grew out of one like Connie Nikas. If, somehow, "Marty Supreme" and "Uncut Gems" haven't kicked your stress levels into high gear, definitely queue up "Good Time" for your next watch.

I'm still personally really mad at the Academy for completely snubbing Luda Guadagnino's 2024 hit "Challengers," but that's their problem — and this sweaty, stressful, sexy, and spectacular movie will live on forever. Penned by Justin Kuritzkes, the movie forms a love triangle for the ages between tennis wunderkind Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) and her two would-be suitors, Patrick Zweig (Josh O'Connor) and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), all of whom meet as teenagers training to be tennis stars. 

When Tashi suffers a career-ending injury before she can even go pro, she puts all of her energy into supporting and effectively controlling Art's professional tennis career, pushing him to play better and harder at every turn ... and when she enrolls him in a "Challenger event" in New Rochelle, New York, they're both surprised to see him face off against Patrick. Suddenly thrown back together, the trio has to figure out how to coexist — and along the way, Guadagnino uses a non-linear structure to explain Tashi, Art, and Patrick's journey. 

Thanks to a thumping score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (which itself was Oscar-worthy), Guadagnino's tightly controlled direction (and some sequences where he really lets loose, like the one where the camera is the tennis ball), and simply striking cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, "Challengers" isn't just a tightly-wound, stress-inducing movie about being the best of the best at any cost. It's also one of the best movies of 2024, and if you somehow haven't enjoyed the pleasures of "Challengers" just yet, I'm actually a little jealous of you. Come for the cool camera work and stay for the churro scene.

Nobody would ever call any of Darren Aronofsky's movies "relaxing," and his 2010 psychological drama "Black Swan" is no exception. Natalie Portman stars in this tour de force as Nina Sayers, a dancer at the New York City Ballet who sees an opportunity to rise above her station when the company's artistic director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), reveals he's looking for an ingenue to dance the dual roles in "Swan Lake." (For the uninitiated, the dancer who leads "Swan Lake" has to contain multitudes and play both Odette, the sweet and pure White Swan, and Odile, the devious and sinister Black Swan.) Though Thomas clearly doubts that Nina has the emotional depth to the Black Swan, he does recognize that her general naïvete works perfectly for the White Swan — and Nina wins the role, delighting her former dancer mother Erica (Barbara Hershey).

Enter Lily (Mila Kunis), a charismatic, charming, and preternaturally talented young dancer who comes out of nowhere and seemingly starts challenging Nina's status as the star of the show. Portman won her first Oscar for playing Nina, and it's easy to see why; Aronofsky puts his leading lady through hell as she tries to evade her mother's most overprotective impulses, parties with Lily, and strives to find perfection in her performance at absolutely any cost. "Black Swan" is the most horror-adjacent movie on this list by quite a long shot — in fact, I'd argue that some of the body-horror scenes are just downright scary, to say nothing of Winona Ryder's astounding and terrifying turn as former prima ballerina Elizabeth "Beth" MacIntyre — but if you're looking for a movie about a tightly-wound, stressed out person who wants to be the best, check it out.

As for "Marty Supreme," it's streaming on HBO Max now.