I'm not taking a half day off work to see Marty Supreme

Here we are, down to my last post before I reveal my 2025 rankings tomorrow.

And as much as I would have liked to have written a post called "Final movies of the ranking year with Timothee Chalamet," it's not to be. 

You see, my last movie of 2024 was A Complete Unknown, which was a strangely timed Friday night advanced screening that capped off that ranking year. Similarly, this year, Chalamet appears in Marty Supreme, which opens in Australian cinemas today.

In another year, I would have gotten in Marty with ease, because I'd have had plenty of time after work to see the movie and to adjust my in-progress rankings accordingly for this final entry. It wouldn't be until 12:30 a.m. that night, which is of course really the next day, that I'd need to finalize those rankings. 

This year, though, I am going to see David Byrne in concert tonight. It was supposed to be with my wife, but she's had to be out of town, so it will be with my younger son, who basically doesn't know any Talking Heads or David Byrne. That should be interesting. 

When I first heard about this conflict, and didn't yet know my wife was going to be out of town, I imagined going into the office today, and then meeting her at the concert site in time for David to start plucking the strings. In between the end of my workday and the start of the concert, there would be a Marty Supreme-sized window of time -- or at least, the window of time necessary for a movie of moderate length, unlike the presumably bloated 149 minutes of Marty Supreme.

But now that I have to accompany my 12-year-old into the city, there just isn't the time, and I'm not willing to take a half day off just to fit in this movie.

Yeah, that was another option. And I have actually taken days off to fit in juicy new releases on the final day, which was necessary in 2014 for Inside Llewyn Davis and Her, and in 2016 for The Hateful Eight, Carol and The Big Short. (Those are the years in which the Januarys fell, not the release years of those movies.) 

But the cost-benefit analysis seems to favor at least two movies for this to be worth it, and considering that it's something I haven't done in ten years now, it's also something I haven't considered worth it in any respect in quite some time.

And certainly not for a movie that a critic I trust said gets very repetitious and ultimately exhausting, which I might have known from the movie to which it is drawing the most direct comparisons, Uncut Gems, also directed by Josh Safdie. Will-to-power narratives where the main character has an excessive amount of arrogance are not really my bag, especially not for the price of a half day's salary. 

You can't get in every movie, but this year, I got in a higher total than any other, and that will have to be enough.