What to Watch: "Köln 75," "Marty Supreme"
A sweet little tale about the making of a famous album, Josh Safdie is running brilliantly out of things to say, and a few streaming recommendations from your constant reviewer.
Happy new year, ye Watch List faithful! If you’re looking for a tonic with which to start 2026, “Köln 75” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐, 2025, $5.99 rental on Amazon and Apple TV) is a pleasant little pick-me-up: A German comedy-drama about the night in 1975 that Keith Jarrett came to the Köln Opera House and recorded what remains the best-selling solo jazz album and best-selling piano album of all time. Writer-director Ido Fluk’s film is actually about the woman who booked the concert – an 18-year-old whirlwind named Vera Brandes – and how the evening came close to not happening at all. Mala Emde plays Brandes as a bohemian fangirl entrepreneur, running a successful booking agency under the radar of her bourgeoise dentist dad (Ulrich Tukur); having heard Jarrett’s solo piano improvisations in Berlin, she’s hell-bent on bringing him to her home town.
The invaluable John Magaro (“Past Lives,” “First Cow,” “September 5”) plays Jarrett as a road-weary perfectionist with a bad back and a diva’s temperament – earned, since he is a genius – and “Köln 75” bounces back and forth between the musician and the promoter as the concert gradually nears. That’s a lopsided story structure, and occasional fourth-wall breaking and narration by Michael Chernus as an American jazz journalist add to the lack of focus. But Emde is delightful in the lead, and the movie becomes a suspense thriller toward the end, as Vera and her friends desperately turn Köln upside down looking for a Bosendorfer Imperial grand, since Jarrett refuses to play on the tinny rehearsal piano the promoter has been stuck with. Most of this story is true, as far as I can tell, and even the developments you see coming a few kilometers down the road arrive with an energy that’s infectious. The caveat? Jarrett, now 80, wouldn’t allow access to his music, so Fluk has to do some fancy playlist footwork, with Nina Simone’s cover of the Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody” bringing the movie home on the soundtrack. That’s a comedown and an unfortunate one, but you can remedy it either by turning down the sound and playing the Köln concert itself, or just put the album on after the end credits roll. In fact, I’m listening to it now.
I’m going to be spending the upcoming weeks playing catch-up with some 2025 movies I missed, as well as ducking out for a vacation someplace warm, but until then, here are some thoughts on the one movie people buttonholed me at Christmas parties to ask about.
With “Marty Supreme” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2), it’s apparent that Timothée Chalamet (above) can do anything quite well, and it’s equally apparent that Josh Safdie can do one thing extremely well. That one thing is creating portraits of charismatic asshats, which Safdie has done with his co-director brother Benny in “Heaven Knows What” (2014), “Good Time” (2017), and “Uncut Gems” (2019) and has now done on his own. Does the absence of Benny (who made his own solo shot last year with the intriguing but amorphous “The Smashing Machine”) change the dynamic? Yes, in that “Marty Supreme” seems even more the work of a brat Scorsese – I mean that as praise, I think – who wants to push his aggravating anti-heroes harder into our face while charming us with sheer filmmaking verve. When all is said and done, the movie’s an expansion of "Uncut Gems" without quite being an improvement, and it showcases a director whose talent keeps increasing even as he may be running out of things to say.
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