Joey Magidson
Welcome back to my Home Movies! This week, our latest Best Picture winner comes home, with Anora in fact immediately joining the Criterion Collection. Today also features a pair of other Criterion releases, including another Sean Baker film, while a ton of 4K re-releases hit shelves. Read on for more.
Joey’s Top Pick
Anora (Criterion Collection)
Anora was the best film of the year for me, bar none. I’ve spoken about it for months now, ever since I saw and fell in love with it at the Telluride Film Festival. There’s not anything new to say, though this Criterion honor is a nice icing on the cake, along with, you know, the Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director (for Baker), Best Actress (for Mikey Madison), Best Original Screenplay (also for Baker), and Best Film Editing (for Baker as well). I wrote about the movie’s awards run here and here, while I spoke to Baker here, Yura Borisov here, and Madison here. My Telluride rave here began like so:
Sean Baker has made a career out of de-stigmatizing sex work. He’s clearly fascinated by characters who exist, to one degree or another, on the margins of society, seen as “other” in some way. Not only does it set him apart as a storyteller, it leads to some incredibly unique works. Starlet, Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket have all established him as a poet laureate for these people. Now, with Anora, Baker has upped his game even more. In crafting his first romance, as well as leaning a bit more into plot, he’s made his fullest cinematic meal yet. This is not just the best thing I’ve seen so far at the Telluride Film Festival, it’s the best movie of the year so far.
Anora is a wild ride. It begins as Baker’s take on Pretty Woman, before evolving into something more akin to a night out thriller. After Hours has been evoked by some, as well as Cinderella by Baker himself, but none of this prepares you for the third act. If act one is comedy and romance, act two retains some of the laughs while also bringing in danger, act three takes it all home with a real sense of tragedy as well. This is an auteur fully in control of his craft.
Also Available This Week
Clean and Sober (Blu-ray)
Dirty Harry (4K)
Full Metal Jacket (4K)
Gandhi (4K)
Last Breath
Last Tango in Paris (4K)
Lethal Weapon (4K)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (4K)
Paddington in Peru
Pale Rider (4K)
Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (4K)
Rick and Morty: The Anime (TV)
Star Trek: Section 31 (TV)
Stripes (4K)
Criterion Corner
Anora
From The Criterion Collection: “Contemporary cinema’s foremost chronicler of American dreamers and schemers hustling on the margins of capitalist promise, Sean Baker, reaches new heights of mastery with this audacious anti–Cinderella story—a whirlwind neorealist screwball comedy with an aching heart. In an electric, star-is-born performance, Mikey Madison soars as Anora, an enterprising, ferociously foulmouthed Brooklyn erotic dancer and sex worker whose Prince Not-So-Charming comes along in the form of a Russian oligarch’s wild-child son (Mark Eydelshteyn). This is the beginning of a fractured fairy tale—also featuring standout performances from Karren Karagulian, Yura Borisov, and Vache Tovmasyan—that turns the cruel realities of class inside out. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, Anora confirms Baker as one of our preeminent auteurs.”
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Basquiat
From The Criterion Collection: “Julian Schnabel’s tribute to his friend and fellow painter Jean-Michel Basquiat is less a conventional biopic than an impressionistic, sensory immersion into the much-mythologized downtown-Manhattan art world of the 1980s. Jeffrey Wright, in his first lead film role, stars as the visionary artist whose rise from graffiti tagger to art star forces him to confront the glare of sudden fame, along with racism, his own struggles with addiction, and the difficulties of being self-determining and free in America. Bolstered by an ensemble cast that includes a sublime performance by David Bowie channeling Andy Warhol, Schnabel’s directorial debut—presented here in the filmmaker’s own luminous black-and-white remastering—is a profoundly expressive elegy for a radiant life cut short.”
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Prince of Broadway
From The Criterion Collection: “A raw, disarmingly moving slice of neorealism, this early-career triumph from DIY auteur Sean Baker plunges into the world of West African immigrant Lucky (Prince Adu) and his Armenian Lebanese boss Levon (Karren Karagulian), two unlikely friends who peddle knockoff designer goods in Manhattan’s wholesale district. When a long-forgotten ex forces him to take care of a young son he didn’t even know he had, Lucky must figure out how to become a father without losing his edge in the counterfeit-merch game. Capturing the chaos of urban life through expressive handheld camera work, remarkably naturalistic performances, and flashes of manic humor, Prince of Broadway is one of Baker’s most vivid explorations of the illusory nature of the American dream.”
Stay tuned for more next week…
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