Is 'Anora' Too Funny To Win Best Picture?
#294: "Anora," "Chef's Table: Noodles," "To Have And Have Not," "They Cloned Tyrone"
Edition 294:
Hey movie lovers!
This week: Can you really believe a comedy about an escort can win Best Picture? I can’t. But that doesn’t mean Anora isn’t one of the best movies of the year. Then I’ll implore you to check out a Bogie & Bacall classic, and the last time a Netflix movie really impressed me. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” the movie I ACTUALLY think will win Best Picture.
Anora
Any of my friends can tell you that one of my enduring mottos is “keep sports dumb,” the idea being that an excess of information and scholarship around something meant to be fun kind of ruins it. I feel the same way about the Oscars. Each awards campaign has been so Moneyball-ed, from which festival a movie debuts at to how many theaters it appears in, for how many weeks, all to construct a narrative that will sway voters…it kinda misses the point, which is the movie itself.
There’s no better example of that this season than Anora, the new movie from indie darling director Sean Baker, who turned heads by shooting Tangerine on an iPhone, then drew awards attention for The Florida Project, and critical plaudits for Red Rocket, all of which focused on low income populations with a special soft spot for sex workers.
This movie represents a significant step up for Baker in terms of budget and ambition. Our titular character, a very Baker-esque protagonist who works as a stripper at a New York City club, agrees to be an escort for the son of a billionaire Russian oligarch, who is living in his father’s mansion and treating America like his personal playground.
In a fit of drunken stupor, the nepo baby professes his love for Anora and the two elope at a Las Vegas chapel, which as you can imagine causes all kinds of problems up to an including international diplomacy.
It’s an incredibly unusual movie to be polling as a Best Picture frontrunner (the current odds-on favorite in most books), not just because of its premise but also because of its execution — it’s chaotic, profane, and super funny.
This movie might honestly be the funniest 2024 release I’ve seen all year, to the point where I almost wonder if Academy voters could seriously consider bestowing it with their most prestigious honor. Unless you count Everything Everywhere All At Once, there’s really never been a movie with this many laughs that has won Best Picture (and surely not one with this many sex scenes).
But because this movie won the Palm d’Or at the Cannes festival, a full-blown campaign began in earnest, hoping to turn the comedy detriment into an underdog status that has can be narrativized into an advantage in our over-intellectualized awards season.
Absolutely none of that has anything to do with the fact that this is a really good movie. It’s got three distinct parts — first, a Pretty Woman style romance, then an Uncut Gems style non-stop thriller, and a third act that’s harder to define but equally compelling.
Rather than let the tension simmer to a boiling point and then explode, Baker throws the brakes on the fast pacing and slowly releases the tension in a way that maximizes the dread and honestly pain of Anora as she gets handled like an accessory by those who have more money and power than she does.
The not-so-subtle message here is that if you’re poor, you’re powerless against the rich people who can do whatever they want. It’s sobering, but somehow manages to be hopeful at the same time.
All three of those distinctly different movie phases work because they all have Mikey Madison at the center of them, in a star-making performance so powerful it will likely launch her into both Oscar contention and movie star status. She bares it all (literally…many times) and definitely fuels the majority the story’s frenetic energy, but she also plays the melancholy and emotional nuance extremely well.
Of course, it may be a while before you see this movie. There’s the strategy again. This movie opened on exactly six screens this weekend, recording the highest per-screen average of any movie this year, no doubt a ploy to build hype.
We’ll certainly be talking more about it as awards season approaches, and hopefully when more people get a chance to watch it we can maybe revisit because there’s a lot more to chew on when we can do spoilers! Keep an eye out.
Something New
Chef’s Table: Noodles (Netflix): I’m a simple man of simple tastes, ok? I will always and forever click on anything if I see in the preview clip soaring visuals of Italy and beautiful plates of pasta. “Chef’s Table” has bee providing reliable food porn for years now, and while it’s definitely reasonable to roll one’s eyes at just how earnestly, and reverentially, the show takes its chefs, somehow in each episode I end up being won over by the passion and dedication that each of them shows to their craft. I watched the Evan Funke episode (I’ve gotten the chance to eat at one of his Los Angeles restaurants) and the Pepe Guida episode (Italy!) and both were incredibly satisfying and relaxing.
Something Old
To Have And Have Not (1944, $VOD): Imagine making a movie back in the “golden age” of Hollywood, when there had only been like, what, a couple hundred movies ever made? And in the studio system you could churn these things out on an assembly line. So when something like Casablanca hits in 1942 (no one in the making of that movie would’ve guessed it would be an all-timer), you can go make another movie about an American living overseas who remains stubbornly neutral about World War II until he falls in love with a girl who softens his cynicism (same plot!).
That’s ungenerous for this movie though, considering it’s based on a novel by Ernest Hemingway (Nobel Prize winner), adapted by William Faulkner (Nobel Prize winner), directed by Howard Hawks (director of His Girl Friday, The Big Sleep, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Rio Bravo), and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, the greatest on-screen romantic duo in cinema history. Bogie and Bacall’s chemistry is sizzling, and for any fans of Casablanca out there, this movie scratches much of the same itch in terms of timeless romance, clever comedy and straightforward heroism.
Something To Stream
They Cloned Tyrone (Netflix): I know this isn’t strictly speaking a horror movie, but I’m not strictly speaking a horror aficionado, so my contribution to spooky season is to remind you of this creepy comedy from last year, which stars Jamie Foxx, John Boyega and Teyonah Parris as a pimp, a drug dealer and a prostitute (respectively) who stumble upon a a Get Out-style conspiracy where white people are running experiments on the black folks in the hood (as the title might suggest). It’s got a real Friday-style comedic energy, while also making some pretty insightful observations about who profits and really pulls the strings (namely, white-owned brands marketing to stereotypes). Big recommend from me.
Trailer Watch: The Brutalist
So this is the biggest Best Picture competition for Anora, and although this trailer doesn’t show much, it definitely gives us enough to see that this movie is Oscars catnip. An epic family drama about American immigrants? In period costumes?? Starring Adrien Brody?!? I’m sorry but if this movie is good I just don’t see any way it doesn’t beat out that silly ol’ comedy about a sex worker.