(Credits: Far Out / YouTube still)
Sat 16 August 2025 12:30, UK
2025 is shaping up to be a big year for Josh Safdie. After years of making acclaimed feature films with his brother Benny, the young director is stepping out on his own for the first time since 2008.
His movie Marty Supreme, a sports drama based on the life of table tennis star Marty Mauser, is set to release later this year. What’s more, Benny is also dropping a sports biopic in 2025 – The Smashing Machine starring Dwayne Johnson. The brothers are going head-to-head with the same type of movie released mere months apart. This is going to be juicy.
Marty Supreme stars Timothée Chalamet in the title role and features supporting performances from Gwyneth Paltrow, Abel Ferrara, and Kevin O’Reilly, who has a great story about how he came to join the cast. Add these names to the list of stars who’ve appeared in Safide brothers movies – Robert Pattinson, Caleb Landry Jones, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Adam Sandler etc – and that’s a pretty impressive list of friends.
If all of these big names had gotten together for one film, then they might have built a cast to rival one of Safdie’s top movies. Speaking with Rotten Tomatoes, the rising star explained why he has such a deep affection for what he calls his “favourite Scorsese film… maybe the greatest film ever made.”
“Goodfellas has the capability of condensing and expanding time at the same moment. It has the ability to at once sensationalise and also criticise the actions of the characters,” he said. “You go from fearing to loving them at the same time. It has the courage to put Ray Liotta in the lead role of that film after seeing him as a supporting player in Something Wild, which is transcendent… Scorsese knew to cast the guy who doesn’t look full-on Italian, even, you know what I mean? The fact that Liotta looks like he could never be fully made. The fact that Liotta looks like a cokehead from Long Island. The casting, again, with that film, is so superior to anything ever made, really. I mean, just filling that film with what feels like real gangsters.”
Alongside Ray Liotta in the lead role of Henry Hill, Goodfellas features a stacked cast populating the shady world of the New York mafia. Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, and Paul Sorvino all play gangsters, whilst Lorraine Bracco dazzles as Hill’s wife Karen. Samuel L. Jackson makes a brief appearance, and Scorsese even snuck his own parents into the movie.
Hill not being “full-on Italian” is key to the movie’s plot. Due to his Irish blood, both he and De Niro’s Jimmy Conway can’t be ‘made’, ie fully accepted into the upper echelons of the mob. This process is reserved only for those of pure Italian blood. In reality, Liotta was abandoned as a baby, so his real heritage is unknown. However, his adoptive parents were of Italian and Scottish descent, which is pretty close to Hill’s situation.
Everyone and their mums goes on about how great Goodfellas is, but it’s a classic for a reason. Safdie’s ability to identify what makes it so good from a casting perspective is why he’s one of the most sought-after directors working today and gives us hope that he made the right choices when casting for Marty Supreme.
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