Gurl, you didn’t earn it…or maybe you did. I don’t even know anymore.

I’m several months behind on addressing last year’s “Anora,” but who cares?  It isn’t like it is, or ever was, a movie of the times.  It’s not like this confounding cinematic release is a contemporary, popular, cool, hip, with-it, groovy, bitchin’, of-the-moment pop-culture phenomenon that reflected the cultural and entertainment zeitgeist of 2024 (I don’t even think there’s been a cultural and entertainment zeitgeist since about 2011).  This waste of time is such a waste of time for me to even write about, but I would be remiss in my literary and critical duties if I didn’t hurl a massive caveat at you readers in the form of this bit of writing.  There are several other topics I’m working on right now, but since I’m actually forcing myself to sit at my laptop and write at present–I really, really need a break, and it has nothing to do with motivation so much as it has to do with being entirely sick and tired of working with words; how much easier would it be to just scribble a line drawing or daub some paint or sketch a subtle figure on a slip of construction paper and call it art?–I might as well get this one out of the way.  

What was this burbling mountain of unstructured, shallow, exploitative, nonsensical, chaotic, lurid, entry-level, brain-melting dogshit that I watched on Amazon Prime? 

It may sound as though I’m swan-diving into my usual habit of impulsive and reactionary hot takes on things that don’t quite butter my toast, but did you sit through this?  Did you?  If so, did you make it until the end?  I suppose if you’re a straight guy, you most certainly did, because I don’t care how much of a complex, intellectual, educated, critically-thinking man you consider yourself to be: You most likely dug this moronic male fantasy from start to finish.  And I mean literally from start to finish, because the movie opens with the camera panning across several gyrating female asses in a strip club, and concludes with a sex worker bouncing up and down on a Russian thug’s dick in the driver’s seat of a car, thereby cementing the film’s entire raison d’etre as being softcore pornography disguised as a comed…or a dram…or a romant…actually, there’s no category or genre for this thing apart from, well, cinematic excrement.   

I’ve got to watch this thing, I can hear you mutter.  But only out of curiosity.  Only out of curiosity! Nice try, brother.  But please: Do go ahead and watch this.  When it’s over, I challenge you to tell me what the theme of the movie is, the plot, the character development, the overall message, the emotional impact, the purpose of its being funded and produced.  I will bet you the seven dollars in my wallet that you wouldn’t be able to do such a thing, but you will remember the titular character being naked in well over half of the film, and the word “fuck” in its noun, verb, and adjective forms eclipsing all of the other highly-forgettable dialogue given its unstoppable perpetuity.

I’ve seen many, many terrible movies in my time, ranging from the campy to the grotesque to the dull to the amateurish.  I haven’t really felt the need to express my feelings on them in print, apart from the 2024 horror-movie writeups I posted on this blog simply because last year was terrifically crowded with horror films and I did my best to see as many of them as I could.  A bad movie is a bad movie, and as I give it my time I’ll groan, I’ll complain to the person who might be watching it with me, I’ll shut it off, I’ll walk out if it’s truly unbearable and I’m in the cinema, and I’ll carry on and find something else.  With “Anora,” however, I forcibly strapped myself in and pushed myself to watch it in its unnecessarily two-hour-and-twenty-minute-long entirety.  Why?  Well, I decided to endure this reeking cinematic landfill because I had heard quite a bit about it, and based on what I’d heard, was gobsmacked that it won every supposedly major award at the Oscars this year.  I mean, I’m not one to care too much about paid-for trophies awarded to subpar creative excursions, and particularly not the Oscars, where–based on everything I understand–the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) is largely comprised of post-geriatric white men who probably felt something long-dormant stirring in their dusty, retired loins as soon as they pressed play on their “For Your Consideration” copy of this overflowing litterbox.  

It won Best Picture, Best Director, heck, even Best Actress, a shocking upset for Demi Moore, who had scooped up virtually every other trophy in her category during this last award season for her excellent work in “The Substance.”  The “Anora” actress, a complete nobody named Mikey Madison, somehow strolled away with the Best Actress trophy.  Who? you’re asking yourself, scratching your cheek in puzzlement.  That’s precisely the correct reaction.  She’s a nobody, and will remain that way despite winning this award for being a foul-mouthed stripper and hooker from Brooklyn.  You will never hear from her again; she will invariably fall into the same trap as Mira Sorvino, who also won an Oscar in the 90s for her aggravating portrayal of a sex worker, and who hurtled straight into obscurity.  The only thing I remember Mikey Madison from is her minor role as Susan “Sadie Mae Glutz” Atkins in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” where Leonardo DiCaprio broiled her with a flamethrower.  Her portrayal of Sadie, incidentally, annoyed me to no end when I watched it (I guess despite being directed to act that way by Tarantino), because if you know anything about the now-dead Susan Atkins, she had very creepy, very disturbing little-girl mannerisms and voice and behaved nothing like this overwrought theatre-kid nonsense.  

The fact the movie itself is called “Anora” is preposterous.  It’s the name of the female lead, who goes by “Annie” throughout the movie (and there’s already been a movie called “Annie” that was my favourite when I was a seven-year old girl, but seen through present-day eyes, is pretty disturbing in the way director John Huston had an overt little-girl panty fetish), but the only films I know that call themselves after the name of the main protagonist offer a character laden with complexity, depth, a backstory, and an ability to make the viewers align themselves with him or her in some capacity.  Jerry Maguire.  Erin Brockovich.  Billy Elliott.  John Wick.  Annie Hall.  Rocky.  Why, Forrest Gump, while we’re here.  But this?  Why is it named after the female lead?  There is absolutely no there there.  Nothing.  She’s the flimsiest, most paper-thin, underdeveloped character I’ve seen in a long time, garnering no sympathy from the audience (that’s me, in this case) and offering absolutely nothing in the way of showing us–or even flat-out explaining–who she is and why she is the way she is.    

“She’s a nuanced, layered character,” says Mikey Madison on Q with Tom Power, doing her soft-spoken best to give meaning to a role that, indisputably, actually lacked all nuance, all layers, and gave us zilch apart from a brash, uncouth, avaricious, utterly vacuous sex worker with no motivations or identity.  We don’t know who Anora–er, that should be Annie– is at all.  We are offered nothing about her upbringing, her general background, her family situation, her history, her decision-making, her education or lack thereof, her clearly damaged thought processes, her prospects for the future.  We only have a twentysomething girl who works at a strip club in New York City, does some prostitution on the side, and has a vocabulary limited to endless curse-word exclamations.  As someone who is no stranger to swearing (hey, it balances out my verbal eloquence), even I was exhausted and taken aback by the movie’s relentless, unimaginative torrent of the words “fuck,” “fuckin,” and their more sophisticated four-syllable pejorative sibling, “motherfucker.”    

I’m going to roll this back a little bit and start again: Let’s kick this off with the words of someone anonymous on an obscure gay gossip site that I’ve been reading for several years, and who appears to have one of the only sane, lucid takes on this film that I’ve yet encountered:

Anora was a sleazy fake. A male director who saw a pretty young woman in another film and decided he had to write a movie for her. And while he’s at it, write a movie full of opportunities for this young woman to show as much flesh as possible and writhe around simulating sex. The sexist male gaze that has been a part of American films forever. And, of course, a final scene in the film where our young damsel-in-much-distress is ‘saved’ by the hard penis of a gentle thug. Anora was all about Sean Baker creating a place for this young actress he’s hot for to spend hours in front of him with no clothes on. But, no…he must be progressive and cool because he thanked all the sex workers in his Oscars speech. Gimme a break.

That was entirely accurate, and admirably restrained in its assessment.  This is because, as I indicated earlier, the very first scene of this movie is that of several gyrating female asses: We’re right in there, right out of the gate, a series of faceless female bodies shoving their bodies into Sean Baker’s salivating camera while bad music blares in the background.  The camera pans across the sight of young women with their rear ends high in the air, grinding and pumping as they give lap dances to enthusiastic male customers, artless depictions of strippers simulating sex on desperate male customers with no unique choreography, no clever cinematography, no foreshadowing of how we might be eventually taken for a complicated, unpredictable ride for the next two hours.  Nope!  The final figure in this assembly line of, er, exotic dancers is our paper-cutout of a character Anora–sorry, Annie–who is switching things up a bit by facing the camera, her back to the male customer, undulating her thong-clad young body against him while seemingly having a great time.  This is the only carefully-edited clip of that I could find on the ‘Tube, as it is entirely graphic in its original form, and we know that YouTube sternly censors any and all nudity but cheerfully gives the thumbs-up to mentally-ill, obese women who cram garbage into their mouths for money.  

Does Annie actually hate this line of work?  Do we get any indication that she’s operating from a place of trauma and desperation, that she is trapped here, that she cries into her pillow at night, that she has a goal outside of stripping and is stockpiling every grimy nickel in order to split the country or go to school and make something of her life?  Nope again!  For the entire movie, Annie appears to love stripping and enticing patrons into paying for private lap dances in the back, and demonstrates absolutely no reservations or concerns about accepting offers to make private house calls in order to get paid for sex.

Sean Baker, the voyeuristic, inexcusably bad writer-director who has apparently made several films prior to this one about his main obsession in life (sex workers), claims that he saw Mikey Madison in the aforementioned Quentin Tarantino film and something from the “Scream” franchise and decided, doggone it, he needed to write a movie with her as the perennially-naked female lead!  As Mikey herself has confirmed a few times, she didn’t need to audition or do a cold read-through or screen test, which is completely unheard-of unless you’re a successful household name; no, Baker just knew that Mikey Madison was the perfect thespian to take such a spiritually-exhausting, multifaceted role and show her tits and ass classically-trained acting chops to an artistically-ravenous audience.  It had zero to do with the fact that he wanted to film as many scenes as possible of this young woman–whom he’s clearly hot for–screaming, stripping, and debasing herself, because what struggling actress wouldn’t take the gift of lead role in a film?  Any film?  

Look at this man on the left, the sensitive, bashful artiste with honourable intentions, accompanied by his ingenue whose celluloid gifts and talents he wanted nothing more than to share with the world.  

Let’s get to what the movie is “about.”   You are welcome in advance, by the way, because I sacrificed 2.5 hours of life so you wouldn’t have to:

A very young woman named Anora (sigh…Annie) works at a strip club.  She gives lots of private lap dances.  When she’s finished work in the morning, she takes the subway back to Brooklyn, where she shares a house with another girl we know nothing about, apart from the fact that she asks Annie if she picked up any milk on her way home.  Annie goes to work again, and an extremely skinny, hyperactive Russian kid is at the club and seems to take a liking to her.  They exchange numbers, and the following day he contacts her to come to his house somewhere in an outer borough.  She does, and the house turns out to be an enormous, modern mansion.  They smoke dope and have lots of jackrabbit sex and he gives her money.  He also throws a big New Year’s party and invites Annie, which she enthusiastically attends with a friend of hers.  More paid sex.  

The Russian kid, named Ivan (or Vanya), asks her to hang out with him for a week, and he’ll pay her several thousand dollars.  Geez, this is just like Richard Gere propositioning Julia Roberts in that other star-making movie, except Julia didn’t have to take off every stitch of her clothing and pretend to get endlessly pounded by a scrawny foreigner!  Vanya tells Annie that he has so much dough because his father is an extremely wealthy businessman in Russia, and shows her internet proof. 

Vanya and Annie do very little during the first couple of days apart from having bad sex that both of them seem to think is good (I doubt this is intentional; I think scumbag writer-director Sean Baker is, in all likelihood, an absolutely terrible lover who spends whatever income he makes on prostitutes and strippers), though she does watch him play video games quite a bit.  

As the two bask in a mutually-satisfying postcoital glow, it’s clear that having the matchstick Vanya give it to Annie for three ADHD minutes would be the most heated session of nerve-shredding lust in anyone’s lifetime.   

During her stay with the attention-span-challenged brat Vanya, personality-impaired Annie is whisked off to Vegas for an impromptu trip with him and some of his friends, also of Russian background.  They gamble, they party, they drink, they get up to Vegas hijinks as only the Vegas-visiting can do.  While lolling about in the hotel bed, the two star crossed lovers spontaneously decide to get married, ostensibly so Vanya can stay in the USA or something (I forget exactly why, but I think this is it).  Annie agrees to this idea, and they hit one of those tacky wedding chapels to make things official.   

Again, we have no inner dialogue, no conversations between Annie and a pal to talk about this, no hesitation or suspicion or red flags on her end, just an empty shell of a strippin’ girl who makes a stupid decision.  We don’t even have a montage of Annie running around her imagination–what imagination?–picturing designer clothing or well-dressed children or high-society life or yachts or paid servants, thereby showing her superficial intentions.  Nope yet again!  Just surface-level actions with zero revealed as to why Annie does what she does, and why she is who she is: A hollow, soulless hank of hair and perpetually-exposed flesh with a severely limited vocabulary and a grating Brooklyn accent.  

Did she marry him so she could pull herself out of a bad situation?  I don’t think so; she appears to love her job.  Did she marry him because they were in true love?  This isn’t possible, since they’ve known each other for a few days and haven’t swapped so much as a significant look, never mind an introspective moment of conversation.  Did she marry him because the sex is hotter than a volcanic pool?  Watch the movie and tell me if you’d peel off your panties for this kid; I guarantee you’d rather give J.D. Vance a whirl.  

They marry and go back to the mansion somewhere in New York to sit around, screw, and play video games, when we learn that Vanya’s mother and oligarch father caught wind of the fact that their son had a spontaneous wedding to a, well, a hooker, really.  They send a couple of their heavies over to the mansion, an Armenian cleaner-upper and a Russian thug named Igor, in order to collect Vanya and bring him back to Russia.  Vanya throws tantrum after tantrum while Annie, wearing only a T-shirt, stands around uttering three-word sentences and questions, all of which contain some form of the word “fuck.”  Vanya eventually splits the scene, running like an escaped convict out the front door and leaving the screeching Annie behind with the heavies.  This might be the first of a few instances in which Annie calls the silent giant Igor a “pussy-ass faggot,” if memory serves.  Terrific command of words, this girl.

A noisy fight sequence ensues in the mansion wherein the two men try to subdue Annie, and–

Are you with me still?  Does this sound like a great, award-worthy film so far?  Okay.  Congratulations for sticking with me through this agonizing recap.  Moving along…

After plenty of top-lung screaming on Annie’s end, she is restrained, and the men decide she needs to come with them to find Vanya.  This results in what must be at least thirty or forty minutes of screen time consisting of them driving around, stomping through Coney Island, interrogating passers-by and acquaintances, and calling Vanya’s cell phone, all to no avail.  Meanwhile, his parents make an emergency trip over in their private jet, where they meet up with the shady search party and snub Annie entirely, who is just trying to shake their hand and introduce herself eagerly as the wife, knowing they will adore and accept her as part of the family since she and Vanya are in love.  

She is seriously this dumb.  Or is she naive?  No, she’s completely dumb.  She is a dumb, stoopid, irredeemable, empty character.

The mother gives Annie all sorts of dismissive looks and words, telling her that they are getting divorced, and that is that.  Annie refuses, saying that she and Vanya are in love, in love, and she is his wife.  Everyone tries to explain to Annie that Vanya is immature, spoiled, thoughtless, and irresponsible, and she is yet another end product of this behaviour; in fact, the bedroom they’ve been boinking in for the last week isn’t actually his, it belongs to his parents when they’re in town.  His bedroom is the one down the hall “with the spaceships on the wall.”  He’s a little boy, for God’s sakes!  Annie still won’t accept their terms, but lord almighty, she still has to accompany them to city hall against her will so she can grant a divorce.  The legal team there says that since they got married in Vegas, they need to have a Nevada divorce.  Boy howdy, are his parents mad!

Meanwhile, during this time, the one-word thug Igor is treating Annie with gentleness and respect, clearly feeling pity or compassion or lust for this top-volume, crass, numbskulled sex worker who enjoys calling him a “pussy-ass faggot.”  I can’t remember what happens after this, except that Vanya is eventually located at the very strip club where they met (Annie’s place of employment), and he is hauled away in a state more intoxicated than I think I have ever been, but since this kid has the body-fat percentage of Karen Carpenter circa 1982, I’m sure he had a couple of Bud Lights and blacked out.

The divorce is granted and Igor drops Annie back off at her house in Brooklyn.  Something comes over her, and she decides to straddle his lap while the car is in park and ride him like a twenty-five cent mechanical supermarket pony.  Then she starts crying.  Then they hug.  And that’s it: That is the end of the entire movie.  

It isn’t even a quirky indie film, the likes of which we were lucky enough to have been bombarded with during the wonderful 90s.  It isn’t a comedy, it isn’t a drama, it isn’t really pornography, it isn’t a character study (ha, ha!), it isn’t anything except a completely obscene, cheap excuse for Sean Baker to string together countless scenes of Mikey Madison without her clothes on, dancing on laps and miming intercourse with strange men.  Mikey, at twenty-six, is young enough to be my daughter–which could be depressing, but I am legitimately starting to enjoy the experience and lessons learned at my age, not to mention the thrill of reinventing oneself at nearly fifty–and I’ve made some of the worst career moves anyone could ever dream of, without a doubt.  However, “Anora” can’t possibly be something she is proud of.  Nobody cared about this movie; nobody knew who she was before it, and I am almost certain it will stay this way despite the gold statue she won for totally humiliating herself onscreen.  Marisa Tomei also won an Oscar for acting obnoxious with a Brooklyn accent many decades ago, and what happened to her after that?  Exactly.  

In fact, as I was cringing throughout this ludicrous trash that swiftly raised the question of how it was financed at all, I couldn’t help but think of her parents.  She is apparently the good Jewish daughter of two practicing psychologists, and was probably very proud that she landed the lead role in a movie she didn’t even have to work for.  So what happened at the movie’s premiere?  Did she haul mom and dad along with her?  Did she see the final cut before the premiere?  Did she warn her parents?  Did they know what she had signed up for, and were there intensive head-shrinking sessions with their little girl prior to filming?  Gadzooks, what were these two psychologists thinking as they watched their daughter screech and parade around naked and wiggle on top of men and provide the audience with a character who is, at best, forgettable, and at worst, rage-inducing?  I can’t even watch the intimate scene in “An American Werewolf in London” if my parents are in the same room as me.  David Naughton is slowly kissing his way down Jenny Agutter’s sexy body to the promised land?  There I am, off to their kitchen to refresh my fizzy water for an hour, so long as I don’t miss one of the most superb lines in any movie, ever.

I wish I were joking when I say that there are numerous videos on YouTube called “The Ending of Anora, Explained.”  This is how low people’s standards have sunk for entertainment, or at least, how fervently people are craving meaning in a world where there no longer appears to be any.  

Anyway, that’s “Anora.”  As I check the word count, I see I’m at nearly 6,000 here, writing about something I cannot stand.  That can’t be normal.  Maybe I need to call up Mikey Madison’s parents, Dr. and Dr. Rosberg, and figure out what my problem is.  I guess I’ve just been delaying some of the other essays I started, one of which is all about Jesus, of all people.  However, this was a pretty good lead-in to that piece, which I hope to finish soon, but not before another one is completed, I’m sure.  The prostitute-to-prophet pipeline is, thankfully, a lot shorter than I thought.

Love

Nadya.

(Oh, and PayPal is still @NadyaVera27 if you want to donate to this cause and the time I’m going to be putting towards a YouTube channel, which hopefully doesn’t edge out this blog. Might as well throw this shamelessly out there, because basically everyone online does it, and I spend a ton of my own time working on writing…time that is becoming more of a scarcity. Big thanks to those who have donated. ❤️)