Anora – no shock as to why it's won big

A rom-com that takes a darker turn, director, writer, producer and editor Steve Baker’s mega award-winning Anora tells the story of the titular character, who prefers to be known as Ani. A stripper at a club in Brighton Beach, an American-Russian part of Brooklyn, she is introduced to a young Russian, Ivan ‘Vanya’ Zakharov, the 21-year-old son of a Russian oligarch, because she can understand Russian.

He is supposed to be in the US studying, but this spoiled brat spends most of his time partying and playing video games. When he and Ani hit it off, he asks if he can pay her to be his girlfriend for a week. She agrees and, with some of his friends, they fly to Las Vegas.

While there, Vanya expresses disdain for his parents and Russia, and then impulsively asks Ani to marry him. Despite her initial disbelief, she agrees and they wed before returning to New York, to the mansion Vanya has been living in.

But word gets back to his parents and they set off from Russia, having ordered his Armenian godfather/US babysitter, Toros, to arrange an annulment and hold Vanya for return to the motherland. Ani, on the other hand, has no intention of simply quitting.

This is not Pretty Woman. For one thing, it’s no happy-ever-after fairy tale – it’s a lot grittier and doesn’t play with tropes about ‘poor’ sex workers who need saving. It’s Baker’s second feature about sex workers after Tangerine and he never treats them with any sense of moral judgmentalism. On top of that, it never makes sex work look sleazy/pornographic.

Also, Ani can do charming, but she’s not afraid to spit venom, use violence and not simply acquiesce to the demands of others.

Filmed with a nod to 1970s New York crime dramas, Drew Daniels’s cinematography has a look that entirely matches its subject. It rolls in at 139 minutes (long for me), but never feels over-stretched. The final scene is a wallop to the guts.

Mikey Madison won the best actress Oscar a week ago – and it’s not hard to see why. She gives this everything she’s got and is spiky, funny and charming by turns. It’s a nuanced performance that leaves us wondering – at least to a degree – about her motivations.

Mark Eydelshteyn is very good as the spoiled Vanya, as are Karren Karagulian as Toros, and Yura Borisov and Vache Tovmasyan as two hoods that he hires.

Absolutely no surprise that this has done so well on the awards circuit – and well worth a watch.

Currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Capote – another grown-up film worth watching

In November 1959, in Holcomb – a place that apparently even most Kansans don’t know of – the Cutter family (farmer Herb, wife Bonnie and their teenage daughter, Nancy, and son, Kenyon) were murdered in their farmhouse.

Seeing a report about this in the New York Times, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, actor and socialite Truman Capote is instantly fascinated by the case and tells New Yorker magazine editor William Shawn that he’s going to write about it.

He travels to Kansas with childhood friend Harper Lee as both company and to help facilitate contacts. Shortly after they arrive in town, police arrest two suspects. Perry Smith and Richard Hickock stand trial, are found guilty and sentenced to death.

Capote decides that his work will be a book – a non-fictional novel – and he finds ways to gain contact with the men in prison, particularly Smith, gaining his confidence and finding out about his life, not least by finding a better lawyer for their appeal than they had for their initial trial. But what he really wants to know is what happened that November night and Smith won’t say.

\Released in 2005, Capote is based on Gerald Clarke’s 1988 book of the same name, is directed by Bennett Miller from a screenplay by Dan Futterman and enjoysh cinematography by Adam Kimmel that beautifully contrasts the glistening New York that Capote inhabits with the wide-open spaces of rural Kansas.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, who won an Oscar, a Bafta and a Golden Globe for his performance, has Capote’s voice and mannerisms down pat, with his narcissism clear and his motivations far from it. There is a cynicism to his Capote, but also a vulnerability – perhaps partly down to his homosexuality and effeminism.

Clifton Collins Jr is very good as Smith, as is Catherine Keener as Lee. Bob Balaban gives a nice turn as Shawn, as does Bruce Greenwood as Capote’s long-time partner, John Dunphy.

Coming in at an unrushed (but never dragging) 114 minutes, the pace allows the characters and relationships to develop. The violence is minimised in terms of what you actually see on screen, but never otherwise. This is more very good, grown-up drama, and currently available on Amazon Prime in the UK.

Doubt is a superbly acted, intelligent, grown-up drama

Popping up on Netflix as I looked for something to watch this afternoon, Doubt is a 2008 film that was written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, adapted from his 2004 Pulitzer and Tony-winning play, Doubt: A Parable.

Set in 1964, a year after the assassination of JFK and not long after Vatican II pledged that it would drag the church into the 20^th century, it takes place in a predominantly Irish-American parish in the Bronx, where cheerful Father Flynn is the priest of St Nicholas’s Church.

As he preaches about a community of doubt – particularly in light of the previous year’s assassination – Sister Aloysius, the principal of the connected school, prowls the aisles, admonishing children who aren’t paying enough attention.

This sets up the central confrontation in the piece – that of the modernising priest who wants to be friends with the children and their families, and the nun who entered the convent after being widowed in WWII and is very much of the old order.

But after witnessing a fleeting encounter between Flynn and one of her pupils, Aloysius tells her fellow nuns to be on the watch for anything suspicious and report it to her. Some days later, naïve Sister James eventually tells her that a week earlier, Flynn had called her in class to ask for one of the boys – Donald Miller, the school’s sole black pupil – to be sent to see him at the rectory.

When he returns to class, he is acting strangely and has alcohol on his breath. Aloysius has no doubts about what is happening. James is full of them.

The film’s is quietly paced and gives great time to flesh out the characters. It ultimately leaves the audience to decide whether Aloysius is correct. Do we have doubts too or her certainty?

The central cast is superb. Meryl Streep is a fierce Aloysius, Philip Seymour Hoffman a charming Flynn who can be threatening too, and Amy Adams takes the naïve James and gives her some real complexity. With only a single scene, Viola Davis is outstanding as Mrs Miller, Donald’s mother.

All four gained Oscar nominations: Streep for best actress and the others in the best supporting categories.

A seriously intelligent, grown-up drama, it’s well worth 104 minutes of your time.