Anora
I didn't get a chance to see Sean Baker's Anora before the Academy Awards on March 2nd and when it sweeped with Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Original Screenplay I was champing at the bit to see it. I think going into it with high expectations hurt my viewing of it a tiny bit. Don't get me wrong, it's a very good movie...but I can't say it blew me away.
Anora is about a 23-year old stripper/escort, Anora "Ani" Mikheeva, who meets 21 year old Ivan "Vanya" Zakharov at the strip club she works at. When he asks if she "works outside the club", she agrees to meet him at his insanely huge mansion and the two begin a relationship that starts as purely transactional but seems to deepen into something more.
After a glamourous sex-and-drug-filled week in Vegas, Vanya reveals that his parents are making him return to Russia to start working for the family (it's unclear what exactly his family does, but it's very clear that they are oligarchs of some sort and have more money than God). On an impulse, Ani and Vanya decide to get married at one of those Vegas chapels so that Vanya doesn't have to leave. And they live happily ever after! The end!
LOL. Of course not. When Vanya's parents find out what happened, they send Vanya's godfather and some toughs to the mansion (which is, of course, owned not by Vanya, but by his parents) to force the couple to annul the marriage. Hijinks, both funny and sad, ensue. Ani slowly comes to grips with the immaturity of the man she married. The boy she married, really, because despite being of legal age, Vanya is still just a boy under his parents' thumb.
Anora is very funny, though at times it's a lot. There is a lot of screaming and yelling, which irritated me after a while. It's also a little hard to believe that Ani, ostensibly street smart due to her line of work, wouldn't realize that marrying Vanya is an incredibly stupid idea. But then we have to also consider that she's only 23, not yet cynical about the world, and is caught up in the fantasy of wealth and star-crossed love.
If you're up for a funnier and sadder version of Pretty Woman, you'll likely enjoy Anora. Did it deserve Best Picture? In my opinion, no. But I'm not mad that it won.
Grade: A-
***
Tangerine
Immediately after finishing Anora, I watched Tangerine, which is also directed by Sean Baker and is also about sex workers...although Tangerine could not be more different than Anora. Tangerine is a very short, slice-of-life type of film about Sin-Dee Rella, a Black, transgender sex worker who is recently released from a month in prison and finds out that her pimp/boyfriend, Chester, is cheating on her. She goes on a quest to find the "fish" (cisgender woman) Chester cheated with and confront both of them.
Hijinks ensue. This is kind of Baker's whole vibe: hijinks ensuing.
Tangerine is VERY funny and outrageous. It's interesting to compare it to Anora, which is also about a sex worker, but a higher end, white, cis sex worker. Sin-Dee Rella (played wonderfully by Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and her friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor) are basically homeless. They are streetwalkers. One bad day could mean ruin for them. Yet, they're also deeply protective of one another. When Sin-Dee is released from prison with 2 dollars to her name on Christmas Eve, she spends the 2 dollars on a donut that she gives to Alexandra as a Christmas gift.
Sean Baker has come under criticism for his personal politics, but also about the way he portrays sex workers. Some people feel that he looks down on them, or essentially makes his bread off of "poverty porn". I can see that angle for sure, but I also think that he gives a voice to people that many wouldn't even give the time of day to. And he avoids the "hooker with a heart of gold" stereotype, instead portraying sex workers as three-dimensional people with flaws and strengths just like anyone else. I admire his work, even if it's not perfect.
Grade: B+
***
Eve's Bayou
This film, directed by Kasi Lemmons, had been on my "to-watch" list for a long time. It wasn't what I expected at all, but I still enjoyed it. The film poster makes it look like a sultry romance, but there isn't much romance to be found in this film at all.
The movie takes place in 1960s Louisiana. Eve Batiste (played by Jurnee Smollett) is 10 years old. One evening, at a party, she accidentally catches her father, a well-respected doctor, having sex with a woman who is not his wife. This freaks Eve out and her father, Louis (played by Samuel L. Jackson...miscast, in my opinion), convinces her she didn't see what she saw. Eve's older sister, Cisely (Meagan Good), who is very close with her father, also convinces Eve that she misunderstood what she saw.
During the rest of that summer, Eve spends a lot of time with her Aunt Mozelle (Debbi Morgan), who has the gift of sight and tells fortunes for a living. Eve herself has the gift too, although she doesn't fully understand it yet. Eve's Bayou reminded me a bit of Practical Magic--another film that focuses on sisters and aunts and magical powers. But Eve's Bayou is far sadder and melancholic than Practical Magic.
I wanted something more out of Eve's Bayou. I wanted it to be spookier and more empowering or something. It's a sad, Southern Gothic soap opera with some bewitching moments (such as when Mozelle tells Eve the story of when her husband confronted her lover, leading to tragic consequences), but overall the film felt a bit limp.
Grade: B
***
The White Lotus, season 3
I was very impressed with the third season of The White Lotus, the anthology TV series that follows rich people at various "White Lotus" hotel locations around the world. Season 3 takes plan in Thailand and has some really fantastic actors: Parker Posey, Jason Isaacs, Carrie Coon, Walton Goggins among them.
I won't go into much detail since I can't review an entire season of television in a paragraph, but I'll mention a few things I found particularly interesting or well-done this season. There is a focus on spirituality in season 3 that I found very profound. Specifically, it's about the limits of spiritually and what happens when the shit really hits the fan. The two actors I was most impressed with this season were Jason Isaacs as Timothy Ratliff and Walton Goggins as Rick Hatchett. Timothy is a very wealthy financier who finds out that a former business partner just got busted for illegal activity that implicates Timothy. He spends the rest of the season contemplating how his and his family's life will change is he loses everything and ends up in prison. Rick is a middle-aged guy with a younger girlfriend who clearly has some heavy baggage due to the death of his father. He is in Thailand to try to find the man who killed his dad. And he'll go to any length to meet this man face-to-face.
Series creator Mike White (a bit of a controversial figure himself) walks a very fine line between satire and sincerity. There are a lot of moments in the series where you don't know if you're being encouraged to laugh at the privileged, entitled rich characters or the empathize with them. Or both. Say what you will about the series, it definitely gives three-dimensions to the majority of its characters, even when that means they disappoint us in the end.
Grade: A
***
The Pitt, season 1
I never watched ER and have rarely watched any medical shows (with Scrubs being the exception, although I've only seen a few seasons), so I was surprised when I found myself drawn to The Pitt, a show that takes place in real time during a very long shift at the Pittsburgh Medical Trauma Hospital.
Noah Wyle plays Dr. "Robby" Robinavitch, the senior attending in charge of the day shift. On this particular day, he is supervising two medical students and an intern as well as a number of residents. The Pitt really throws you in the deep end with all the medical jargon and hierarchies.
The thing about The Pitt that people will either appreciate or hate is that it takes time to give attention to social issues that impact medicine. For example, a Black woman is brought into the hospital tied to a gurney because she was exhibiting "drug-seeking behavior". Turns out, she has sickle cell anemia, which can cause agonizing pain. One resident recognizes this and treats her correctly. All of this is discussed out loud for the benefit of the viewer. Issues such as neurodivergence, fatphobia, drug addiction, and human trafficking come up throughout the day, making each episode have a bit of an "afterschool special" vibe. But despite some awkward exposition, I still think The Pitt fucking slaps.
If you can handle a bit of medical gore, it's worth checking out. It's very bingeable.
Grade: A
***
Yellowjackets, season 3
The first two seasons of Yellowjackets, about a girl's soccer team that ends up stranded in the Canadian wilderness, was the perfect blend of spooky and edgy. Cutting between two timelines, we saw the horrible things the girls had to resort to doing to survive in the woods and the aftermath of the survivors, trying to live normal lives 25 years later.
Season 3 has lost some of that magic. It opens during the springtime and shows the girls not just surviving, but thriving in the encampments they built after the cabin they discovered and lived in during the first two seasons burns down. I know this show isn't supposed to be realistic, but to me they were really pushing it with all the extra shit the girls seem to have made or found allowing them to do fancy crafts like paper lanterns. They also have a pen of animals like goats and sheep...do many goats and sheep roam in the mountains of Canada? I guess that's the supernatural part of the show coming to the forefront.
Despite the show spinning its wheels a bit, it's still a really good time. My main beef is that it seems to be tilting more towards the ridiculous than the genuinely creepy in this season. But I'm going to keep watching! I just hope they get back on track in season 4.
Grade: B+
