Anora (2024)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on February 22, 2025 @ tonymacklin.net.

Anora could be subtitled WTF.

For a long time I've avoided reviewing Anora, the indie film that has gotten 6 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Direction and Best Original Screenplay, and Best Actress.

I didn't want to get in front of the gushing horde of reviewers that give the film 93% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. But that's Rotten Tomatoes. I suspect and hope that there are viewers that may appreciate a contrary position.

I found the film loud, grating, smug, and irritating. Indie director/writer Sean Baker has been compared to indie director John Cassavettes. I knew John Cassavettes, and Baker is no John Cassavettes.

I didn't affirm Baker's previous Tangerine (2015) although it had popular support.

But what provoked me into writing this review is Baker's Oscar-nominated screenplay for Anora. He is like a child who discovered the word "fuck," and uses some form of it ad nausem throughout his movie.

But it's not 1948 when Norman Mailer had to use "fug" in his classic novel The Naked and the Dead. Or 1977 -- almost 50 years ago, when David Mamet brought "fuck" to Broadway in his play American Buffalo. The play originally opened in Chicago in 1975.

Mamet set about to make the word "fuck" meaningless by using it again and again.

50 years have passed, but Baker still uses meaningless language. I don't like meaningless language.

One might say people talk like that. In real life they also say, "You know" and "I mean." But they don't belong in screenplays.

It's difficult to find a character you can relate to in Anora. At least, I hope it's hard.

Mikey Madison may be the favorite as Best Actress as the exotic dancer and sex worker. She yells a lot and seems to say "fuck" every other sentence.

Yuri Borisov as the bodyguard may be the Best Supporting Actor nominee with some of the least dialogue ever. But he has presence.

Anora may be representative of 2024-2025. It has amusing moments, but it's something of a grift of a movie.

It's not my cup of fucking tea.