Anora
Story Stream
'Anora' and the Pain and Power of Being Sexy March 05, 2025
Hollywood has always loved a hooker, so long as she has a heart of gold.The history of prostitutes in film is one in which the prostitute’s depth of character is portrayed as ironic, surprising, even tragic, given her line of work. She’s usually fall...
Sean Baker’s American Dreams March 04, 2025
At last night’s Oscars ceremony, Mikey Madison was dressed like a winner. The star of Sean Baker’s Anora wore a pink Dior gown, a wink, perhaps, to this one Audrey Hepburn wears in Funny Face, and to Gwyneth Paltrow, a fellow Best Actress winner. In ...
The Winners and Losers of the 2025 Oscars March 04, 2025
Winner: Conan O’BrienAs a longtime Conan-head, I was hoping the comedian would bring some of his old late-night flair to his first Academy Awards hosting gig. Within minutes, Conan delivered, parodying The Substance by emerging out of Demi Moore’s bo...
Anora is a Movie about Marriage March 03, 2025
You could make the case that Anora, Sean Baker’s critically-acclaimed anti-Cinderella story, is a movie about exploitation. The protagonist, after all, is a Brighton Beach sex worker....
Anora’s Body and Soul January 27, 2025
Sean Baker’s “Anora,” which recently won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and is a strong Oscar contender, is not an easy film but rather a complicated jumble of conflicting themes, ideas, and tones. It’s also the sort of movie your mom tol...
How the Academy Awards Adapted to Catastrophe January 24, 2025
Until two weeks ago, Oscar pundits were describing this awards season as “weird.” Unlike last year’s slate, dominated by Barbenheimer, the new crop of contenders had been thinned out by the actors’ and writers’ strikes, leaving room for such polarizi...
Riches & Honor December 04, 2024
In a plutocracy, it isn’t just the wealthy but wealth itself that rules. This is both because the wealthy are themselves controlled—perhaps more than anyone else—by their money, and because even in the places where the wealthy do not exert direct con...
“Anora,” an American Fantasia November 08, 2024
It’s something of a cliché that married men run off with strippers to escape the sexless banality of their domestic lives. Yet the fantasy can work both ways; a wealthy john can fulfill the dream of material comfort and health insurance. Both sides s...
The 49 Best Movies of 2024 (So Far) November 07, 2024
We’re just a few days into November, and already I’m feeling thankful. At the moment, my gratitude goes to Mikey Madison and Mark Eydelshteyn, who shine and pop like fireworks in Sean Baker’s whirlwind New York love story Anora; Conner O’Malley, Eric...
From Russia with Lust October 31, 2024
Sean Baker is fastidious about research, plunging himself into the milieu of whatever he happens to be making a movie about. And yes, he knows how that looks. “People online are like, ‘Oh, Sean is such a horndog! That’s the only reason he makes those...
