Two great films this week.

Anora

One thing you can never say about indie filmmaker Sean Baker is that he’s boring. His films, while having varying degrees of quality, never fail to hold your attention. In 2015, Baker exploded onto the screen with his debut feature, Tangerine, which stood out for casting a lot of non-actors in bit parts, casting two trans actors as its leads, and mostly for being shot entirely on the iPhone 5. It was a fairly good comedic drama with some solid performances. He gave us The Florida Project as his second feature, which, despite its intense critical acclaim and having personally watched it four times, I didn’t like. Willem Dafoe and a few unknowns deliver some fantastic work, but I was firmly in the minority of people who felt it was exploitative and insincere. After that, Baker released a movie that A LOT of people felt was exploitative and insincere, but I thought was one of the best comedies in years – Red Rocket. It followed a washed-up pornstar, brilliantly portrayed by Simon Rex, trying to break back into the business and using everyone in his orbit to do so. It was nasty, humiliating, but undeniably honest. I laughed so hard that I almost shit. Now Mr. Baker returns with another raunchy comedy, Anora, perhaps the most hyped film of the 2024 Oscar Season, fresh off a Palme d’Or win at the Cannes Film Festival.

Given how goo-goo everyone seemed to be going for it, I was skeptical, but it more than worked its magic with me. Anora is indisputably Baker’s best film yet, an almost perfect comedy that trades in the auteur’s penchant for a loose vibe for purposefully constructed dialogue and a story that, while certainly shaggy, is always moving forward. It’s also a coming-out party for Mikey Madison, the movie star, who plays the titular Anora in one of the year’s very best performances.

Anora, or Ani, is a 23-year-old stripper in Brighton Beach. She’s good at her job but not very happy where she’s at in life. She works odd hours, has an asshole for a roommate, and always looks tired. One night at work, a 19-year-old Russian boy, Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), enters the club with a fat stack of cash. When he finds out one of the club’s girls speaks Russian, he immediately asks for her. Ani comes along, and the two hit it off. What starts as an expensive night in the VIP room becomes spending a whole week with Vanya in his big-ass mansion, which becomes him paying her to marry him so he doesn’t have to go back home to Russia. What Anora doesn’t know is the lengths Vanya’s family, a notoriously powerful one, will go to get the marriage annulled. From there, the movie becomes an explosively funny situational comedy with a very dark undertone, one that goes to unexpected places before finally leaving us on a note so striking it will all but ensure the film’s legacy for decades to come.

This is my generation’s Pretty Woman, a funnier, raunchier, more insightful one with way less of that fairytale bullshit. It’s the best film Baker has ever made, hands down. There are stretches in Anora, mainly during the film’s longest and arguably best scene, that have the spirit of John Cassavetes soaring through it. Like John, Sean captures these truly amazing, bracingly honest moments from his actors through improvisation, his fantastic screenplay, and the outstanding performances all around. It’s impossible to imagine anyone but Mikey Madison in this role, it’s so destined to become iconic in the coming months/years that I feel like I don’t have to spend most of this review hurling adjectives at it. She will most likely get the Oscar next March, which will be a well-deserved win. Besides her, the rest of the cast is fantastic from top to bottom. Mark Eydelshetyn perfectly captures the oblivious, nerdy energy of an ultra-privileged nepo baby, while Karren Karagulian is hilarious as an Armenian Orthodox priest who somehow works for Vanya’s family. Even all the bit players are good, like Lindsey Normington in a very funny performance as Ani’s enemy at work. Perhaps the biggest discovery of the film, besides Madison, is Russian actor Yura Borisov as the surprisingly sensitive Igor, who plays a big role in the film during the third act.

The only real flaw of Anora is that it’s a bit overlong, there’s a small stretch between the second and third act of the film that feels like the movie is repeating itself a bit. Earlier I compared the feel of this to a John Cassavetes picture, and interestingly enough, that was generally the only major flaw of his movies. It’s certainly not a deal breaker, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t check my phone to see how far into the movie we were at this time. Anora isn’t a perfect film but it might be the closest we get to one in this fairly disappointing movie year. Grade: A- (In Theaters)

Conclave

After Anora had finished, I walked out of the theater and into the auditorium next door to see a showing of Conclave , which started in less than three minutes. When I arrived at my seat, a stereotypical Scottsdale couple was sitting in it. He was much older than her; she had lots of plastic surgery, and they were both loudly talking like they wanted everyone to notice them. Like a total loser, I lacked the courage and conviction to say anything, so I swallowed my pride and sat three seats down. A few moments later, another couple came in, and I recognized the couple in my seat. “Hey! Nice to see you again!” The second man looked at his ticket and asked one of the chair thieves, “Hey…what seats are you guys in?” The stowaway couple hesitated briefly before the lady said, “Doesn’t matter, sit down.” Couple #2 sat in the two seats between me and the stowaways. Once the coming attractions began, a metric ton of senior citizens piled into the theater. 1 out of every 3 had their iPhone flashlights on, occasionally blinding me as they desperately searched for their seats in the darkness. Apparently, some thought their seats might be on the ceiling? It was a packed house and boy, I mean packed tight. Everyone was in close quarters, and everything smelled like popcorn, farts, and Chanel No. 5.

Based on the trailers and word of mouth, I expected Conclave to be shameless awards bait seasoned with screechy performances in the pitch of “Give me an Oscar, please!” However, what I got was a terrific melodrama with some of the best and most nuanced performances of the year. Ralph Fiennes has perhaps never been better than as Cardinal Lawrence, a tirelessly devoted and selfless man who after the Pope dies of a heart attack, gathers a bunch of the church’s top capos, I mean cardinals, for a secluded conclave. These men include Stanley Tucci as a progressive American cardinal, John Lithgow as a conservative Canadian cardinal, Sergio Castellito as a traditionalist pre-Vatican II asshole, Lucian Msamati as a Nigerian conservative cardinal, and Brian F. O’Byrne as a monsignor who is basically Ralph Fiennes’ opposition researcher. Their goal is to pick a new pope and folks; the intensely passive-aggressive lobbying will be super cringe. Two significant events happen to kick off the vote – 1) it is rumored that one of the top candidates to replace the Pope (John Lithgow) was secretly fired by the Pope right before he died, and 2) The Pope secretly made this Mexican archbishop (Carlos Diehz) that nobody knows a Cardinal, therefore requiring his inclusion in the conclave. Picking a new pope is going to be a rough few days!

Besides the performances, this is an incredibly well-directed and gorgeously shot motion picture. Director Edward Berger, who did 2022’s remake of All Quiet on the Western Front, is in top form here, treating something as dull as a pope election like a presidential election. I never expected a movie about a bunch of popes being mildly rude to each other to practically blow the roof off of my brain, but here we are, ladies and gentlemen. French cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine, sure to get an Oscar nomination, makes every tedious ritual look fascinating and gorgeous. Everyone is excellent, with Fiennes, Tucci, and Lithgow particularly standing out, but I have two major problems with the movie.

The first is the last twenty minutes, which take us by the hand into this leap of absurdism that feels cheap and unearned. The ending especially threatens to undo all the powerful speeches and wonderfully cryptic conversations the first two acts of the script had going for it. The second problem is the Isabella Rossellini character that wastes a one-dimensional, bullshit part on one of the best actresses we have. She gives a speech about how women’s opinions don’t mean anything in the church. Ironically, it would have landed way better if they meant anything in Peter Straughan’s screenplay. We never get to know her as a character beyond broad strokes, which really stinks.

Overall, though, Conclave is a major success. It’s a very traditional, straightforward drama executed exceptionally well, with some of our best male character actors cosplaying as men of the cloth. It’s something both you and your somewhat liberal grandma can agree on. Grade: B+ (In Theaters)