Movie Reviews
Anora | Reelviews Movie Reviews
Going into Anora, I wasn’t sure what to expect but it
certainly wasn’t a screwball comedy. Yet, following an explosively erotic, wild
twist on the Pretty Woman cliché, writer/director Sean Baker guides his
movie into an extended period of warped comedy. By the third act, he returns to
a drama-based foundation, focusing on concluding with a modicum of closure but Anora
stands out as an airy experience full of surprises (big and small), all
anchored by Mikey Madison’s tremendous performance.
Madison is a revelation as the title character, stripper
Anora “Ani” Mikheeva, who lives in Brooklyn and works in an upscale club in Manhattan.
Madison has mastered the accent and attitude of someone eking out an existence
in Ani’s circumstances. The character is bold and brassy, taking shit from no
one (including her fellow dancers) and seizing any opportunity that comes her
way. Madison is fearless, seemingly comfortable with the nudity required for (numerous)
scenes in the film’s first 45 minutes (she reportedly felt so at ease with
Baker and her co-star, Mark Eydelshteyn, that she turned down the offer of an
intimacy coordinator) and showing an admirable capacity for physical comedy
during the film’s midsection. But her most remarkable moment comes during the
final scene.
Early in Anora, Baker, who has a gift for a you-are-there
filmmaking, takes the viewer behind-the-scenes at the strip club where Anora
works, providing glimpses of how the dancers view their work. The conversations
aren’t fundamentally different from what one might hear from servers in
restaurants or performers in a stage show. This is a job. They know how to do
it and how to skirt the rules to get the best tips. Anora is willing to do a
little extra on the side (off club grounds) to make some additional cash but
she’s not cheap and doesn’t perceive herself as a prostitute. In fact, she
bristles at being called a “whore” or “hooker,” evidence to the contrary.
Her fortunes, which are illustrated briefly with a shot of
her flat, take a turn for the better when the club owner introduces her to
Vanya (Eydelshteyn), the spoiled scion of a Russian oligarch who’s looking for
a good time with a woman who can speak Russian (one of Anora’s talents). Smitten
and unsatisfied with what she offers in a VIP room, Vanya asks for a meeting at
his mansion and the two are soon negotiating a deal where she will be his
exclusive, live-in “girlfriend” for a week (she gets $15K for the job). While
on a trip to Vegas, Vanya impulsively proposes and the two return to New York
as a wedded couple. This news alarms Vanya’s Armenian handler, Toros (Karren
Karagulian), who is ordered by Vanya’s irate parents to “take care of” the
situation. When his bumbling henchmen, Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura
Borisov), arrive at the mansion, Vanya is initially stubborn and belligerent but
then runs away, leaving Anora to deal with the Three Stooges.
Vanya’s flight signals a shift in tone from the playful
romantic interaction between the newlywed couple to the comedic interactions
between Anora and her three captors. It’s a twist on O. Henry’s “Ransom of Red
Chief,” where the victim is more than the kidnappers can handle. Although this
segment probably goes on a little too long (the movie as a whole feels like it
could benefit from some trimming, mostly during the third act), it vacillates
between darkly amusing and laugh-out-loud funny. The thugs aren’t particularly menacing
and Anora never seems to be in danger. By the time Anora reaches its
final 40 minutes, the Baker shifts into a more grounded exploration of the emotional
toll of the experience on Ani.
In 2017, when Baker had his international breakthrough with The Florida Project, I remember being surprised at how engaging such a small, seemingly
simple production could be. I wrote the following: “The Florida Project feels genuine from start to finish and Baker
doesn’t wander onto a Hollywood-inspired detour despite many opportunities.” Some
of those same qualities are evident in Anora. By using handheld cameras
(but not in a way that threaten to bring on nausea) and favoring longer takes,
Baker opts for a gritty, intimate perspective to present a narrative that could
best be described as a twisted fairy tale. He navigates tonal switches and
story beats that could doom another production but which end up elevating this
one.
Anora has proven to be liked by both critics and
everyday movie-goers, at least those that give it a chance. (I saw it on its
local opening night and there were only a dozen attendees.) After winning the
Golden Palm at Cannes, it went on to capture the Audience Award at Toronto and
currently holds a 91 rating (Universal Acclaim) at Metacritic. But marketing
the film has proven tricky for distributor NEON. The movie’s essential
qualities don’t translate well to a two-minute trailer and the confusing platform
release strategy has left some viewers uncertain when it might open at a
theater near them. Here’s hoping the movie finds its audience because it’s one
of the freshest and most audacious films available in this year’s sparse
cinematic landscape.
Anora (United States, 2024)
Movie Reviews
1986 Movie Reviews – Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit | The Nerdy
by | May 9, 2026May 9, 2026 10:30 am EDT
Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1986 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.
We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1986 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1986 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.
This time around, it’s May 9, 1986, and we’re off to see Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit.
Dangerously Close
I would love to tell you what the point of this film was, but I’m not sure it knew.
An elite school has turned into a magnet school, attracting some “undesirables,” so a group of students known as The Sentinels take up policing their school, but will they go too far?
The basic plot of the film is simple enough, but there is an oddball “twist” toward the end tht served no real purpose and somehow turns the whole thing into a murder-mystery. Mysteries only work when you know you’re supposed to be solving them, and not when you’re alerted to one existing with 15 minutes left.
Decent 80s music, some stylistic shots, absolutely no substance.
Fire with Fire
Oh wait… I may want to go back and watch Dangerously Close again over this one.
Joe Fisk (Craig Sheffer) is being held at a juvenile delinquent facility close a high-end all-girls Catholic school. One day while running through the forest as part of an exercise he spots Catholic schoolgirl Lisa Taylor (Virginia Madsen) and the two fall immediately in love because… reasons.
This film is just so incredibly lazy. The ‘love story’ really can just be chalked up to ‘hormones.’
Last Resort
Once again I am baffled how Charles Grodin kept getting work so much through out the 1980s.
George Lollar (Grodin) is a salesman in Chicago in need of a vacation. He loads up the family and takes them to Club Sand, which turns out to be a swingers resort as well as surrounded by barbed wire to keep rebels out.
There are a lot of talented people in this movie such as Phil Hartman and Megan Mullally, but the film lets them down at every turn with half-baked ideas of jokes. Supposedly, Grodin rewrote nearly the entire script and I think that explains a lot about how this film feels like unfinished ideas. It’s a Frankenstein monster of a script with half-complete ideas that feel like they are from completely different movies.
Short Circuit
Lets just get this out of the way: What in the world was Fisher Stevens doing?
NOVA Laboratory has come up with a new series of military robots called S.A.I.N.T. (Strategic Artificially Intelligent Nuclear Transport). Following a successful demonstration for the military, Five is struck by an electrical surge and finds itself needing ‘input.’ After inadvertently escaping the lab, it wands into the life of Stephanie Speck (Ally Sheedy), who cares for animals and takes Five in. Dr. Newton Crosby (Steve Guttenberg) is trying to get five back, while the security team wants to destroy it.
Overall, the film is thin, but harmless. The 80s did seem to love a ‘technology being used for the wrong reasons’ theme, and this falls into that camp. What is mind-blowing, however, is Stevens as Ben Jabituya, Crosby’s assistant. Not only is he wearing brown face, but he’s doing a horrible Indian accent and later reveals he was born and raised in the U.S.
His whole character is mystifying.
Honestly, a couple of decades ago I may have recommended this movie, but it’s a definite pass now just for being offensive.
1986 Movie Reviews will continue on May 16, 2026, with Sweet Liberty and Top Gun.
By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer
Posted: May 8th, 2026 / 08:34 PM
AFFECTION movie poster | ©2026 Brainstorm Media
Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Jessica Rothe, Joseph Cross, Julianna Layne
Writer: BT Meza
Director: BT Meza
Distributor: Brainstorm Media
Release Date: May 8, 2026
AFFECTION is an odd title for this tale. While it is about a number of topics and emotions, fondness isn’t one of them. Obsession, definitely. Love, possibly. The kind of general warm fellow feelings associated with “affection”? No.
There have been a lot of movies lately in which characters – mostly women – are grappling with false identities and/or false memories imposed upon them, mostly by men.
Let us stipulate that the protagonist (Jessica Rothe) in AFFECTION is not an android or in an artificial reality. However, we can tell something is way off from the opening sequence. A car is stalled on a tree-bordered highway. Rothe’s character is lying face down on the asphalt beside it, possibly dead.
But then the young woman rises, dragging a broken ankle. She experiences a full-body seizure. Fighting to recover, she sees oncoming headlights and tries to run, only to be hit by a car.
The woman wakes up in a bed she doesn’t recognize, next to a man (Joseph Cross) she likewise is sure she’s never seen before. One big confrontation later, the man says his name is Bruce – and that the woman is his wife, Ellie.
Ellie insists that her name is Sarah Thompson, and she is married to someone else, with a son. When she sees her reflection in a mirror, she doesn’t relate to the face looking back at her.
Bruce counters that Ellie has a rare neurological condition that causes her to block out her waking life and believe her dreams are real. This is why they agreed, together, to move to this isolated house, without the kinds of interruptions that can hinder Ellie’s recovery.
The set-up is presented in a way where we share Ellie’s skepticism. But Ellie and Bruce’s little daughter Alice (Julianna Layne) immediately identifies Ellie as “Mommy!” Alice appears to be too young to be in on any kind of deception, so what is going on here?
AFFECTION eventually explains this via a helpful videotape, though it’s so convoluted that viewers watching on streaming may want to replay the sequence to make sure they understand the exposition.
Writer/director BT Meza musters a sense of menace and lurking weirdness, as well as making great use of his location.
We still have a lot of questions, many of which are still unanswered by the film’s end. It may not matter to the points AFFECTION is trying to make, but a better sense of exactly how all this started might help our investment.
As it is, despite a heroically versatile performance by Rothe, a credible and anguished turn by Cross and appealing work from Layne, we’re so busy trying to piece together what’s important and what’s not and how we’re supposed to feel about all of it that it can be hard to keep track of the action as it unfolds.
Agree or not, Meza’s arguments are lucid and illustrated clearly by AFFECTION’s events. However, the movie is structured in a way that becomes more frustrating as it goes. We comprehend it intellectually but can’t engage viscerally.
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RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — In this episode of 8News Reel Talk, digital producer Julia Broberg is joined by anchor Deanna Allbrittin and reporter Allison Williams to talk about “The Devil Wears Prada 2.”
The hosts gave their reviews and assigned the following star ratings:
Deanna: ★★★★.5
Allison: ★★★.25
Julia: ★★
To watch more livestreams and digital video content, head to the WRIC+ Originals page. You can also watch full on-demand videos on your smart TV using the WRIC+ app.
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