Is this what a Best Picture looks like in 2025? Like a neon draped, two-hour+ episode of "The Sopranos" smashed into an un-glamorized 'Pretty Woman" remake, ANORA is a frank, funny, jet black comedy.
But Best Picture????
Mikey Madison won a Best Actress Oscar for her role as Anora or "Ani"as she prefers to be called, a New Jersey stripper with a heart of steel.
The opening of the film shows Ani at work, offering her body to an endless parade of men in a stripclub, walking the most gullible/wealthy back to the VIP room for extra fun and $100 bills. Watching her head home to the tiny house under an elevated metro track in Jersey, it's clear that she sees her nights as a job and nothing more.
That all changes when her ability to speak Russian introduces her to 21 year old Russian Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the only son of a mega-wealthy Russian Oligarch. He invites her back to his house, a mansion that could be in the same neighborhood as Tony Soprano, but it makes Tony's house look like a box.
Ivan is obsessed with sex, drugs and video games and showers Ani with money and rich surroundings. On a whim, they head off to Vegas with their tight group of friends for a week of debauchery.
It appears he's at the Palms in their largest suite. I'd argue that a real Russian Oligarch would not be caught dead at The Palms, but I digress.... As the week comes to a close, Ivan proposes and he and Ani get married in a typical Sin City Wedding Chapel.
And all hell breaks loose.
When news of the marriage begins to hit the tabloids, noting the son of a Russian Billionaire's son has married "a prostitute", Ivan's watchers come calling.
At this point in the film, Writer/Director Sean Baker drops the gear shift into Tarantino speed, ramping up the laughs and violence for nearly the entire rest of the film.
He also casts some fantastic actors in hilarious parts.
Karren Karaguilan damn near steals the movie as Toros, the man that Ivan's parents have chosen to watch over their son in America. Karaguilan is hilarious as he watches his world spin out of control and every effort to clean Ivan's mess up before his parents arrive from Russia goes very, very wrong. His day job is one of the best jokes in the film and I won't reveal it here.
Yura Borisov plays my favorite character in the film, Igor. A sidekick hired for the day by Toros to help him track down Ani and Ivan, Borisov is the heart of the story. His reactions to the action and the dialogue flying out in all directions around him are perfectly subtle, setting up one of the best scenes near the conclusion.
Paul Weissman is hilarious as Nick, Toro's brother and hapless right hand man. Suffering from a bad concussion for the last half of the film, he's a walking disaster that only gets worse when he adds pain narcotics to the mix.
The film is a violent, profane circus and one hell of a wild ride. Where it succeeds for me is my complete inability to guess where it was going for much of its running time. Once this aspect falls away in a last act that feels badly in need of an editor, I began to feel trapped in a confined space with these lowlifes. I think you could cut out more than half of the desperate search for Ivan and improved the film greatly, but it just won the Oscar for best editing, so what the hell do I know?
I know that Ani is a star making turn for Mikey Madison. She is so palpably Jersey tough in the role, that it's hard for me to believe that's not who she really is. Watching her acceptance speech at the Academy Awards was startling. I shouldn't have been that surprised as her small role in Tarantino's "Once Upon A Time in Hollywood" as one of Charles Manson's acolytes was impactful. She's a chameleon of the highest order and gives herself to the camera full tilt in every scene.
Brandishing sex like a weapon, Baker delivers a relentless film that never blinks in its portrayal of mobsters, sex workers and the dangers of love. In the movies, when men fall in love with strippers, they're usually the ones taking the transactional moment too seriously. Baker's effectively turned that concept on its head.
I did feel like Baker was trying to out-Tarantino QT in the last half, dropping the F-bomb 479 times in a little over two hours. (Yes, someone counted for us online.) I know these people exist, but do I really want to hang out with them this long?
David Chase's "The Sopranos" always managed to find the perfect blend of explosive violence, sex, ugly motivation and human drama that gave the characters a point of connectivity. I never found that with anyone but Ani in the last half and brilliantly, Igor for the entire film.
So back to my original question, is this dark Cinderella tale packed with graphic sex and drug use what a Best Picture looks like in 2025?
According to the Academy voters, yes.
While I admire ANORA's force of nature, it wouldn't even make my Top 10 of 2024. It's intriguing and funny, but I'd never feel a desire to watch it again.
That being said, I can't wait to see what Madison and Baker do next.
I'll give it a B.
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